TweetsGiving uses Twitter to fund a classroom in Africa on Thanksgiving

With a few hours to spare, TweetsGiving, a web-based project set up to help build a classroom in a Tanzania school has surpassed its goal of raising $10,000. What’s interesting is how word spread about the project: through the micro-messaging service Twitter.

The initiative, started less than two days ago by Epic Change, a nonprofit organization, leveraged the Thanksgiving holiday and a simple premise to reach its goal. First, it asked that people tweet (a Twitter message) out anything they were thankful for and include the #TweetsGiving tag and a link to the site. A quick scan on Twitter Search shows hundreds if not thousands of these messages out there with still more coming. Second, the project asked for a donation in honor of whatever you were grateful for. These donations, done through PayPal, allowed you to buy a brick in the new classroom for $10 or become a “Top Turkey” for $100. And third, it asked that you follow @TweetsGiving on Twitter and help spread the word through other means (blogging, Facebook, etc.).

As it stands right now, TweetsGiving has raised $10,581 dollars, equaling 105 percent of its stated goal. There’s still a little bit of time to give if you’re so inclined. I’m sure the money will be put to good use in Tanzania.

From crowd-sourced last-minute fundraisers to the quick dissemination of news about the terrorist attacks in Mumabi, Twitter is certainly proving its worth this Thanksgiving season.

You can find me on Twitter here along with fellow VentureBeat writers Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison and Dan Kaplan. Oh, and we have a VentureBeat account (for our posts) as well.