Is there a way to use social media for social good?

TINT & Miracle Messages partnered up to answer that question and accomplish that goal.

Miracle Messages are short video messages from homeless people to their long lost loved ones, delivered via social media by people just like you. To date, volunteers have delivered 23 Miracle Messages, resulting in 11 reunions, including Dale and his sister Erin after 20 years, who checked himself into rehab shortly after reuniting and is now sober and living with family.

Miracle Messages is partnering with TINT to scale to new heights. With the audacious mission of mobilizing the internet to reunite 1% of the 100 million homeless people on earth each year, Miracle Messages is using TINT to empower anyone in the world to capture and share Miracle Messages from their homeless neighbors to loved ones, using hashtag #miraclemessages.

The Problem

Up until recently, most Miracle Messages were recorded and delivered by Miracle Messages’ Founder/CEO Kevin F. Adler, who launched the social venture in honor of his Uncle Mark, who suffered from schizophrenia and lived on-and-off the streets for 30 years. Kevin would meet a homeless person on the streets or through a partner organization, record their Miracle Message, post the video on YouTube and miraclemessages.org, and share it strategically on social media.

Increasingly, that is changing. A smattering of volunteers (called “messengers”) across the United States have recorded Miracle Messages in their own communities, using smartphones and social media to help their homeless neighbors reunite with loved ones. A recent example: Gabby Cordell and the Choose Love Foundation recorded a Miracle Message from Isaac Avila, a homeless man in Miami who had not seen his family in over 40 years. Within days, Gabby and other messengers had located Isaac’s family and received response videos from them. Within weeks, Isaac’s sister drove from Texas to Florida to pick him up and bring him home for good.

This crowd-driven approach is how Miracle Messages will scale, but a major challenge exists: how to empower volunteers to seamlessly share content. Many social impact organizations face a similar dilemma: creating a hassle free way for supporters to show their support, but with limited time and resources to expend on custom technology solutions to help them. People often want to make a difference; the problem is how to make it easy and accessible for them to do so.

For first time volunteers with Miracle Messages, it could be daunting enough to visit a local homeless shelter or meal service and offer guests the opportunity to record video messages to their loved ones. Expecting volunteers of all ages and levels of digital savvy to jump through multiple hoops to upload and describe videos, send multiple emails, and find the right channels seems cumbersome at best. And so, Miracle Messages needed to find the right partner.

Kevin posted on his Facebook wall asking for advice. His friend Satya responded.

Three weeks and a few emails later, Miracle Messages is thrilled to begin using TINT for its ongoing #miraclemessages hashtag campaign.

The Solution:

Why TINT is the ideal tool for campaigns using social media for social good

With TINT, anyone can now bring Miracle Messages to their area by posting the videos they record with hashtag #miraclemessages to their YouTube channel or in the Miracle Messages Facebook page. Miracle Messages then adds YouTube videos to a public Miracle Messages playlist, and uses the moderation features in TINT to share these user-generated videos with the world, adding CTAs like “undelivered message – please share!” to make it easy to spread on social media.

Furthermore, Miracle Messages can now feature time-sensitive posts, identify top messengers through TINT’s built-in analytics, easily request the rights to repurpose user-generated videos as needed, and offer companies and influencers the extraordinary opportunity to sponsor individual Miracle Messages, using their social media presence for social good while mobilizing their followers and witnessing unparalleled levels of engagement in an effort to reunite the homeless.

TINT is proud to sponsor the Miracle Message of Danny Arnett, a homeless Vietnam veteran who lives in San Francisco and has not see his son Jack in 29 years. Danny’s twin brother Allen was recently able to reunite with his son Mark for the first time in 45 years through Miracle Messages. With your help, we hope to do the same for Danny! Click here to share his video.

Together, TINT and Miracle Messages are more than just partners – they are pioneers of a new approach to social impact storytelling that elevates viewers into storytellers, empowering anyone in the world to make a difference through social media.

Local impact on a global platform? Liking, sharing, and tagging may never be the same again.

Watch other miracles from Miracle Messages and join the movement at miraclemessages.org or by following them on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Like what you read and want to launch something like this of your own for your organization/initiatives with TINT? Let’s talk!