This post is a collaboration between Max Gladwell and Mashable’s Summer of Social Good charitable fundraiser. It is the second in our series of #10Ways posts being published simultaneously across as many as 300 blogs.

Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.

You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

3. Follow Charities on Social Networks

In addition to sharing links to articles about issues you come across, you should also follow charities you support on the social networks where they are active. By increasing the size of their social graph, you’re increasing the size of their reach. When your charities tweet or post information about a campaign or a cause, statistics or a link to a good article, consider retweeting that post on Twitter, liking it on Facebook, or blogging about it.

Following charities on social media sites is a great way to keep in the loop and get updates, and it’s a great way to help the charity increase its reach by spreading information to your friends and followers.

You can follow the Summer of Social Good Charities:

Oxfam America (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube)
The Humane Society (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr)
LIVESTRONG (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr)
WWF (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr)

4. Support Causes on Awareness Hubs

Another way you can show your support for the charities you care about is to rally around them on awareness hubs like Change.org, Care2, or the Facebook Causes application. These are social networks or applications specifically built with non-profits in mind. They offer special tools and opportunities for charities to spread awareness of issues, take action, and raise money.

It’s important to follow and support organizations on these sites because they’re another point of access for you to gather information about a charity or cause, and because by supporting your charity you’ll be increasing their overall reach. The more people they have following them and receiving their updates, the greater the chance that information they put out will spread virally.

5. Find Volunteer Opportunities

Using social media online can help connect you with volunteer opportunities offline, and according to web analytics firm Compete, traffic to volunteering sites is actually up sharply in 2009. Two of the biggest sites for locating volunteer opportunities are VolunteerMatch, which has almost 60,000 opportunities listed, and Idealist.org, which also lists paying jobs in the non-profit sector, in addition to maintaining databases of both volunteer jobs and willing volunteers.

For those who are interested in helping out when volunteers are urgently needed in crisis situations, check out HelpInDisaster.org, a site which helps register and educate those who want to help during disasters so that local resources are not tied up directing the calls of eager volunteers. Teenagers, meanwhile, should check out DoSomething.org, a site targeted at young adults seeking volunteer opportunities in their communities.

6. Embed a Widget on Your Site

Many charities offer embeddable widgets or badges that you can use on your social networking profiles or blogs to show your support. These badges generally serve one of two purposes (or both). They raise awareness of an issue and offer up a link or links to additional information. And very often they are used to raise money.

Mashable’s Summer of Social Good campaign, for example, has a widget that does both. The embeddable widget, which was custom built using Sprout (the creators of ChipIn), can both collect funds and offer information about the four charities the campaign supports.

7. Organize a Tweetup

You can use online social media tools to organize offline events, which are a great way to gather together like-minded people to raise awareness, raise money, or just discuss an issue that’s important to you. Getting people together offline to learn about an important issue can really kick start the conversation and make supporting the cause seem more real.

Be sure to check out Mashable’s guide to organizing a tweetup to make sure yours goes off without a hitch, or check to see if there are any tweetups in your area to attend that are already organized.

8. Express Yourself Using Video

As mentioned, blog posts are great, but a picture really says a thousand words. The web has become a lot more visual in recent years and there are now a large number of social tools to help you express yourself using video. When you record a video plea or call to action about your issue or charity, you can make your message sound more authentic and real. You can use sites like 12seconds.tv, Vimeo, and YouTube to easily record and spread your video message.

Last week, the Summer of Social Good campaign encouraged people to use video to show support for charity. The #12forGood campaign challenged people to submit a 12 second video of themselves doing something for the Summer of Social Good. That could be anything, from singing a song to reciting a poem to just dancing around like a maniac — the idea was to use the power of video to spread awareness about the campaign and the charities it supports.

If you’re more into watching videos than recording them, Givzy.com enables you to raise funds for charities like Unicef and St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital by sharing viral videos by e-mail.

9. Sign or Start a Petition

There aren’t many more powerful ways to support a cause than to sign your name to a petition. Petitions spread awareness and, when successfully carried out, can demonstrate massive support for an issue. By making petitions viral, the social web has arguably made them even more powerful tools for social change. There are a large number of petition creation and hosting web sites out there. One of the biggest is The Petition Site, which is operated by the social awareness network Care2, or PetitionOnline.com, which has collected more than 79 million signatures over the years.

Petitions are extremely powerful, because they can strike a chord, spread virally, and serve as a visual demonstration of the support that an issue has gathered. Social media fans will want to check out a fairly new option for creating and spreading petitions: Twitition, an application that allows people to create, spread, and sign petitions via Twitter.

