Young donors and volunteers, snubbing traditional appeals such as direct mail and phone calls, are satisfying their philanthropic urges on the Internet. They’re increasingly turning to blogs and social-networking Web sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, to spread the word about — and raise funds for — their favorite nonprofits and causes. They’re sending Web-based fund-raising pitches to their friends and families, encouraging them, in turn, to forward the appeals to their own contacts.
At the same time, a growing number of charities — ranging from start-ups to established names such as the Salvation Army — are launching profiles on popular social-networking sites, hoping that young people will link up to the pages. Some are also encouraging bloggers to mention the causes on their sites, raising thousands of dollars in small donations from readers.
Many of the nonprofits that have embraced social networking are themselves run by people in their 20s and 30s, who already spend a good portion of their lives online. Some of them also appeal to donors by offering them tangible results of their gifts by directly linking contributors with recipients.
Social-networking sites, for their part, are offering new tools to help attract nonprofits and contributors. In May, a social-action start-up called Project Agape launched a new program on Facebook called “Causes,” in which users can create online communities to advocate for various issues, charities and political candidates. Since then, the program has attracted more than 2.5 million Facebook users, raising some $300,000 for nonprofits and politicians, says Joe Green, 24, the project’s co-founder.
Social Networking for Charity November 24, 2008
Greenwood High School is a web 2.0 innovator… November 24, 2008
A high school as an innovator. It has happened. GHS or Greenwood highschool has taken myspace into their own hands, by rolling out their own schools’ social network. This in my opinion is an innovation that every school, religous orginization and charity in the country should follow. With the small cost (under $100 usd) of starting and operating a social network on ning, kickapps or boonex there is a million resoans to do this.
Social netowrk brings a tremendious and relitivly simple system to bring like minded audiances together in a managable enviroment. With a social network people of your like minded group are able to share, communicate, colaborate, in a safe enviroment that you can eaisly manage and market to.
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The GHS Social Network, http://greenwoodhs.ning.com continues to grow. Our site is less than 2 years old and has more GHS students, alumni and faculty than MySpace. At over 2,600 members we have groups for each class year so you can pass around reunion plans; we have many forums, ranging from Wines and Spirits to Movie and Restaurant reviews to Missing Classmate searches. Our groups include the GHS Memorial Group – a place to remember those who had passed on; our Prayer Circle for those who are sick or grieving and know the benefit of prayers from others; Parents of AD/HD group; our Southside Rebel and Northside Knight groups and many more.
You can post photos – we currently have over 20,000 posted by the members. There is live chat with your friends, a place to list member owned or run businesses; create your own blog and personal page and so much more. This site is for GHS alumni, current students, faculty and staff. It is family friendly – so your kids can look over your shoulder as you surf the site. It is run by a GHS alumni who verifies all members before they are approved and closely monitors the content to ensure that the site never has any offensive material on it.
Best of all – IT IS FREE. So come and join the 2600+ who are already here at: http://greenwoodhs.ning.com The original GHS alumni site!
To learn more about how you can get a free social network started for your educational facility, church orginization or charity please call Jeff Palumbo at United Media Partners 734-652-1846.
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Social Networking/Charity Mashups November 20, 2008
Cause-Related Marketing in the Newest Social Media
The network effect aka Metcalf’s Law postulates that the value of a network is proportionate to the square of the number of users. That is, a network only starts demonstrating value after reaching the critical mass described by the equation.
In other words, each of these outfits has some selling to do.
uPlej. With an approach that could probably only come from Utah is uPlej, which owes its business model as much to multi-level marketing as it does to Facebook.
Here’s how it works: you sign up as a member of uPlej and designate a charity, create your own profile, alert your personal network to your new uPlej page and UPlej dings your credit card for $4.99 a month. Of that, $4 goes directly to the charity, and the remaining $0.99 goes to uPlej’s operations and fees for processing credit cards and the like.
What’s the appeal? Well if just 4 of your friends also join uPlej, then your designated charity could receive perhaps $85 a month (more or less)! Here’s how: “The charity calculator works on the premise that each of your ‘friends’ tells just 4 people each, who tell just 4 people, and so on through 3 degrees.
