Who is your favorite Tri-Cities charity?

I know, this doesn’t have much to do with car accidents, personal injury, or insurance claims, but Anderson Law recently polled Facebook users to find out who their favorite local Tri-Cities charity or non-profit organization is.

To make it easier, we decided to narrow the poll down to four of our favorite charities: the Second Harvest Food Bank in Pasco, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Benton and Franklin Counties, the Tri-City Union Gospel Mission, and the Boy Scouts of America (Blue Mountain Council in Richland). As an incentive to participate in the poll, we told participants that we would donate $10 per vote to the charity of their choice. As soon as the poll was open, I contacted each charity to let them know that we were seeking votes and asked them to post the poll on their Facebook pages.

The response was tremendous! Within a day, several hundred people showed their support by casting a vote. It was working! We were hoping that we would continue to see votes pour in, but the spike had passed. We waited a few more days to close the poll, but only a few more votes trickled in. What happened?

It turns out, nothing unusual happened. The lifespan of a Facebook post is usually only a few hours. This is much shorter than the two-day lifespan of a news article. Ours probably lasted a little longer because the different charities were notified at different times throughout the day. In other words, our post was successful, it just wasn’t viral.

We learned a few things through the poll. The first one may seem obvious, but it’s worth saying: every charity is very appreciative of people who volunteer to raise money for them. Also, the Boys and Girls Club Facebook following is more active than the other charities and garnered more than half of the votes. That seems pretty intuitive based on the age of the boys, girls, and the staff. Finally, we saw how passionate people are about who they support. Each charity has loyal supporters who are happy to tell you why they love their charity. This feedback is especially helpful because it reminds us why we are supporting each of the charities we support.

This poll was one small way Anderson Law has been able to give back to the community we live in. Let us know how else we might be able to help by commenting below or calling 509-987-1777 at our office on Clearwater in Kennewick.