This year, for the seventh annual Thanks and Giving campaign, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has launched new technologies like text-to-donate, virtual gifts and mobile applications to connect with the public digitally. During the holiday season, celebrity friends including the Jonas Brothers, Lady Antebellum, Katharine McPhee and Daisy Fuentes, also will raise awareness and drive fundraising efforts through their social media channels and other digital assets.

New this year, St. Jude developed mobile-ready websites in both English (www.tg.stjude.org) and Spanish (www.dargracias.org) for users with iPhones, Blackberries or iPads. These sites can also be accessed from a desktop or a laptop. Additionally, St. Jude created a text-to-donate option for Thanks and Giving. To make a one-time $10 donation to the Thanks and Giving campaign, consumers simply send a text message with the word HOPE in the body of the message to the telephone number 90999.

St. Jude also developed a new Facebook application that allows users to send a virtual gift to friends when they make a minimum donation of $5. Virtual gifts include patient art, St. Jude’s “ABC’s of Cancer,” celebrity images with St. Jude patients, hospital campus shots and more. After a user makes a donation on any of the St. Jude websites, they can share a message with friends on family on Facebook detailing their support of Thanks and Giving. Go to tg.stjude.org/getinvolved/virutalgifts to utilize this application.

This holiday season, St. Jude has increased the star power to support the Thanks and Giving campaign online. Celebrities including the Jonas Brothers, Lady Antebellum, Daisy Fuentes, Katharine McPhee, Julianne Hough, Jewel, Danny Gokey, Noel Scharjris, Danna Garcia and Martiza Rodriguez have donated their time and committed to highlighting the Thanks and Giving campaign on their personal social network sites with messaging, photos and videos of themselves with patients and at the Hospital.

Go to www.facebook.com/stjude to follow these celebrity friends.

Katharine McPhee, Julianne Hough, Danny Gokey, Jewel and Jo Dee Messina have all agreed to host peer-to-peer fundraising pages through the My Energy for St. Jude component of the online Thanks and Giving campaign. This component allows friends and family to support each celebrity’s team effort to raise money for St. Jude.

Country Girl wants you to be a Tattle Tale! Have you been to a country concert lately? Run into a country artist while out on the town? We want to hear all about your country music news and entertainment. Email me at countrygirl@countrymusictattletale.com