10. Organize an Online Event

Social media is a great way to organize offline, but you can also use online tools to organize effective online events. That can mean free form fund raising drives, like the Twitter-and-blog-powered campaign to raise money for a crisis center in Illinois last month that took in over $130,000 in just two weeks. Or it could mean an organized “tweet-a-thon” like the ones run by the 12for12k group, which aims to raise $12,000 each month for a different charity.

In March, 12for12k ran a 12-hour tweet-a-thon, in which any donation of at least $12 over a 12 hour period gained the person donating an entry into a drawing for prizes like an iPod Touch or a Nintendo Wii Fit. Last month, 12for12k took a different approach to an online event by holding a more ambitious 24-hour live video-a-thon, which included video interviews, music and sketch comedy performances, call-ins, and drawings for a large number of prizes given out to anyone who donated $12 or more.

Bonus: Think Outside the Box

Social media provides almost limitless opportunity for being creative. You can think outside the box to come up with all sorts of innovative ways to raise money or awareness for a charity or cause. When Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer, for example, he created Blame Drew’s Cancer, a campaign that encourages people to blow off steam by blaming his cancer for bad things in their lives using the Twitter hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. Over 16,000 things have been blamed on Drew’s cancer, and he intends to find sponsors to turn those tweets into donations to LIVESTRONG once he beats the disease.

Or check out Nathan Winters, who is biking across the United States and documenting the entire trip using social media tools, in order to raise money and awareness for The Nature Conservancy.

The number of innovative things you can do using social media to support a charity or spread information about an issue is nearly endless. Can you think of any others? Please share them in the comments.

Special thanks to VPS.net

A special thanks to VPS.net, who are donating $100 to the Summer of Social Good for every signup they receive this week.

Sign up at VPS.net and use the coupon code “SOSG”to receive 3 Months of FREE hosting on top of your purchased term. VPS.net honors a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee so there’s no risk.

About the “10 Ways” Series

The “10 Ways” Series was originated by Max Gladwell. This is the second simultaneous blog post in the series. The first ran on more than 80 blogs, including Mashable. Among other things, it is a social media experiment and the exploration of a new content distribution model. You can follow Max Gladwell on Twitter.

This content was originally written by Mashable’s Josh Catone.

Of all the problems the new Obama administration faces–health care, national security, the economy, global warming–none is more pressing than energy.

No sooner than the 270th electoral vote was confirmed, bloggers and reporters started to wonder aloud about President-elect Barack Obama’s energy plan. In his campaign, the talking point boiled down to $150 billion dollars of investment and five million new jobs. More recently, he outlined an immediate economic recovery plan that will create 2.5 million new jobs by 2011, in part by “building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technology that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years head.”

The challenge we face with energy, however, is unprecedented. It’s bigger than fascism, communism, and putting a man on the moon. It’s entirely global in scope, and our survival as a civilization depends on it. Nevertheless, there are powerful interests working against it…and us.

Energy is the world’s largest single industry. It just so happens that it’s controlled by so many dictators and multinational corporations, and the incentive structure is such that they are compelled to maximize short-term gains at the expense of long-term prosperity and well being, both for themselves and their six billion stakeholders. First of all, the rules governing energy economics must profoundly change. It’s a tall order. And the American government, backed by its multi-trillion-dollar economy, is the only entity big enough to pull it off. Obama knows this.

A recent Newsweek special issue on the Secrets of the 2008 Campaign featured a superb quote, in which Obama echoes our critique that greenies tend to be penny wise and pound foolish. When he was preparing for a televised debate during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying:

“I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”

Ayn Rand’s hero, John Galt, was not concerned with the minutiae of incremental advancement and neither is Obama. Does he think we all need to keep our tires properly inflated to conserve fuel? Of course he does. But this is just basic first aid: stop the bleeding and stabilize the patient. The cure requires a blood transfusion and several organ transplants. It calls for innovation on par with what Galt had in mind when he designed a motor that runs on infinitely clean, renewable, and abundant static electricity. It calls for a revolution, and revolutions start with the people.

America’s CTO

We were fortunate enough to have met Senator Obama early in the primary campaign, when he stopped by Conserv Fuel in Brentwood, CA, to make a speech on energy. Max Gladwell founder, Rob Reed, was one of the “green pioneers” who launched LA’s first B99/E85 filling station. Obama was speaking there in June of 2007, about the bottom-up solutions that Conserv and its entrepreneurial founders represented. (He was also 20 points behind Clinton.) Obama carefully tempered his support of ethanol by qualifying “certain types” in reference to cellulosic versus corn. Obama had a command of the energy issues then, and now he’s conferring with the best and brightest minds on this most pressing and challenging issue. The vision and execution for this new energy plan could be vested with America’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

At the recent Web 2.0 Expo, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins, who considers cleantech the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century, said the top three things this new CTO should focus on are energy, green technology, and “more basic research. The most important thing,” Doerr said, that Obama needs to do is, “kick-start a huge amount of innovation and research in energy. We invest less than a billion dollars a year in energy, compared to $32 billion in health care.” About energy, he said, “It’s the challenge for our generation. It’s the scourge of the economy.”

