Making microdonations on the Web is a little harder than it once was. Many of the services I would have included in this roundup have shuttered in the past year. In fact, there are just a handful of viable such services left.
Regardless, each of the services listed below will help you connect with the charitable organization (or person) you care about most. You can choose a cause, decide how much to donate, and you're done. It's a really simple process. And if you're in the mood to share, it should be a rewarding one.
Get giving
#BeatCancer Although the #BeatCancer initiative that asked for users to include the hash tag in their tweets to raise cash for cancer awareness is over, the organization's site still allows users to make donations to four different cancer organizations. They include organizations dedicated to breast cancer awareness, childhood cancer, an organization dedicated to better research, and a group that provides support for cancer patients.
You can use the site to donate whatever you'd like to any of the organizations. You can also get the word out about the organizations by clicking on the "spread the word" option in each donation widget. Upon doing so, your Twitter account will be populated with a link for others to donate to the same organization. It's a convenient way to be social and contribute to the fight against cancer.
#BeatCancer allows you to fight cancer.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)ChipIn ChipIn is a fine way to start raising money for the charity you care about. It also provides an easy way to get all your social-networking friends to dole out some cash.
When you get to ChipIn, you'll need to input the cause you're trying to raise money for. You can also input how much cash you want to raise over the term of the fundraiser. From there, you need to input your PayPal account. It works well, but it's the social element that might help most. With the help of ChipIn's Facebook widget, you can put your donation box in front of all your friends. You can also add plug-ins to your Web site. Overall, ChipIn makes it quite convenient to make and receive microdonations.
ChipIn will help you raise cash for things you care about.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)
#BeatCancer, a charitable campaign that launched at the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, started making its way around the social Web last week. The goal was to set a new Guinness World Record for the most social mentions in a 24-hour period while raising cash for cancer organizations. Users were asked to include the #BeatCancer hash tag in tweets, Facebook status updates, and blog posts.
According to Everywhere, the social-media communications firm behind the charitable event, 209,771 social messages were sent during the 24-hour period ending 9 a.m. PDT on October 18. The campaign tallied more than 100 million impressions. Both figures set new Guinness World Records.
Most importantly, the organization was able to raise more than $70,000 from sponsors eBay/PayPal and MillerCoors Brewing Company. The companies donated one cent for each tweet, status update, or blog post that featured #BeatCancer. There have been more than 620,000 mentions of #BeatCancer as of this writing.
The idea for #BeatCancer came from Everywhere's managing partner and cancer survivor Tamara Knechtel. She said in a statement that her company wanted to use "social media for social good." It looks like she succeeded.
If you're interested in getting in on the #BeatCancer donations, you still can. Everywhere said that it plans to keep the program running. Like before, any tweet, blog-post mention, or Facebook status update containing the #BeatCancer hash tag will send one cent to cancer organizations.
"ABC" refers back
to the mission. But
no bird?
For your non sequitur of the day...
In an attempt to boost literacy rates around the world, Twitter has launched a wine label with San Francisco-based winery Crushpad.
The label is dubbed Fledgling Wine. In addition to its Web site, the self-described "social winemaking venture" has a Twitter page too that just kicked in minutes ago.
"As a company that's only one percent into its journey, we're always thinking about our long term impact on the world," Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone wrote on Fledgling Wine's home page. "The Fledgling Initiative embodies two things that are at the core of Twitter's mission: providing access to information and highlighting the power of open communication to bring about positive change."
For now, Fledgling Wine is available only as a pre-order--pinot noir or chardonnay. The wine will be bottled in August 2010. In the meantime, anyone interested in buying Twitter's 750ml bottles of wine can pay $20. According to Stone and Williams, $5 from the proceeds "will be donated to Room to Read, a transformational non-profit that brings books, libraries and ultimately literacy to people in the poorest areas around the world." The remaining $15 will be used for production costs.
Twitter's co-founders said they believe Fledgling Wine will help Twitter as well. They reason that "if you can't read, you can't Tweet!"
The news was first reported by San Francisco Weekly.
NEW YORK--Four nonprofit organizations will be participating in a test of Facebook's "credits" platform, marketing and outreach director Randi Zuckerberg said on Friday morning at the Social Good Conference presented by social-media blog Mashable.