“For every person you tell that visits your user page and signs up, you receive $1.00 for the cause YOU have elected to support. For every person they tell that visits their user page and signs up, you also get $1.00 for your cause, and so on through 3 degrees. Everybody that you tell that joins your network is your first degree, everybody that joins the network of anybody on your first degree (anybody that they tell), becomes your second degree, and so on. This gives you the opportunity, for only your $4.99 monthly payment, to raise a significant amount of money for your cause every month—simply by connecting with other charitable individuals.”
As I write this, you can choose from uPlej’s universe of 150 charities, a number they’re working hard to increase. uPlej is not a charity, it’s a fundraising company that uses the power of a networked downline to raise money for charities.
Just Cause. Like uPlej, Just Cause is a for-profit entity as well. But they prefer to think of themselves as a ‘for-benefit’ company, ala Newman’s Own and Peacekeeper Cause-Metics. Just Cause bills itself as “social networking with a purpose.”
Causes, individuals, and companies can all set up accounts and start talking about what their doing to make the world better, mainly through blogs. You can create or join user groups, post events, seek volunteers, donors, supporters, etc.
There’s more than 150 blogs currently being posted on the Just Cause site and about 60 nonprofits. Just Cause also publishes a magazine by the same name, expects to sponsor community events. The magazine is distributed with participating ‘city magazines’ in Seattle, Atlanta, Chicago and elsewhere. Just Cause says that the glue that holds all the pieces together is its approach to telling ‘stories.’
Here’s how. good2gether gives an Internet ‘widget’ to local TV, radio and newspaper media outlets. When a story is posted about, say, the crisis in Darfur, the widget points to local nonprofit resources that are working on the problem. The widget displays information in a frame on the media outlet’s website, which it can sell. If the reader clicks on one of the nonprofit links, it connects to a Do Good page where they find a profile of the pertinent nonprofit(s).
The profile or elements of the profile can be emailed, sent to Facebook, added to your calendar, etc. The profile is free to the nonprofit and relatively easy to generate. Better, the charity can sell the sponsorship of the page which it splits 65:35 with good2gether, which operates Do Good. To participate in this part of the service, the charity has to agree to charge a minimum of $100 per sponsor and limit it to no more six sponsors.
good2gether launched the Do Good Channel in Boston this month and is scheduled to add several top 10 markets per month over the next few months, including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C.
Memelabs, the user-generated video contest platform company, November 20, 2008
Memelabs, the user-generated video contest platform company, today announces the release of a custom version of memelabs to help non-profit organizations and charities easily create and manage User Generated Video (UGV) campaigns online. The company is rolling out a pilot version of the new platform for Apathy is Boring, a Canadian non-partisan project that uses art, media, and technology to encourage active citizenry.
Vancouver, BC (PRWEB) — Memelabs, the user-generated video contest platform company, today announces the release of a custom version of memelabs to help non-profit organizations and charities easily create and manage User Generated Video (UGV) campaigns online. The company is rolling out a pilot version of the new platform for Apathy is Boring, a Canadian non-partisan project that uses art, media, and technology to encourage active citizenry.
Memelabs helps organizations promote viral video marketing that gain targeted exposure for marketing campaigns online, such as the successful viral video contests the company launched for Wells Fargo, Intrawest, Texas Instruments and Garden State Life.
In three easy steps marketers have a fully customized video contest ready for launch.
- Design: the customer can supply its own design or the Memelabs team works with the client to create a design; a fully customizable CSS with 100% share of brand.
- Integration: the Memelabs team applies the design to its contest platform, and can advise on and implement additional social media outreach strategies.
- Promotion: the Memelabs team helps to get the word out through social media tools, such as blogs, newsletters, bookmarks to its user base of over 100,000 people and partnerships with 40 film schools. These are film makers and enthusiasts who have previously signed up and participated in memelabs contests.
Once the contest is up and running, videos are submitted by consumers for voting and ranking by the user base. Memelabs constantly monitors video submissions, rankings and commentary to ensure no fraudulent or offensive activity takes place. In addition, this version gives customers access to the back-end platform from which clients can manage campaign details.