The Oil Problem

During the great oil shock of 2008, which now feels like ancient history, we wrote frequently about high energy prices and what it meant for the environment, our security, and the economy. This amounted to a double-edged sword. The #1 reason why high gas prices [were] good for America and the world (despite being bad) was that conservation would ultimately drive those prices down. And this would be a good thing for one reason: an opportunity to seize control of our energy destiny.

If and when prices come down, it will be up to the U.S. government to support them in an effort to (a) continue to reduce demand, (b) price in the external costs of GHG emissions, toxic emissions, and other externalities through taxes and other market mechanisms, and (c) reinvest that tax revenue in a the pursuit of a more sustainable green economy.

Prices have come down and then some. According to CNN, “It took gas prices more than three years to rise from $2 to a record high of $4.11, but just four months to plummet all the way back again – and then some. For the first time since March 9, 2005, the average price of gasoline fell below $2 a gallon, according to a report from motorist group AAA.”

While it would not be wise to levy a tax on gasoline during the economic crisis and recession, the Obama administration should have a plan in place to do so as soon as the economy shows signs of recovering. It may not be politically expedient, but we’re going to pay this tax one way or another. This past summer, we paid it to Putin, Chavez, and the Saudis. Best to keep that revenue at home. There are ways to mitigate the impact it would have on lower-income families by reducing their payroll taxes. This incentivizes them to both work more (be more productive) and drive more efficiently (be less wasteful). Any short-term pain from a hefty gas tax would be more than offset by the long-term gains we’d realize through a competitive market for clean alternatives, complete with the jobs and economic boost it would generate, not to mention the security that comes with reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

Other Solutions

Obama often included nuclear energy and so-called “clean coal” in his speeches. We sincerely hope he was serious about the former but pandering for votes with the latter.

In his infamous and mischaracterized quote about bankrupting coal-fired power plants, Obama described a scenario where cap-and-trade policies would make it difficult to operate a typical coal-fired power plant at a profit. Though we all heard Obama endorse “clean coal technology”, we think it comes with a wink and a nudge, because we all know it amounts to silly talk. Obama’s point about coal-fired power plants going bankrupt is this: when policies price in the costs of pollution, such as through cap and trade, these plants will no longer be economically viable. That is, until the coal industry actually innovates and develops legitimate “clean coal”. At the very least, this means capturing and sequestering all of the CO2 emissoins, which has yet to be tested or proven on any serious scale. Until then, it’s nothing more than Orwellian double speak.

Nuclear power, on the other hand, holds tremendous promise given an economic environment that taxes or otherwise caps CO2 emissions. Save for some unforseen breakthrough in energy science, our low-carbon energy future will include a fair share of nuclear power. Having surrounded himself with very smart people, Obama also knows this.

For those who follow us on Twitter, you’ve seen our Einstein background with our favorite quote of his: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Einstein’s general theory of relativity–his theory of gravity–changed the world. It changed how we understand space and time. This is the level of thought and innovation that will be required if we’re to truly solve the energy problem. New thinking from a new generation of networked social entrepreneurs.

Blogging wins out over social networking as Change.org shifts strategy from connecting to content.

Something profound happened today, and few seem to have noticed its true significance. The online activism platform Change.org relaunched its site with a new approach to changing the world. Change.org is still committed to the big issues of stopping global warming and ending genocide, but the online strategy has profoundly…changed.

According to CenterNetworks, where we first spotted the story, Change.org managing editor Josh Levy “spoke about moving away from leveraging only the social networks as the Facebook application Causes does. He believes there is power in the blog and has basically shifted Change.org into a variety of blogs on the most popular causes across the world.”

In other words, content trumped connecting and blogging trumped social networking.

We first wrote about the for-profit social enterprise in Be the Change You Wish to See on the Social Web. Founded in the summer of 2005 and launched in early 2007, Change.org relied on social networking to connect people around these important issues in the hopes that they’d recruit others and take action. Unfortunately, simply connecting like-minded people is not compelling enough to empower them to take on big issues like women’s rights or immigration. Social networking is great for socializing but much less effective when it comes to inspiring action. This applies equally to making charitable contributions and being influenced by advertising. Few things inspire or motivate like a good story, and that’s what content is all about.

