Another case of Twitter-led micro-donations having a huge positive impact.
Last night, many Twitter users saw tweets and retweets of a post from @armano, who was hoping to help Daniela, a spousal abuse victim, rent an apartment for her family. In a span of four hours, more than $9k was raised and by this morning, the total has exceeded $11.7k.
The initial request came from David Armano, VP of Experience Design at Critical Mass. He and his wife had taken in Daniela and her family when they lost their home. Daniela has three children, the youngest of whom has Down's syndrome. David and his family took her family in, but they have a modest house and that's not a long-term solution.
So, David posted a request for help on his blog and the Twitter universe jumped in. With hundreds of retweets and a spot on the front page of Digg, they soon raised more than $11,000. She and her family will have an apartment of their own soon and she can begin to rebuild their lives.
Even in these tough times (perhaps especially in these tough times), people are willing to step up with generous donations to others. Twitter enables communication of the requests to grow exponentially, while micropayment tools like Chip in, Paypal and Tipjoy make micro-donations safe and easy.