"I just received confirmation yesterday that...we're going to be reopening up charity gifts in the Gift Shop," said Zuckerberg (who is, yes, the sister of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg). "We are exploring ways for developers to use the Gift Shop to offer...virtual, real, and charity gifts."
This will be rolling out next week with four test partners--Project Red, Kiva, Toms Shoes (which is not a non-profit, but a for-profit retailer that donates a pair of shoes for every pair sold), and the World Wildlife Fund--Zuckerberg said, and pending its success, "we may open to everyone really soon after that."
The blog Inside Facebook reported last week that four online gift and greeting companies--American Greetings Interactive, GreetBeatz, Someecards, and Real Gifts--would be selling virtual gifts in the Facebook gift shop as part of a test of the new "Pay with Facebook" virtual currency.
Facebook first offered "charity gifts" for a 48-hour window to commemorate the milestone of 200 million members. A total of 16 nonprofits and advocacy groups participated in the initiative.
The social network already uses "credits" to sell in-house and branded virtual gifts, a change it made last November (gifts had originally been listed in U.S. dollars). The extension of the system to third-party developers on Facebook's platform has been talked about for quite some time now but finally appears to be nearing a wider launch.
We knew Facebook was about to hit 200 million active users, but now it's official, per a post by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the company's official blog.
"We will welcome our 200 millionth user to Facebook some time today," wrote Zuckerberg, who's just over a month away from his 25th birthday. "Growing rapidly to 200 million users is a really good start, but we've always known that in order for Facebook to help people represent everything that is happening in their world, everyone needs to have a voice."
To commemorate the occasion, Facebook has launched a page called Facebook for Good, a page for members to share stories and experiences about how the social site has helped them give back.
It has also partnered with 16 charities and advocacy groups that have created virtual "gifts" that members can buy for one anothers' profiles. Most of the proceeds of the sale will go to the charity--Zuckerberg wrote that the rest will go to administrative costs, not to Facebook.
The partner organizations include a few longstanding names in charity like the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association, as well as newer tech-industry favorites like micro-loan start-up Kiva, shoe retailer Toms, and clean-water group Charity Water.
The campaign also puts Facebook's virtual-gift platform and "credits" system back in the spotlight at a time when, after much anticipation, the company is finally starting to make some moves in the micropayment space.
Slightly over a year ago, at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, Zuckerberg was asked about Facebook's plans in the philanthropic space. His response was that the company wasn't yet at that point.
"I think at this point, because we're not incredibly profitable, we're not at that stage of the company--hopefully we get there--that's not really something that we can do a lot of," he said to CNET News last March. "But I'd like to think that just what the company is trying to do in general, just helping people communicate, is actually making the world better."
A year later, Facebook's revenues are up, but not as much as some critics say they ought to be. This kind of growth isn't cheap--and with 200 million users, Facebook still has a lot of work to do on the business side, not just in the feel-good, change-the-world department.
If you're looking for something "good" to do Thursday night, you're in luck. Volunteer-organized Twestivals are planned in more than 200 cities around the world.
The Twestivals are a loose coalition of fundraisers that aim to use the social-media tool du jour--Twitter--to raise money for Charity Water, a nonprofit devoted to bringing clean drinking water to developing countries.
It's not officially organized by Twitter, but enthusiasts are hoping that the series of Twestivals can be an example for future fundraisers and how the likes of Twitter can fuel volunteer and donor efforts. Word has spread largely through Twitter buzz. And given the current economic situation, many nonprofits are going to need to follow the example of the small-donor-driven Obama campaign in lieu of depending on a few deep pockets.
I should disclose that I've been doing some volunteer work with the New York edition of Twestival, helping write some copy for promotional materials. New York is Charity Water's home city, and the organizers are expecting more than a thousand people at a big nightclub blowout in the West Chelsea neighborhood. Other Twestivals will be smaller and more intimate gatherings, more like the "meetups" (or "tweetups," if you will) that local Twitter communities have been organizing for months now.
All in all, Twestivals around the world hope to raise a whopping $1 million on the night of the event and as a result of subsequent press throughout the rest of February.