A similar sentiment was expressed in one of the first reviews of Change.org after it launched. According to Sonny Cloward of NTEN,

The premise is pretty straightforward – connect people with one another and organizations to push forward common causes (i.e. changes). I perused the site, thought it was a great idea, didn’t dig very deeply, felt a moment of kumbaya with my fellow do-gooders and then quickly forgot about it.

So is Change.org just another fly-by-night project of some well meaning people with a good concept – just badly planned and executed – awaiting a slow descent into the dead pool? The site has a nicely streamlined and accessible UI, so it’s obvious someone put some thought and resources into it. Yet it has nothing in the way of features that hook me and keep me engaged and active in issues and people that matter to me (via dashboard, email, or RSS).

Change.org appears to have taken this last line to heart, as the new blogging (content) strategy seeks to hook and engage people with the information that’s essential to inspiring action. (As of this writing, though, it has yet to integrate RSS.)

In terms of design, the new Change.org is a network of blogs in the spirit of Gawker Media, Sugar, and Green Options, only these are not standalone blog properties but rather subdomains for each cause e.g. http://genocide.change.org and http://globalwarming.change.org. The main Change.org page is a portal of sorts to each of the blogs with featured headlines and links to the social networking component and cause profiles. By organizing the blogs on subdomains according to the main cause keyword, it will help to push them to the top of corresponding search results and ultimately recruit new members who wouldn’t have discovered Change.org otherwise. This is the more strategic part of Change.org’s blogging strategy, as they’ll seek to become more relevant not only to the people who want to learn about these issues but to Google itself. It’s an excellent blogging for SEO approach.

Just today, Google chief Eric Schmidt was featured in AdAge, where he spoke about the importance of brands and content.

Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus as part of their annual industry conference, [Schmidt] said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted. “Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

In a talk that he structured mostly as an invitation for questions and ideas, Mr. Schmidt declined to advise magazines on looking more popular to Google’s page-ranking programs.

“We don’t actually want you to be successful,” he said. The company’s algorithms are trying to find the most relevant search results, after all, not the sites that best game the system. “The fundamental way to increase your rank is to increase your relevance,” he added.

Branding, on the other hand, may be an essential element that helps people navigate the world, he said. “Brand affinity is clearly hard wired,” he said. “It is so fundamental to human existence that it’s not going away. It must have a genetic component.”

Change.org is applying these truths to its new approach by building on its brand and making it more relevant and discoverable through content.

This also speaks to an October 6th CNET News article, “Analyst: Half of ’social media campaigns’ will flop“, in which an analyst claims that while “75 percent of Fortune 1000 companies with Web sites will have undertaken some kind of online social-networking initiative for marketing or customer relations purposes” by 2012, half of them will fail.

Notice that neither the headline nor the article mentions blogging or content. Because while these are fundamental to social media, they aren’t typically factored into what one calls a “social media campaign”. This has to change.

Our point is simple. As we wrote in The First Rule of Social Media Club and Can a Blog Lead Your Business Strategy?, the supreme value of social media is content. Social media enables more efficient creation, distribution, and discovery of content…with plenty of help from Google, of course. The social media strategies we develop are grounded in content. One of our mantras is that all companies are now media companies. Most just haven’t realized it.

We help companies to release their inner media company. Just as Change.org did today.

The Kiva Business 4 Business credit card makes micro-lending easy and more impactful with matching funds. Plus, a story about connecting through the social web.

The KIVA B4B BusinessCard credit card is one of a kind. It enables small business owners in the first world to make micro loans to budding entrepreneurs in the third world, and the credit card issuing company, Advanta, matches those loans up to $200 per month per card member. But first, there’s an interesting story behind how we came to write about (and ultimately endorse) this do-good credit card.

Erick Brownstein develops innovative cause marketing programs for the credit card company, Advanta. One of those is called Ideablob, which won accolades at last year’s Demo conference. This social media platform enables entrepreneurs to submit their business ideas, garner or share advice, and vote on the best ideas. Each month, the winner with the most votes gets $10,000 to help start their business.

One of Erick’s many roles is to help promote the winners. For July, the $10K went to Healthy Vending Solutions, which seeks to provide healthier snack and beverage alternatives in schools. Erick did a quick Google search for related blogs and found Max School Bus, which is the second blog in what we’re now calling the Media Maxwell network. It made plenty of sense for us to post about it, so we did.

As emails went back and forth for a couple weeks, we noticed that Erick’s phone numbers had 310 and 323 area codes i.e. Los Angeles. We inquried about his rough coordinates in the sprawl. We’re in Santa Monica. Erick replies that he’s in Santa Monica, more specifically near 16th and Ocean Park. Holy cow, we reply, we’re on 14th and Ocean Park!

So we can thank Google, social media, cause marketing, and our shared interests for shrinking the world to a four-block radius and bringing us together. Which brings us to the Kiva B4B credit card.

