The Examiner, a Web site that monitors local news and trends posted an article on how the Community Foundation successfully utilized twitter in a recent campaign to giveaway 1k to a local nonprofit:

During the 10-week period, The Community Foundation invited people to follow their organization on Twitter and tweet about their favorite local nonprofits. They spread the word through Twitter, Facebook, GivingMatters.com, e-mail communication and help of local partners including CoolPeopleCare.org and radio station Lightning 100. Nancy VanReece, executive director of The Nashville Shakespeare Festival, said she heard about the contest through an e-mail blast.

VanReece noted that her organization decided early on that they would participate the first week and the seventh week since the contest was long. They did not want their followers to become burned out on their requests to participate. “Because the grand prize opportunity was not announced until that eighth week we were able to put all our efforts on that opportunity without what I would call tweet burn,” VanReece said. “We used HootSuite to schedule our requests at different times of day and used a pattern of every other day toward the end. With some research, I was able to tell when the tweets were trending and sent requests out at those times. In the last 24 hours, we sent direct messages to any follower that had sent a direct message to us in the last year and asked them to RT to help us win. We also included instructions on our Facebook Page, our Facebook Cause and our E-Newsletter – all in the last 48 hours of the contest. I really think that that hat-trick kept us in the top five for the drawing.”