This Friday, Mashable is hosting the first ever Social Good Conference in New York City. It’s a one-day event celebrating the end of the Summer for Social Good, a charitable campaign spearheaded by the social media blog, that focused on raising funds for four charities: Livestrong, Humane Society, Oxfam, and WWF.

The conference will feature speakers from the charities as well as well as social media mavens such as Shira Lazar, Adam Hirsch, Pete Cashmore, and Randi Zuckerberg. The conference brings together activists and technologists, providing a forum for them to discover new causes and new ways to promote them. We had a chance to sit down with Adam Hirsch from Mashable to learn more about this amazing event.

How did the Social Good Conference come about?

It really came out of the Summer for Social Good, Mashables’ first major initiative in the charity fundraising space. We’ve been involved with great causes before as media sponsors or event hosts, but we wanted to do something directly ourselves. We’ve been able to partner with some great charities and use our expertise, social media, to help them with awareness. We saw the opportunity for a unique way to engage and give back to the community and it was perfect for us.

Tell us a little more about the Summer for Social Good.

The Summer for Social Good is a campaign dedicated to spreading awareness for four major organizations who affect policies and have profound impacts on the world. Social media connects people with similar interests and allows them to share information and things that they are passionate about – we wanted to tap into this on behalf of these incredible organizations. Awareness was key, we want the charities to learn how to promote and raise money online, and for people who haven’t been exploring the causes – give them a chance to find something that they can get involved with. The whole campaign ends with the conference and will bring together the social media scene with the local and national non-profit scene. 100% of ticket sales will go to the charities. It will  be an exciting group and hopefully a lot of positive change will result.

Did the Summer of Social Good involve any actual events?

Yes, there was the Hyatt4Good tweet-up tour. We did these networking events in six cities — NY, Chicago, Denver, LA, DC, and Boston. Ticket sales were donated to the Summer for Social Good fund, which goes directly to the charities. These tweet-ups connected media folks with non-profits and we raised over $8,000.

You’ve spent the whole summer fundraising for these organization, do you have any tips for other fundraisers?

You can’t just do fundraising online alone, you have to have some sort of real-time connection with your audience. An event is the perfect forum to bring together people with similar passions and interests.  When you’re trying to raise money and awareness an event can generate the kind of excitement and buzz that is really difficult to achieve online. 

Related posts:

1. 10 Social Media events happening around the country
2. Putting the social back in social media

I had the pleasure of attending Mashable’s SummerMashSF last evening and can report the event was a wild success. By 7:20PM, there was a line of San Francisco technoholics, Web 2.0 scenesters and their stilletoed groupies all the way down the block on Utah Street. Inside the spacious venue (popular SOMISSPO district night club Mighty), there was barely enough room to make your way from the Rohit Bhargava book-signing table to the bar (a distance of about 9 feet) without getting to know a half-dozen strangers really, really well. But tight quarters make for good (social) networking. I’m just glad I brought enough business cards and breath mints. Congrats to Pete Cashmore and the Mashable crew for a kick-ass event, and best of luck with the rest of the tour which continues this Friday in Los Angeles. Attend if you can.

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