Erick rode his cruiser bike to our office for an impromptu meeting so we could introduce ourselves and compare notes. Turns out he has some excellent bona fides. From Mother Theresa’s Home for the Sick & Dying Destitute in Calcutta to senior research analyst for Strategic Environmental Associates to manual laborer, from national campaign director for Rainforest Action Network to small business owner, Erick’s background is equal parts eclectic and meaningful. Now he’s got a credit-card offer you can’t refuse.

If you’re not familiar with Kiva.org, it’s a simple micro-lending service built on a social media platform. Entrepreneurs in developing countries submit detailed business-loan requests through Kiva’s field partners. It could be $100 to buy a cow or $700 for clothing fabric. Individual lenders (like you) can commit to fund a loan fully or in part. Neither Kiva nor the individual lenders (like you) take fees or earn interest. It’s purely a feel good for the lender, complete with some verification through Kiva.org that the loan is working. Kiva earns its operating capital through donations that lenders choose to make above and beyond the loan amounts. Erick helped come up with the bright idea of rolling Kiva into its own credit card.

The KIVA B4B BusinessCard credit card targets small business owners who can relate to how valuable a loan can be to get your venture off the ground. However, anyone (like you) can apply for the card and take advantage of this unique program, where the card issuer, Advanta, matches your Kiva loans up to $200 per month per card member. Do the math. That’s four cows. But that’s not all.

Brownstein and company have also offered this as an affiliate marketing program, which means that Max Gladwell can earn fees for referring our loyal readers. That’s right, if you click here or on the credit card image above and apply for a Kiva B4B credit card, you can simultaneously support third-world entrepreneurs, first-world Max Gladwell, and Kiva. Because in addition to our fees, Advanta makes a $25 donation (not a loan) to Kiva.

In so far as credit cards are a necessity of life in the 21st century, this is the first we’ve really felt comfortable endorsing. You can check out a number of different green credit cards, but none of them is as innovative and rewarding as the Kiva B4B in our humble opinion. Other pertinent details: 0% on balance transfers for 15 months and 7.99% thereafter; 5% statement credit for grants to Kiva and other charitable donations, as well as up to 1% on purchases; no annual fee. Please read all terms and conditions before applying.

Brownstein and Advanta have another venture that they’ll debut at the upcoming Demo conference, and we look forward to checking it out.

Charity-driven social media platform recruits bloggers in an effort to raise awareness and donations for Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C).

We’ve been working with SocialVibe over the past couple months (that’s a disclosure, in case you missed it), specifically on its marketing and social media strategies. Prior to this, we blogged about SocialVibe here and here. Regardless of the fact that we’re now on the take, the following is something we most certainly would be blogging about.

We’ve all heard the saying, “It’s serious as cancer.” The expression is used in many ways. It’s become cliché. But there’s a reason why clichés are formed. Like the universal feeling of being stuck between a rock and a hard place, there’s a deeper truth. “Serious as cancer” achieves cliché status because cancer presides over all things serious. It is the king and queen of seriousness. And while cancer deserves this respect, it is our duty to end its tyrannical reign. To render cancer less serious and eventually not serious at all. That’s essentially what Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) is all about.

Stand Up To Cancer is an initiative aimed at rallying the public around the goal of ending cancer’s reign as a leading cause of death. The initiative brings together an unprecedented collaboration that unites the major television networks, entertainment industry executives, celebrities and prominent leaders in cancer research and patient advocacy. ABC, CBS and NBC will donate one hour of simultaneous commercial-free primetime for a nationally televised fundraising event to air on September 5, 2008 (8 pm EDT and PDT). If you’ve not seen the PSA, it’s nothing short of inspiring:

SocialVibe is supporting SU2C in a number of ways. SU2C is one of the featured causes that users can choose to support by adding the brand-cause badge to your profile pages, such as MySpace and Facebook. These earn points for impressions which translate into cash donations. Anyone who has a profile page, personal website, or blog can post the embed code, complete with a third-party sponsor, like so:

For bloggers, however, SocialVibe is inviting all of us to raise straight cash by directing readers to this specific link: SocialVibe.com/SU2C. Which is a unique portal for signing up and becoming a SocialVibe member. For each successful sign-up through this page (that means you), SocialVibe donates $1 to SU2C. When all is said and done, SocialVibe will list the bloggers and their donation tally on its blog, The Vibe, together with a press release that will feature the top bloggers. As a blogger, you don’t have to actually sign up in order to direct readers to sign up. You’ll still generate $1 for every person who does, though the tracking may not be that accurate. Alternatively or in addition to this, bloggers can contact SocialVibe (su2c [at] socialvibe.com) to have a custom, co-branded badge designed for their blog, which guarantees tracking.