“We chose to integrate memelabs into our National Video Contest as it was the perfect medium to reach our target demographic, Canadian youth, in an engaging and user friendly online environment. We’ve also received an incredible amount of support from memelabs, whether in site development, marketing strategy, and content management, making our campaign a cinch to update and maintain,” comments Apathy is Boring’s Development Coordinator Adrienne Smith. “Memelabs’ commitment to the Apathy is Boring cause has made them a perfect partner for us and we look forward to our continued collaboration.”
Apathy is Boring wants young Canadians to grab their video cameras and cell phones and tell their vision for the next 250 years of Canada and enter this in an online contest at the Apathy is Boring contest site. Running July-September, 2008, one national contest winner will receive a grand prize: a trip to Halifax for the winner to attend and showcase their video during a Youth Dialogue hosted by Her Excellency the Right Honourable Michaëlle Jean, Governor General of Canada, on September 20th. More information on the Governor General’s Youth Dialogues is available at www.citizenvoices.gg.ca. The winner will also receive backstage passes to the Apathy is Boring Concert featuring artists ill Scarlett.
“New conversations are emerging online between organizations and consumers and as social media has now become part of the mainstream, organizations are looking for new ways to engage with its customers,” comments Dario Meli, co-founder and partner, memelabs. “Memelabs creates this bridge – engaging, encouraging and supporting positive interaction and inspiring community development. All we ask of organizations is to bring their marketing idea and we’ll put it into action.”
About memelabs
Memelabs is the first platform for companies to effectively roll out consumer-generated online video contests to gain brand loyalty in the Web 2.0 world. Easily and efficiently marketers can take advantage of the growing social marketing trends of consumer online video production, viral video marketing and consumer participation in online contests.
Social Networks Emerging as New Charity Fundraising Platforms November 20, 2008
“We’ve seen social media can be used to bring people together for all sorts of reasons; I really hope we can bring people together to do good,” said Anthony Berkman, president of BlogCatalog.com, a social blog directory on the Internet, as he launched a social awareness campaign to benefit DonorsChoose.org on May 28.
“Even better, this is a chance to find common interests within BlogCatalog.com and across the Web,” he added.
The campaign asked directory members (bloggers) to write about DonorsChoose.org and raise funds for the non-profit organization. DonorsChoose.org is a non-profit Web site that brings teachers and donors together to fund specific student projects that range from “Magical Math Centers” to “Cooking Across the Curriculum”. Any individual can search teacher proposals and fund specific projects, which are tax deductible.
“Internet social networks from MySpace to Facebook are receiving a ton of media and Internet attention, but we have yet to see an online social community come together to raise funds for a good cause,” said Anthony Berkman, president of BlogCatalog.com. “We see this as an opportunity to empower and recognize bloggers to collectively focus their blogs for good.”
Berkman’s idea is to challenge directory members to draw attention to and raise funds for this underserved non-profit organization. BlogCatalog.com has set a goal to raise at least $25,000 for DonorsChoose.org, which is a member of the Omidyar Network.
The Omidyar Network is a mission-based organization established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam (pictured above). Berkman said depending on the success of the challenge, BlogCatalog.com will develop a community service page to host and promote more blog events in the near future. All donations made to DonorsChoose.Org will credit the blogger.
Charity Badge: Using the Power of Social Networking for Good November 20, 2008
Yahoo has come up with a way to mix social networking with charities and non-profits. Called Yahoo! For Good, it has partnered with ‘charity aggregator’ Network for Good and launched a personalized Charity Badge – for people to put on their websites, social networks or email. To promote the initiative, Yahoo! will match the amount raised by the user who generates the largest number of individual donations from their personal social network (up to $50,000).
The Charity Badge works by allowing website owners or social network users to create and publish a personalized badge (essentially a widget). You can even put it on your email signature. With the badge you can set up a link to your favorite charity, so that family, friends and others in your social network can donate as well. Or you can simply copy the code for an existing badge, that someone else set up for a charity. Check out the top 10 badges to get an idea of how this works.
There are even some stats to back up the campaign:
“According to recent studies, consumers value the personal advice of friends, family and acquaintances 1.5 more times today than in the 1970s and twice as much as traditional media (1). A staggering 61 percent of people surveyed report giving to a charity because a personal connection has asked them to make a contribution (2).”
