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40,000+ donations, $2,500+ raised for Baby Days during Mobile Tweetup

The KIRO 7 Mobile Tweetup with Jenni Hogan returned Thursday to help collect donations for Northwest Harvest to support local babies in need.

Jenni and the baby donation collecting team, which included Michael Fox, KIRO 7's Seattle Insider; Matthew Campbell from Northwest Harvest; Brad Brotherton from Brotherton Cadillac; and KIRO 7 Intern Briana Bowers, drove around for three hours visiting as many Twitter friends as they could, and collecting donations for Northwest Harvest's Baby Days.

The goal was to fill a Brotheron Cadillac Escalade and mechanic van full to the brim. Jenni's best Twitter friends, who follow her at @jennihogan, went above and beyond. The crew finished the Mobile Tweetup with five trucks for a total of 56,732 items for babies and $2,617.86 raised through cash and text donations.

The online world supported by tweeting along and helping raise awareness for the cause. The hashtag #MobileTweetup trended as breaking news in Seattle, and Northwest Harvest (@NWHarvest), Jenni Hogan (@JenniHogan) and "Baby7," the code used to text donations, all trended too.

We saw a total of 609 tweets during the Tweetup and 269 retweets from 170 unique users resulting in a total of 331,803 accounts reached, according to PeopleBrowsr.com.

Our top tweeting viewer on the Kred Leaderboard was Johanna Baxter -- @hanniespice on Twitter – with 76 tweets.

Best of all, the most retweeted tweet was our call to get even more donations to Northwest Harvest:

"Text BABY7 to 85944 to make a $10 donation to @NWHarvest and babies in need and watch http://kiro.tv/mt5live"

The Mobile Tweetup crews started in Seattle at KIRO 7 Studios, where Stanwood's Absolute Cheerleading team greeted Jenni and the cameras with more than 2,600 baby items, and a $500 check in the KIRO 7 lobby as the crew were leaving to start the route.

Several companies in the Pacific Northwest supported the Tweetup by rallying their employees and clients to donate. Jenni and the crew stopped in at Bigfish Games, Hotel Max, Ryan Swanson Law, Clearwire, Obadiah Salon, Northwest Center, Movin 92.5 and ended at Brotherton Cadillac. The route took them from Seattle to Bellevue and on to Renton.

Along the way, several of Jenni’s best Twitter friends met up with her to donate checks and baby items. Tracy Corey from Nurturing Expressions in West Seattle brought two boxes full of donations from the West Seattle Community. An Eastside non-profit, Band of Brothers Northwest, also showed up with bags full of baby food, diapers and wipes. Local CEO Lynnette Damir of Swaddle Designs and her husband greeted the team at the final stop with a van full of $10,000 worth of baby blankets.

The entire Mobile Tweetup was livestreamed on kirotv.com to allow KIRO 7 viewers and Twitter followers to ride along from their computers at home or work.

This Mobile Tweetup grew out of a tremendous need for baby formula, infant cereal, jars of baby food and powdered and canned milk for Northwest Harvest to give to their most vulnerable clients, babies.

KIRO 7 and its partners are collecting much-needed items for Northwest Harvest's youngest and most vulnerable clients through April 5. You can make a $10 donation now by texting "BABY7" to 85944. Your donation will help children in our community immediately.