As Howard Greenstein writes in his related post on Social Media Club, “I’m making a call to action for all my social media connected friends: please be a part of this effort, raise visibility and help find the cure. I ask that you suggest other things we can do as a community to increase awareness. I think this is a ‘case study’ for how SMC can help bring about change via social media.”

As we’ve said before, it’s no coincidence that social media and social good share the same first name. In fact, blogs serve a social good in and of themselves. Jeremiah Owyang dipped his toe into these waters when he rallied bloggers and social media devotees around earthquake relief in China, despite being well outside the scope of his web strategy blog. Even Perez Hilton writes frequent posts in support of worthwhile causes. It’s just part of the blogger DNA, and we’re honored to be a part of it.

Lest we forget, you can also make a straight cash donation to SU2C. That is still allowed.

For more information, SocialVibe has set up this How-to Page to guide bloggers through signing up and provide more information about its platform. There is a blog post template there in HTML format that you can easily copy, paste, and edit as you see fit. It’s open source, free to use, and was written in WordPress (fyi).

As a final note, we spoke with the PR firm that’s handling the SU2C campaign yesterday. This initiative is quite the phenomenon. There’s little in the way of central management and control. Sure, there is a main website. And there’s been plenty of PSA advertising on TV. There will be plenty of press. But it’s really got a life of its own. It will be aired through the most mainstream of mainstream media channels, which is great. But we’re eager to see if we, in the new-media world, can demonstrate our power and reach and stand toe-to-toe with Big Media in supporting this supremely worthy cause.

Looking forward to your comments…

The social networking for social good space continues to heat up with Ammado.com and a new NetCommunity feature from Blackbaud.

Is it a coincidence that social good and social media share first names? It has always seemed that the social web was purpose built to benefit humanity. It’s no surprise that so many entrepreneurs are leveraging these tools to raise funds and awareness for nonprofits.

From Inquirer.net: A Facebook-like service for non-profit and non-government organizations (NGOs) showed local organizations how social networks can be used as effective means to raise funds and attract potential donors worldwide, an executive said.

“Social network services are social engagement tools,” said Joeri Gianotten, Ammado.com director for Asia Pacific who was in Manila to discuss about his company during Microsoft NGO Day, where hundreds of local NGOs were invited.

Social networks like Change.org or Ammado.com are now providing non-profit and NGOs a virtual platform to connect to a bigger community of donors, Gianotten said.

Similar to how social network Facebook has allowed people to connect to other people, social networks like Ammado are even becoming effective tools for smaller NGOs to manage volunteers,” added Gianotten.

He cited the story of an Indian non-government organization that was able to connect to a United States-based non-profit organization that was donating toys to children through Ammado. Since the Indian organization could not afford such a large shipment, the US organization eventually led a campaign to get donors to finance the shipment of the toys to the Indian organization.

Gianotten also shared the story of a small Filipino organization based in Ormoc that used social networking to get donations from people worldwide to fund livelihood projects for locals.

Ammado.com was founded by serial entrepreneur Peter Conlon and Anna Kupka to connect NGOs to global private or institutional donors, according to the executive. While the concept was born in 2005, Ammado.com only came out of a closed beta in June this year.

“Now small organizations can easily reach out to the world,” Gianotten said.

Ammado.com currently provides free services to NGOs and non-profit organizations. They only need to sign up and create their unique profile, similar to creating a profile in Facebook or other social networking sites. There are over 2,000 NGOs and non-profit organization members from over 100 countries, Gianotten said.

Gianotten said that corporations, however, have to register and pay to join the social network. Essentially, fees collected from corporations go to the maintenance and operations of the social network, he added.

Turner Broadcasting was among its first corporate client, he said.

Ammado.com will soon launch a so-called “donation circle,” which is a “giving platform” for members of the social network. Donations from this giving platform will go to the Ammado Foundation.

In related news:

From TMCNet.com: Blackbaud today unveiled a new release of Blackbaud NetCommunity, saying it includes “major enhancements in both function and features.”

Company officials cite “improved site design features to enhanced Web accessibility and a native social networking feature called ‘Wave,’ ”all designed to provide nonprofits with ways to engage constituents online.

The vendor has also unveiled a new set of NetCommunity Open Platform APIs for creating custom parts, integrated Web services and custom transactions.

“With Wave, Blackbaud has introduced a new way to use social networking – both within the application and by integrating to social network services like Facebook – which will add to the viral nature of our work,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Director of Information Technology Michael Sola.

Marc Chardon, Blackbaud’s chief executive officer, said since it was introduced in 2004, more than 600 nonprofits have selected NetCommunity. “Integration with The Raiser’s Edge lets nonprofits customize Web visitors’ online experience while capturing key information in their CRM systems,” he said.

