The Weekly Good: Twitter Gives Back With #Tweet4Good, Here’s The Behind The Scenes Look

[Note: This is a weekly series. If your company is doing something amazing to help a charitable cause or doing some good in your community, please reach out.]

Before we start with this week's edition of "The Weekly Good", I want to let everyone know that our thoughts are with those who are affected by the horrific events in Connecticut today. We are all human, and doing damage like this to one another must stop.

There are good things going on in the world, and it's important to highlight those things. When tech companies deploy their efforts and resources for good, it hits me, for reasons. Twitter is doing something really awesome, called #Tweet4Good. For every tweet using the #Tweet4Good hashtag, Twitter will give $1 to in ads on the platform to the Red Cross. Up to $20,000. You have until 12/31 to get your tweets in.

Twitter will donate $1 in Twitter Ads for Good to @RedCross with each #Tweet4Good before 12/31, up to $20K. Please RT: tweet.twitter.com/Tweet4Good

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Twitter Advertising (@TwitterAds) December 13, 2012

We spoke to Claire Diaz-Ortiz, who leads social innovation at Twitter, and she told us all about the initiative:

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TechCrunch: How did you come up with the idea for #tweet4good?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: The #Tweet4Good initiative was the brainchild of our Sales Marketing Team as a way to bring our advertisers and users together to engage around a critical non-profit and to support them with a donation in Twitter Ads for Good, our pro-bono ad program.

In Dec 2011 we renamed our pro-bono advertising program as Twitter Ads for Good. To help promote the program, we ran a holiday campaign for our advertisers that invited them to choose from five different charities for a donation in Twitter Ads for Good that Twitter would make on their behalf. This year we wanted to evolve that idea and bring it to Twitter to invite our advertisers to participate and engage with the program on our platform. The goal is to involve people in the campaign to help us reach our $20,000 goal as way to generate more awareness for the @RedCross by Tweeting with the hashtag #Tweet4Good.

TechCrunch: How do you usually work with nonprofits for good using ad units?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: The Twitter for Nonprofits program gives benefits to any non-profit who applies. The Twitter Ads for Good program, which has been in existence since the day we first launched our very first ad product back in April of 2010, now gives nearly a million dollars in pro-bono ads to non-profit organizations each year.

TechCrunch: How else do you work with nonprofits as a company?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: Although we do engage in some one-off philanthropic work, including our collobration with Girls Who Code, we focus on the programmatic ways we can reach large numbers of non-profits. The Twitter for Nonprofits program and the Twitter Ads for Good program do well to reach this aim.

TechCrunch:</b What are some stories about nonprofits that have used twitter for good, with or without your help?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: See some great case studies of non-profits at http://www.Hope140.org. Another great example of Twitter use this year by a social good campaign would be the #halfthesky campaign — the book, documentary, and now movement of @nickkristof to help support women and girls the world over.

TechCrunch:</b What are your days like at Twitter?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: I (Claire) work with non-profits, faith organizations, and their leaders to help make Twitter a place for them to do their good works. Whether in helping to highlight the work of excellent charities, or in working to bring leaders like the Pope onto Twitter, the goal is always the same: to help users better do what they are already good at.

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There's a website that features all of the people who have tweeted with the hashtag, along with a real-time indication of how close we are to hitting the maximum goal. It's pretty awesome:

Participate, tweet, and if you're a company, think of something that you can do year-round to help out some less-fortunate folks with the tools that you have at your disposal. You never know, you might just change the world. Twitter did it with a hashtag.

In case you've missed our previous Weekly Good pieces, have a look here, here and here.