Max Gladwell

Viral fundraising is central to new social networking tools

MySpace Impact is the cause-driven channel for social, environmental, and political efforts. The channel holds monthly Impact Awards, which are divided into six categories — International Development, Poverty Relief, Social Justice, Health and Safety, Environmentalism and Community-building. One Impact Award is given out each month based on user-nominated voting. The organization receives $10,000, a month-long link on the MySpace Impact community page, a mention in the monthly newsletter and a MySpace-wide bulletin announcing its victory. The winners’ causes benefit greatly because of the public exposure offered by MySpace.

Recently, MySpace announced that it will soon offer a profile platform designed specifically for nonprofits.

“Many organizations and campaigns on MySpace have found great success using the dynamic communication tools that all standard MySpace user profiles have. But MySpace Impact has decided it’s time we provided more tailored features to help organizations, campaigns, and passionate do-gooders like you build vibrant community on our vast platform — for free. To that end, we’ll soon launch a profile type for MySpace “Impact-makers” — including exciting new features designed with advocacy and organizing in mind.

Chief among these Impact profile features is a viral fundraising tool we’ve developed with PayPal. You can see the tool in action today on the profiles of a select group of non-profit and presidential campaign profiles, but with the launch of the “Impact-maker” profile type, it will be available to all non-profit organizations and campaigns. Not only does the tool facilitate fundraising/contributing through MySpace profiles, but the tool is also viral so friends and supporters can add the tools to their own profiles to show off causes they support and help raise funds. The viral effect of the fundraising can be viewed with a “supporter tree” function which tracks the users who have added the tool to their profiles and how much each person has raised as a result.”

We’re not sure in the timing of the new profile debut, but we’ll post more details as they’re available.

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