Wave, Blackbaud NetCommunity’s new social networking feature, helps nonprofits create mission-specific online communities that also integrate with popular social networking sites like Facebook.

Additional enhancements include content approval, “allowing workflow approval processes for content publishing and versioning,” company officials say, as well as eCards allowing Web site visitors to send electronic cards for free or for a donation.

It’s possible that the power of social networking cuts both ways.

Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook (especially MySpace) have long been criticized for “enabling” child predators. The latest critique comes from Dr. Himanshu Tyagi, a British psychiatrist. According to a report by the BBC, Tyagi says that “people with active online identities might place less value on their real lives…adding that this could raise the risk of impulsive acts or even suicide.”

The story quickly became sensationalized and spread around blogs and other news outlets:

British Psychiatrist Warns About Dangers Of Social Networking Websites

Doctor: Social networking sites skew kids’ world view

New Study Probes Social Networking Generation

The Child’s Conception of Social Networking

Dr. Tyagi responded via a press release to clarify his comments:

To put the talk into context, it was meant for a professional audience, and it purpose was to create awareness amongst psychiatrists about the potential intergenerational difficulties we might run into if we remain oblivious to the growing importance of internet and its application in the lives of young people.”

”It’s important to understand that my perspective is that of a clinical psychiatrist. I did not ‘warn’ general public or professionals about social working websites as reported. If anything I warned professionals about the dangers of ignorance about the changing world that their young patients exist and are growing in. My talk was meant to be open-ended, thought provoking and constructive.

Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle runs a story advising that “Nonprofits should make use of social networking.” A key piece of advice is to “start attending meetings of NetSquared, an organization with chapters throughout North America that help nonprofits enter and navigate the social Web.”

And The WIP just posted the following story: “Social Networking Site Put into Action: Darfur Blog on MySpace Encourages Awareness.”

My experience in keeping this blog demonstrates the advantage bloggers have over the mainstream media – free press. Bloggers have the freedom to include perspectives and ideas that are often not included in mainstream coverage. This article is a jumping-off point for me to begin sharing my blog with readers of The WIP by cross-posting my Darfur coverage on The WIP’s TALK blog.

By maintaining this blog, I have found an online community of people interested in staying informed on Darfur and I have given them perspectives that are often missed in the mainstream. I’m happy to be able to fill this void and connect with others who are also using whatever means possible to break the silence.

How do we reconcile these polar opposites? Or do we even need to?

What if we could subscribe to the social web through a centralized micro-payment platform that sustains the medium while supporting good causes? Would anyone pay?

We’ve got a business idea. Actually, it’s an idea for a foundation that could lead to business opportunities. And we’re going to share it, for better or worse. First, here’s the problem.

The social web is built on being open and free. Social networks, social news, blogs, lifestreaming, video sharing, social media aggregators, etc. They’re all valuable and yet they’re all free to use. By the same token, at least half of their value is a function of people using them. Where would YouTube be without user-generated videos? Where would Digg be without user-generated headlines? Where would Max Gladwell be without your thoughtful comments on this post? The problem is monetization.

Most revenue models are based on advertising, and few are able to support growth or valuations with ad revenue alone. Therefore, it’s up to a Microsoft or Google or Yahoo! to acquire these companies and thus provide the only realistic exit. In which case the founders and VCs cash out, and the Internet conglomerates get bigger and more powerful. Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Would it be preferable if these social media companies could actually sustain themselves and maintain their independence? Certainly. Especially considering the worst-case scenarios.

The Web 2.0 bubble and imminent burst is the subject of much speculation. What happens when the music stops and investment dries up and you can’t get that next round? Again, either sell to Microsoft for a song or close up shop. So how do we preserve the social web and make it sustainable? We’re proposing a new nonprofit foundation that will manage our collective subscriptions. Here’s how it would work.

Three groups provide value to the social web: service providers, content creators, and consumers. Many of us play multiple roles. Facebook and Flickr are service providers. Bloggers are creators. We’re all consumers. This foundation would provide a central hub where service providers and content creators could earn subscription fees from consumers.

For example, Twitter signs up with the foundation as a service provider, making it eligible to receive fees from subscribers. Max Gladwell signs up with the foundation as subscriber and pays an initial $10. Subscription fees would be deducted as we used various services to which we subscribed. As a Twitter user, Max Gladwell could opt in to be a paid subscriber, by way of a simple check box in the Twitter profile, and pay a few pennies per Tweet or some small monthly rate. It’s entirely voluntary, and you can opt out at any time while continuing to use the service. StumbleUpon allows you to become a “sponsor”, which is similar, but it requires running a credit card or Paypal. We’re a sponsor but only a handful of our “friends” are. Still, it’s an encouraging sign. Perhaps the buy-in rate would be higher if there was a better system.

