A Lesson in Character Development

In a dark corner of a bar here, a woman types a message on her BlackBerry. A few feet away, a man with a beer in hand pulls out his iPhone to check his Facebook account. At other late-night gatherings such behavior might be seen as awkward, antisocial, or ill-mannered. In this crowd, what looks like high-tech tuning-out is actually tuning-in, and the ultimate sign of social currency.

The scene is Washington’s Twestival (a contraction of “twitter” and “festival”), where more than 200 fans of the site Twitter gathered on a February Thursday night to meet face to face with people they know only by their online nicknames. They are here to raise money for a nonprofit organization called Charity: Water that provides clean drinking water in developing countries.

That such an event could be orchestrated entirely through a communication tool limited to 140-character bulletins is remarkable enough. What’s astonishing is that this same evening is being repeated in more than 200 cities across the world, raising more than $250,000 for charity in just 24 hours.

Welcoming the crowd in Washington, Peter LaMotte, director of marketing at GeniusRocket, an online advertising agency, and the organizer of the local event, sums up the accomplishment of the evening: “We just proved that Twitter is about more than finding ex-girlfriends or -boyfriends or connecting with old co-workers and people you went to school with.”

Twestival is an ambitious extension of an experiment conducted by a London events planner, Amanda Rose, who in September organized what Twitter users call a “tweet-up” to benefit a local soup kitchen. She expected a few dozen people. Nearly 300 showed up, raising $1,425 and collecting 11 boxes of canned food for the charity.

Fittingly for a medium characterized by instantaneous broadcasts, the global event was planned with lightening speed. It was early January when Ms. Rose sent her first Twitter messages — or “tweets” — proposing a worldwide Twitter fund-raising event. Barely six weeks later, thousands of Twitter users across the globe showed up to make it happen.

Ms. Rose and her team of volunteers designated Charity: Water as the sole beneficiary of the event, the Twestival.com organizers said in their press release, based on its appeal as an organization with an easy-to-understand mission and one that financed projects that “can have an immediate and profound impact.”

Initially, organizers hoped to raise $500,000 through a combination of ticket and merchandise sales, sponsorships, and online donations. But following an overwhelming response, they quickly revised that to $1-million. Fund-raising results from local events are still coming in, so it’s not clear how close organizers came to their goal.

‘I Follow You on Twitter’

Here at the Local 16 bar, in Washington, the Twestival chitchat is distinctly techie. Groups of 20and 30-somethings, many of whom work in marketing or social-media technology, swap Twitter gossip — like the story about the guy who rigged his washing machine to twitter whenever a load of laundry was finished — and discuss the thrill of acquiring new “followers,” that is, Twitter users who sign up to receive your updates.

Most everyone wears a nametag with both a real name and a Twitter handle, prompting several exclamations of “Oh, I know you! I follow you on Twitter.”

Fingers fly to wireless phones to check and update Twitter accounts.

From somewhere in the room, someone “tweets” the message: “Hanging out and talking photography with @LindsayG and @KPB (newly engaged!!!) at #DCTwestival.”

Another partygoer accounts for the conspicuous absence of a phone in her hand: “I’m low on batteries,” she says.

Maddie Grant, a social-media strategist, explains her brief but important role in helping the evening come together: some weeks earlier she received a Twitter message from Ms. Rose seeking volunteers to plan the Washington event, which Ms. Grant decided to send out or “re-tweet” to her list of followers.

One of them, Peter LaMotte, took up the challenge. Through what amounted to 10 seconds of effort on her part, she observed, 200 tech-savvy Washingtonians were now raising a glass to clean water. “That’s the power of just 140 characters,” she says.

‘You’re in Charge’

Grass-roots Twitter organizers around the country tell similar stories of how they became involved in the effort. Ben Meck, a senior at Case Western Reserve University, had just one week to put together Cleveland’s Twestival, which attracted 67 people and raised $1,410. After inquiring through Twitter whether there was a Twestival taking place in Cleveland, he received a message in response that said: “You’re in charge.”

The worldwide event was planned and managed entirely by volunteers like Mr. Meck and Mr. LaMotte. They were not given any money for the event, and their chief guidance was a 10-page document with tips on drumming up publicity through Twitter and other social media and on finding sponsors to furnish venues, refreshments, and items that could be auctioned at the Twestival events to raise more money for Charity: Water. “My name got put on a Web site and people started contacting me to ask how they could help out and it went from there,” said Mr. Meck.

Many of the groups in large cities set their fund-raising goal at $4,000 — the minimum amount Charity: Water says it requires to build a single freshwater well.

Washington’s event raised $2,500 through ticket sales, sponsorships, and a raffle.

New York’s Twestival, which attracted 1,000 people to a downtown club, raised $22,500 — enough to build four freshwater wells.

In addition to the money collected at each city’s Twestival, organizers raised an additional $5,000 through a Web site called Twestivalfm, which asked musicians to “donate” songs that other Twitter users could pay to play.

From the time the first Twestival event kicked off in Auckland, New Zealand, anybody could trace the fund-raising event’s progress around the world through a live Webcast of Twestival events in bars, bowling alleys, galleries, nightclubs, and office buildings.

People getting ready to attend a Twestival pub night in Seattle were able to look in on the late-night Twitterers playing Wii tennis in Doha, Qatar, watch Swedes viewing a video made by Charity: Water in a minimalist Stockholm office, or survey the raucous crowds that packed a warehouse in London.

‘Worldwide Scale’

To Twestival-goers, the event may have been a fun opportunity to integrate online and offline social circles. But to onlookers, it was a testament to the fund-raising potential of social media.

“One of the concerns that people have had so far around fund raising through social media is scale,” observes Allison Fine, the author of Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age and host of The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s Social Good podcast. “Twestival, if nothing else, has shown us how possible worldwide scale is at no cost.”

For Charity: Water, Twestival has been an unexpected boon. When the group learned in January that it would be the beneficiary of the experiment, said Nicky Yates, who coordinates volunteers at the charity, only the organization’s founder had a Twitter account. Now, she says, the whole staff is addicted. “It’s amazing to see these people who weren’t donors before tweeting about us and throwing our name out there,” she says.

Initially, says Ms. Yates, the group was nervous about relinquishing stewardship of the charity’s image and reputation to a heterogeneous mass of Twitter users.

“When you have volunteers in 180 cities, you’re not sure how your name and brand will be handled, and how you’ll be represented,” she says. But, she says, staff members were surprised by the sensitivity and enthusiasm with which Twitter followers took up the cause. Several groups, she notes, went so far as to submit their press releases to Charity: Water for approval.

The money raised by Twestival will go toward building freshwater wells in Ethiopia, India, and Uganda. As a thank you, Charity: Water plans to produce a live Webcast to show a well drilling so that Twestival supporters can see the fruits of their fund raising, says Ms. Yates, adding, “We’ll probably tweet about it as well.”