Tweeters can harness the power of 140 characters to help raise funds for 25th Annual Bed & Bread Club Radiothon
The Salvation Army of Metro Detroit is turning to the Twitterverse to help support the 25th annual Bed & Bread Club Radiothon. The Salvation Army will host its inaugural Tweet-a-thon during the 16-hour fundraising event on Friday, Feb. 24. By tweeting to The Salvation Army using the designated #BedandBread hashtag, supporters have the opportunity to be a hero in the fight against poverty in metro Detroit.
Starting on Monday, Feb. 20 and running through 10 p.m. on Radiothon day, Ford Motor Company Fund has pledged to donate $3 for each tweet that uses the #BedandBread hashtag, up to $25,000. Champions of The Salvation Army will also tweet on behalf of the organization and encourage people to pledge their support and make an individual contribution at www.salmich.org. A special Tweetathon booth will be set up at Oakland Mall for people to visit and tweet from.
For every 40 tweets that contain the #BedandBread hashtag, one person will be fed for an entire year. Each individual contribution of $10 helps provide food for one person for a month.
For more information about The Salvation Army Tweetathon, visit www.salmich.org. The Salvation Army also has sample 140 character #BedandBread tweets available for users to share during the Tweetathon.
“When someone tweets using #BedandBread during the Tweetathon, they’re joining a club of thousands of metro Detroiters that have been on the front lines of fighting the war on hunger and homelessness for 25 years,” says Major Mark Anderson, general secretary and metro Detroit area commander for The Salvation Army Eastern Michigan Division. “It’s truly amazing what people — and technology — can do when they join together to make a difference.”
Over its quarter-century history, the Bed & Bread Club Radiothon has grown to become the largest single-market, single-day fundraiser in the country, raising more than $25 million to provide food and shelter to those in need.
The Bed & Bread Program serves nearly 5,000 meals to the hungry each day. That’s approximately 1.7 million meals every year to men, women and children that would otherwise go without. In addition, The Bed & Bread Program provides nearly 500 homeless individuals shelter each night. That’s nearly 167,000 nights of shelter annually.
In fact, from October to December 2011, The Salvation Army saw a 12 percent increase in the number of meals served off of the Bed & Bread trucks.
While other Bed & Bread Programs do exist throughout the country, The Salvation Army of Metro Detroit’s Bed & Bread Program is unique in that it also serves people via mobile soup kitchens. Detroit’s mobile soup kitchens are The Salvation Army’s only traveling Bed & Bread units.
The Bed & Bread trucks leave from The Salvation Army’s Acres of Hope campus in Detroit 365 days a year to visit many designated Bed & Bread stops throughout the day.The Bed & Bread program’s mobile feeding trucks also assist clients in receiving critical social services from The Salvation Army.
Founded by William and Catherine Booth in London, England in 1865, The Salvation Army is a faith-based, non-profit organization dedicated to serving people in need without discrimination. For more information about The Salvation Army, please call 877-SAL-MICH, or visit us at www.salmich.org.
