Shelter Scotland

I’m going to be honest with you — I don’t know much about Shelter Scotland beyond the fact that they have a badass bookshop in my neighbourhood and the recent #SocialMediaSanta campaign made my heart sing. But heart singing moments are still worthy of comment, so i’ll write this review based on that.
Back in December, the lovely Rachel R turned me onto #SocialMediaSanta as a means to get the online community involved in giving back to the local offline community. The concept was simple — collect unwrapped presents and drop them with Shelter Scotland in December to make someones Christmas a little brighter.
The concept isn’t new, they haven’t reinvented the wheel — it’s something we’re all familiar with during the holiday season and any way you toss it, giving back is a nice thing to do. But I was particularly impressed with Shelter Scotland’s take on this and here’s why:
1. Setting up a catchy hashtag. Utilizing online curiosity with a funky sounding hashtag was just genius. Whether you knew about it or not, it was intriguing enough to want to learn more.
2. Really targeting the online community to make offline impact. Let’s be honest, most of our communication happens online nowadays, so I thought it was pretty darn smart to use that to their advantage. Getting the local online communities and bloggers onboard, meant the word travelled faster and an impressive amount of people got involved.
3. Making it super easy to drop off. Whether it was in post, or in person, the Shelter peeps made it pretty foolproof to get the presents there safe and sound. I happen to know that Rachel actually went to Glasgow to pick up presents!
4. But perhaps my favourite thing is that they didn’t limit the presents to just toys. They were asking for presents for Mom & Dad too. I think that’s a really important factor that’s often overlooked and it’s nice to see someone making the WHOLE family a priority.
So yeah, based on #socialmediasanta, i’m a huge fan of this group and look forward to seeing what other initiatives they put forward in 2015!