The idea was originally tweeted by John Thompson on 16 September, three days after the note first went into circulation.
Thompson tweeted: “I will donate the first new five pound note I get to a charity. Will you?”, followed by a poll question with answers ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Of the 2,500 that voted, only 34% of poll respondents selected ‘Yes’ but the tweet has now been retweeted 100 times and has sparked a movement of tweeters pledging to donate their first fiver.
The Institute of Fundraising (IOF), the UK’s professional membership body for fundraising, picked up the tweet and adopted it as a campaign, using the hashtags #FirstFiver and #givefive.
IOF head of policy and research Daniel Fluskey said: “This is a social media campaign, so it is not particularly owned by anybody but when we saw it, and saw it was an easy way for people to support charities and think about giving to good causes, we wanted to promote that and use our membership and network to get it out there.
“We’ve got about 6,000 fundraisers across the UK so we’ve been promoting it to them as it’s not just about getting a corporate body tweeting it; social media works better from a person."
Charities, including Parkinson's UK, the Children's Society, Guide Dogs and MacMillan Cancer have got involved with the campaign on social media and asked for #FirstFiver donations.
Joe Jenkins, Children’s Society director of fundraising and supporter engagement, first heard about the campaign when he was mentioned in a reply to Thompson’s tweet.
He wrote a series of tweets and penned a blogpost detailing all that the Children’s Society could do with a five-pound donation.
Jenkins said: “We have had dozens of people online pledging to follow through with the initiative. We have set up a mechanism online so people can easily click through on the website to donate. Increasingly these days it is important for the experience to be simple, quick and accessible.
“Our senior team have all pledged their first fivers and our chief executive has just pledged his today so I will be collecting that off him later.”
Parkinson’s UK digital fundraising manager Hannah Moysey said it is difficult to quantify the number of donations but that the first day her team began tweeting about #FirstFiver, Parkinson’s UK received seven or eight new text donations.
“We thought it was a really feel-good campaign,” said Moysey.
“It’s quite unique, people are really interested in their first fiver and obviously there is a real feel-good factor when people can share what they’ve donated and how they’ve donated.
“We saw a good reaction on Twitter, people obviously want to get involved and not everyone has had their first fiver yet so it’s really important for us to follow that up in a couple of weeks to remind them it’s a fun campaign to get involved with.”
Fluskey added: “I think if you’re talking about whether this is successful or not, in one sense any extra money that goes to charity is good and it is getting people thinking about giving as well.
“Even those people who haven’t given their fiver to charity for the first time will maybe end up being a long-term supporter.”
The UK’s first polymer fiver features an image of Sir Winston Churchill. Mass production began last September at the factory of security printer De La Rue.
The new polymer £10 and £20 notes, featuring the images of author Jane Austen (£10) and artist JMW Turner (£20), will first be issued in the summer of 2017 and 2020 respectively.
