In yet another unique fundraising initiative, this time through online crowdsourcing, the Aam Aadmi Party has managed to add more than Rs six lakh to its coffers.
One seemingly innocuous tweet by a young AAP volunteer Nishant Beria to donate Rs 2 to the party every time his message was retweeted, kicked off the campaign, which was taken forward by about 400 people, including celebrities.
"I will donate Rs 2 to AAP for every RT this tweet gets in next 24 hrs," Beria tweeted, and got 490 retweets, which prompted him to commit around Rs 1,000 to the party.
"Taking cue from his initiative, around 400 other supporters tweeted on the same line pledging to donate further, which got retweeted in large numbers as well," a social media volunteer of AAP Arvind Jha said.
The number of users who tweeted and retweeted further donation swelled to around 5,654 which reached around 10 lakh users, he claimed. Celebrity supporters of AAP, like singer Vishal Dadlani and former Infosys board member V Balakrishnan increased the pledge amount further to Rs 50 and Rs 100 respectively.
Nominating all his followers, Dadlani tweeted, "I'll donate Rs 50 to #AAP for each RT of this tweet in 24 hours," which was retweeted around 3,000 times. Bollywood actor and AAP leader Gul Panag's pledge to donate Rs 20 for every retweet was "RTd 1117 times in last 24 hours," as per a tweet put out by her.
"Only from top 50 people who RTd we managed to garner around six and a half lakh rupees. So you can imagine that the amount will rise significantly when the committment of 400 others are added up," Jha said.
"It was completely spontaneous initiative taken by one of our volunteers. We had to take note this initiative which has had so much impact," Jha said. Terming it as another step towards ensuring "transparent" poll funding, AAP appreciated voluntary efforts like this, coming largely from its supporters.
"The party is grateful to this young volunteer who launched this brilliant social media outreach, for which other parties have earmaked a separate budget," Jha said. When contacted, Nishant said the idea was to donate and he was glad that he could contribute.
"Idea was to donate to AAP and I am glad it helped AAP in getting the funds. Feels good that somehow I was able to contribute," he said.
