Foursquare 'Checkin for Charity' Hits 135k Checkins, Raises $15k

The Foursquare Checkin for Charity campaign at SXSW 2010 I first reported on last week was a big success for the Save the Children Haiti Relief Fund.

• By the end of SXSWi, attendees had logged over 135,000 checkins on Foursquare.
• The effort was  supported by over 2,400 tweets that included the #sxswHaiti hashtag.
• The 25 cents per login PayPal and Microsoft pledged for a maximum gift of $15,000 was achieved in less than 48 hours!
• The campaign also got some good press, including in WSJ.

The campaign was a great boost for Foursquare as location based services were all the rave at SXSWi this year. Checkin for Charity also showed this tech-savvy crowd what was possible with Foursquare in the cause world.

Kerrie LeBourveau, a member of the StudioGood team that executed the campaign, explains.

"It was a great way to energize an already active community.  Sometimes when I told people about it, they were taken aback and had no idea that something like this was even possible with Foursquare! It was pretty cool to see.  Also, we saw a lot of people actually SHOWING each other their little foursquare messages. Kind of neat to see a guerrilla kind of thing that was not totally forced or pushed on by some big brand."

This may really be the lasting impact of Checkin for Charity. Foursquare ambassadors who can share best practices with causes that will finally have a  social media platform for cause marketing they can truly call their own.

Looking for more ideas of how you can launch a Foursquare cause marketing program for your local nonprofit? Check out this one. Must be a good idea. I got it from Boston's own Harvard University and I've heard they're wicked smaht!