One month ago, Michelle Greer and I met with Lisa Goddard and her staff at the Capital Area Food Bank. At that meeting we hatched the idea for a tweetup to help with their efforts surrounding Hunger Action Month. We even came up with a clever name for it. We called it a HAM-up. A tweetup is a meet-up in real life for people who have usually met first on Twitter.

Twitter is a growing social network surrounding a microsharing application. “HAM-up” is a play on a word that is completely made up and named after an application that sounds pretty funny to begin with. All of this is fairly typical of the social media and social networking world. Creativity and fun are allowed and encouraged. Along with the fun, however, is the potential for some very serious real world benefit accompanied by valid and measurable results.

Here’s what happened: Lisa made the connection with me through colleagues Connie Reece and Sheila Scarborough of Every Dot Connects. They had recently led a workshop on social media which Lisa had attended. Connie, Sheila and I are also co-founders of the Austin Social Media Club which agreed to cosponsor the event. We pulled David Neff of the American Cancer Society into our group because of his active membership in the Social Media Club and 501 Tech Club of Austin, which also agreed to cosponsor.

Following the success of the Blood Drive Tweetup led by Michelle and David, we were confident in the combined social capital of our online networks. So we started twittering away trying to reach anyone who might be willing to help with our efforts to promote Hunger Action Month and the HAM-up.

Next, David remembered that he had met someone at a conference on social media who might have an interest in our project. Ed Nicholson, of Arkansas based Tyson Foods, and David had continued their relationship on Twitter. David figured that Ed might be able to help with our efforts based on their ongoing online conversations. Ed liked the idea and decided to use our efforts to follow through on an idea he had already been considering.

Ed then authored a blog post about the HAM-up on Tyson Food’s Hunger Relief blog. In it the company pledged to donate100 pounds of protein products for the HAM-up for every comment they received on the blog post. Ed figured that 360 comments would be needed to fill a truck and that we might be able to generate that much interest over a few weeks of intense online activity.

With the tremendous help of our combined online networks it took less than four hours to reach the goal. In fact, we doubled the number of comments needed in only a few more hours. The truck arrived this past Monday with over 40,000 pounds of desperately needed protein products for the Food Bank. You can visit the Tyson Foods Gift of Protein 2008 flickr page for a good look at the actual delivery.

By utilizing the social capital she is developing online, Lisa Goddard of the Capital Area Food Bank in Austin, was able to locate resources she might not have been able to identify through traditional outreach methods and with only a few weeks of online activity. This very real example should be studied by anyone considering empowering their employees to use their social networks as a resource for their own company or organization.

September is Hunger Action Month and Hurricane Ike is likely to make the need even more urgent. Please do what you can to help. Whole Foods recently hosted a Grill-up to benefit the Food Bank. As FG Squared CEO Steve Golab joked, “it’s time to HAM-up or shut up.”  I agree. If you can help, please do.