Metasearch engine Dogpile announced Tuesday that it has raised $100,000 toward its goal of raising $1 million to help pets in need.
Dogpile donations are being funded through its Search and Rescue program, a service that's designed to help pets by donating a portion of the search engine's revenue to animal-related charities. Each time a visitor uses Dogpile's search or its Search and Rescue Facebook application, the company delivers some of the revenue generated from that query to the ASPCA.
"Whether people are using Dogpile.com for their online holiday shopping or just for general information searches, the traffic to the site has helped us raise a significant amount for the ASPCA already," Stacy Ybarra, Dogpile's senior director of corporate giving, said in a statement. "Search and Rescue allows any individual with access to a computer to support a worthy cause without significantly changing their habits or spending a penny of their own money."
Dogpile's Search and Rescue program has a goal of raising at least $1 million for pets in need through the end of 2009. As of this writing, the total amount raised has reached $108,000.
Last year, Microsoft launched the "I'm Initiative," which donated nibbles of advertising revenue to 10 selected charities each time a Windows Live Messenger user started an instant message with the word "I'm." On Tuesday, after a year of the gimmick, Microsoft representatives announced that $1.3 million had been netted so far.
Bill Gates would be proud.
"Because of your enthusiasm, we're also excited to announce that we will be continuing this program," Windows Live Messenger product manager Dharmesh Mehta wrote in a blog post. "And with no set limit on the amount donated to each organization, the more 'I'm' conversations people have, the more money that goes toward addressing some of the world's most urgent social issues."
The 10 nonprofits receiving donations from the I'm Initiative are the American Red Cross, the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the Humane Society of the United States, the National AIDS Fund, the National MS Society, NineMillion.org, the Sierra Club, StopGlobalWarming.org, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and UNICEF. Windows Live Messenger users who want to participate are asked to choose which organization they want to receive their click funds; the precise amounts netted by each one were not disclosed, but Microsoft has said that each one has received a minimum of $100,000. The I'm Initiative has also sponsored Cause Effect, a program about social action on the MTV Networks channel MTVU, which is syndicated on college campus broadcast networks.
Mehta wrote in his blog post that Microsoft is considering adding other charities to the list.
Google for Nonprofits, a site designed to educate charities about the search giant's suite of Web-based tools, debuted Tuesday.
The lineup of applications on Google for Nonprofits
(Credit: Google)Essentially, it's a lineup of links to Google's various applications and tutorials for using them, but with a charitable spin. A link to YouTube is accompanied with "broadcast your cause to the world's largest online video community." Google Groups come with a suggestion of "communicate easily to staff or volunteers and encourage discussions among supporters."
But the Google for Nonprofits page also highlights special initiatives for nonprofits, like free advertising through the Google Grants program and transaction fee waivers on the Google Checkout service, along with success stories and testimonials for each Google application.
This is by no means Google's first effort to reach out to nonprofits. Last year, for example, Google launched an outreach program to help nonprofits take advantage of Google Earth. And Google runs a nonprofit of its own: the high-profile Google.org, which has in recent months earmarked $10 million for "sustainable transportation" development and launched a program that aims to use social-media tools for disaster relief.
There are tons of Facebook apps, many that seem to be, well, silly and useless.
A new app that will help a nonprofit coordinate blood donation is really worthwhile and could make a significant direct impact on people's lives.
The app from New York nonprofit Takes All Types sends Facebook alerts to people who opt in and will send reminders for regular donation, according to The New York Times.
"We were reacting to our sense that most of what was on Facebook was too academic or frivolous," Ben Bergman, who created the program, told the newspaper.
However, one Facebook member who posted a comment on the Takes All Types Facebook page brought up some good privacy questions:
"Does TAT act as a confidential medium? Is contact information ever provided to third parties (blood banks, Dept. of Health, hospitals, etc.)? Suppose diseased blood enters (the) supply, and authorities know it is type AB+. Will TAT turn the data of all its AB+ users in a given area over to the CDC or legal authorities if required by court order? Or is there a purposeful level of anonymity built into the system to shield TAT from such responsibilities?"
I look forward to seeing more Facebook apps like this that enable people to do more on Facebook than just share photos and poke each other.
