Mashable.com is worth tracking for tips in a great variety of endeavors … business, fundraising, or just better keeping up with the accelerating growth of social media. (I missed sxsw two years now, not tweeting yet, feeling pretty damn 20th century.)
A recent post in the general social media category: 9 Ways to Do Good With 5 Minutes or $25.
I’ve seen this in varying permutations for quite a while now. The Free Rice site has been active for three years. Check it out if you haven’t: you play a moderately addictive spelling puzzle, each win triggering a donation of 10 grains of rice through the World Food Programme. Click “subjects” on the top nav to switch to history, math, and other quizzes.
Sponsorship on this is beautiful to my eyes, a great example of online cause marketing. Their names are front and center with answers. You gotta love them for this giveaway. And it can’t cost the THAT much, even with 94 billion grains donated so far. More cost-efficient than an ad on the Superbowl, I’d wager.
Kiva is a great cause, great bang for the buck with smart microlending.
When I attended the International Fundraising Congress a few years ago, micro-fundraising sites seemed pretty well established, at least in Europe. Drive people to a custom Facebook page or other hosted site, ask for relatively small donations, but lots of them … essentially the power of face-to-face with friends adapted for online. Like sponsoring my running a 10K for a cause, essentially.
I haven’t seen these sprouting in my line of sight. Maybe my age? Out of touch? Living in the USA?