(1) Source: The Influentials
(2) Source: Harris Interactive
Rather than set up my own badge, I chose an existing badge for a worthy cause: Global Exchange. Here it is below and I’ve also added it to R/WW’s sidebar. If you feel like donating, click the orange ‘Donate’ button in the badge.
New MTV series 4Real (.com) debuts November 20, 2008
Sol Guy stands next to a needle drop-box in a Downtown Eastside alley, and nods to two men dumpster-diving a few metres away.
He’s retracing a scene from an episode in his new MTV series, 4Real, in which he and Hollywood starlet Eva Mendes examine the troubled neighbourhood’s issues, from drug addiction to homelessness.
“We were picking up needles and putting them in here,” said Guy, 33, raising his eyebrows and smiling at the graffiti-covered box.
The series, which Guy hosts, kicks off tonight at 7:30 p.m. on CTV with the first of four “sneak peak” episodes. The entire series, including the Vancouver-based episode, will air in March on MTV in Canada.
In each show, a celebrity — including Mendes, Joaquin Phoenix and Cameron Diaz — travels to meet with local leaders and activists in developing countries, war zones, remote villages and slums.
Phoenix visits an indigenous tribe in the Amazon. Diaz meets a medicine man in Peru. U.K. rapper M.I.A. heads to Liberia to meet a children’s rights advocate. Hip-hop star, K’naan, visits the largest slum in East Africa with a local aid worker.
Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside seemed a good fit, said Guy.
“It’s the poorest postal code in Canada and it’s like, yo, we can do better than that as a city,” said Guy. “We have to examine collectively why that place exists, where have we failed?”
The Vancouver episode focuses on health advocate Liz Evans and her work with the Portland Hotel, which has a number of outreach programs for people in the area. While filming in October, Mendes worked in the hotel’s kitchen and joined volunteers at night, collecting used needles in alleys.
“I’ve completely been educated,” Mendes said of her experience. “We can’t look the other way, nor should we look the other way.”
Guy said the experience made him examine his own stereotypes, something he hopes the audience will also do. “I just hope that people in Vancouver recognize the beauty of the people [in the Downtown Eastside] and they’re not to be ignored.”
Josh Thome, 35, an environmental and social activist, created the series with Guy. The childhood friends, who went to elementary school together in Grand Forks, began brainstorming about the series five years ago. They spent two years travelling together before deciding on the format, then creating a pilot. Thome said he hopes the series inspires people to action. “We’ve come so far, but I feel we’re at the starting line,” Thome said in an interview Sunday.
He said the website for the show, www.4Real.com, is important to connecting the audience to issues. It includes background on the people and areas the series features and it is linked to Vancouver-based online giving group, www.givemeaning.com, so people can donate funds.
Thome said he’s particularly proud of the Downtown Eastside episode, to air in March. “It shows you don’t need to travel around the world to find inspiring leaders or issues that need addressing,” said Thome. “You can literally look outside your door.”
Fifty per cent of any profits the show makes will be given to the community leaders and groups including the Portland Hotel, said Guy. “I don’t want to find myself taking advantage of anyone,” he said. “They’re part of it too.”
Go to www.4Real.com to learn more.
4Real is an excellent original content create to generate awareness for charitable efforts.
Future of Giving-Donations-Technology and Charity November 14, 2008
Social Media can truly impact our worlds’ charitable initiatives. It is nice to see tools like sixdegrees.org widgets. These tools are interesting in that they allow a viral way of sharing your passion for charity and raising money. These tools however are no more than a donation tool. Donating alone in the US to charities (27% of all gdonations) is a mere $39 Billion. 50% of all charitable giving is immediately spent to raise more money for the charities. Leaving our country with $19.5 billion in charitable giving to be spent on “the cause” and all other operational expenses. Charitable giving to churches represents 32% of all ($300 Billion) charitable giving in the US. Giving is only a part of the solution. We have seen an increase in Giving year over year but there is only so much to give.
The next generation of “giving” is something that will allow consumers to be empowered to make change through their consumer actions, and drive money from COMMERCE (multiple Trillions available) to charities.
Jeff Palumbo; United Media Partners Inc.
Kevin Bacon, Charity
