TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Meredith Bowen was getting tired of requests from Facebook friends to exchange make-believe pansies, daffodils and tiny cartoon characters for her “(Lil) Green Patch,” a virtual garden that sprouted on her social-networking page about a year ago.
She was ready to delete it, until she learned The Nature Conservancy was getting a portion of the ad revenue generated by the game.
“I’ve saved like 133 square feet of rain forest,” the 31-year- old Holt resident said.
Bowen illustrates both the potential upside and downside for charitable causes hoping to cash in on the popularity of social-networking sites such as Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace.
With millions of users worldwide, the sites would seem fertile ground for fundraising experiments — especially ones where users aren’t asked to make direct contributions.
But it’s far from certain that social networking will prove as effective as more traditional fundraising methods, such as direct mail, telephone solicitation and even e-mails to past donors.
One hurdle to overcome is the sheer deluge of information online.
As Facebook users are bombarded with invitations to send and receive virtual beers, throw snowballs, sign petitions and take quizzes, applications benefiting charities can seem like just another silly game.
“I get so many of those requests,” said Nicole Marble, 23, who works at Michigan State University. “Sometimes I pay attention to them, but with a lot of them, I’m just clicking ‘Ignore, Ignore, Ignore.’ ”
Many appeals on social networks have drawn lots of attention but few dollars.
“You often see where 20,000 people have joined a cause and it’s raised $200,” said Jim Tobin, president of Ignite Social Media, a promotional company in Cary, N.C.
The (Lil) Green Patch game has done better than most, generating $162,150 in little more than a year, said Sue Citro, digital membership director for The Nature Conservancy.
The game is among the most popular applications that Facebook can add to their profiles, with nearly 6 million active users monthly, according to Facebook.
Players plant virtual “gardens” with flowers and fruits sent by friends and send plants to them in return. Ads are shown alongside the game. Green Patch Inc., the Mountain View, Calif., developer of the game, donates a portion of ad revenue to The Nature Conservancy’s rain-forest preservation campaign.
Even if social-networking sites draw relatively little money now, it’s imperative for nonprofits to explore them, said Melissa Brown, associate director of research for the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Surveys by the center show that direct mail and phone solicitation have become less successful in recent years, while Internet fundraising has risen steadily.
