WSU student raises $55,000 for St. Jude Hospitals with viral tweet

USA

A simple post on Twitter has led to a Washington State University student raising more than $55,000 for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

On Saturday, WSU Sophomore Danni Messina sent out a tweet, promising she'd donate $0.25 to St. Jude for every favorite and $0.50 for every retweet. Soon, she was in the hole for tens of thousands of dollars.

Messina got the idea for the tweet after spending time home with her family. She asked a good friend how his Thanksgiving break was, and his response reminded her that not everyone gets to be home for the holidays.

"He's like 'oh, you know, I spent it with my grandma in the hospital.' And I was like, wow that's so common," Messina said.

That text gave her the idea to help out children who don't get to be home for the holidays either. She was hoping her friends would retweet her, and she'd be able to donate a small amount of money to the children's hospital.

"Then I tweeted it out, I'm like you know what I'm going to give back to St. Jude and kind of only expecting like 50 retweets, like 100 likes, maybe," she said.

Instead, the tweet was being retweeted thousands of times. By Sunday night as she headed back to Pullman from Seattle, she figured the donation would be doable. She expected to be donating around $1,000 and her mother promised to match her donation. But when she got of the plane, she found herself promising thousands of dollars to St. Jude.

"Okay, we're going up and up. And so I got here and I'm like 'guys, what do I do?'" Messina said.

She knew she couldn't donate the money on her own, and decided to make it a community effort. She created a GoFundMe to raise the money she had promised. Within three days, she had reached her $50,000 goal.

"I woke up and someone texted me, 'Danni, you met your goal.' And I literally just started crying," she said.

But, Messina isn't finished. She will be donating the money raised to St. Jude on December 20. She now hopes that she can raise more than $200,000 before then. Messina also promises she still plans to donate the $500 she originally intended.

Source: kxly