By centralizing the subscriptions, one could seamlessly subscribe to (and support) any blog, photo sharing service, social network…any social media resource that participates in the foundation. We realize that it’s too burdensome to individually subscribe to every blog or social news site we use. Plus, the transaction costs would be prohibitive. Having a single subscription account with micro payments makes it not only efficient and possible, but it can also function as its own aggregator, providing a record of your social media use–the blog posts you’ve read, the people you’ve friended, the stories you’ve submitted, the videos you’ve favorited–together with any micro payments you’ve been charged.

As a nonprofit foundation, the organization will provide a sustainable revenue model for the social web. It’s basically crowdsourcing a revenue model. That’s the mission and social benefit. But it can also support other causes and nonprofits. Signing up for either a subscription account or a service provider/content creator account would also include choosing a charity to support. A portion of the fees, both from the paying and earning sides, would be donated to charities. So it’s doubly good.

Here’s why it won’t work: people won’t pay for anything they already get for free. Fair enough. But who would have thought Wikipedia, a 100% voluntary online encyclopedia, could ever have been successful? There is a tremendous generosity on the social web in terms of our time. Given the right model, might people also open their wallets to support their favorite blogs and services, especially if it’s also supporting good causes? Many have said they’d pay for a more reliable Twitter. Would they also pay for a more balanced and sustainable social web? The net impact could be substantial.

Consistent with the principles of social media, this foundation would put control in the hands of users. By controlling the flow of revenue, it shifts power from advertisers, VCs, and conglomerates to the people. Imagine if Twitter’s revenue model was dependent on voluntary user subscriptions and Microsoft acquired them. Many would opt out of paying but continue using the service. The revenue would disappear. So while the foundation could facilitate more sustainable business models, it could also impact valuations and exit opportunities. Companies might have no choice but to remain independent, since their profitability would likely depend on it.

In some ways, this foundation would help the social web to function like KCRW (best radio station ever). The vast majority listen to this quality, commercial-free radio station for free aka the freeriders. But enough of us make contributions (paying voluntary subscriptions) to sustain its excellent programming. This isn’t to say that these blogs and social networks can’t run advertising. If it’s reasonable and done well, users will still subscribe. After all, this is micro payments…pennies per view or post or friend. Most would be hybrid models like print magazines or cable TV (but better, of course). Gaining financial support from users could make all the difference–a good cause in and of itself–while simultaneously supporting other good causes.

In terms of structure, this nonprofit foundation would pass 100% of the fees to service providers, content creators, and charities. It would sustain itself through grants and other revenue opportunities (TBD).

We look forward to comments on this idea. If nothing else, it’s an interesting thought experiement. Perhaps there’s something like it that we don’t know about. We’ve not made any estimates about potential rates and revenue opportunities. It’s all conceptual at this point. If anyone wants to take the conversation offline, feel free to drop an email to rob [at] maxgladwell dot com.

GreenMap.org is scheduled to release a new social mapping site in September. Here’s a preview.

GreenMap is a global map-making community that organizes the green landscape. According to the organization, the “Green Map System supports local Green Mapmakers as they create perspective-changing community ‘portraits’ which act as comprehensive inventories for decision-making and as practical guides for residents and tourists. Mapmaking teams pair our adaptable tools and universal iconography with local knowledge and leadership to chart green living, ecological, social and cultural resources.”

The organization has been around since 1995 but relaunched in 2007 in its current form. At that point, there were 400 registered Green Map projects from 51 countries. Green Maps’ maps can be downloaded in PDF format to take them offline and into the real world. Recently, we learned about Green Maps’ plan to launch a more interactive, Web 2.0 version of the site–a social mapping site–and today we get a preview of Open Green Map.

“This social mapping website will soon guide users to nature, culture and green living innovations. Open Green Map will also share the public’s insights, images and impacts about each of these significant places.

Open Green Map will connect the booming ‘go local,’ green development and ecotourism movements with social networking and interactive mapping, empowering widespread participation in critical local environment, climate and equity issues worldwide.”

It’s like Wikipedia meets Yelp meets Google Maps. One can only speculate about the different mashups with location-based social networking sites like BrightKite and mobile access on the iPhone 3G with GPS.

Update: This is the email notification that prompted this post.

“The enthusiasm is building as the Open Green Map project goes into full-scale production. Already a finalist in the NetSquared Challenge and presented at Beyond Broadcasting and Where 2.0 conferences, this inclusive, participatory social mapping website will put thousands of hopeful green sites from around the world on the map! Open Green Map will also share the public’s insights, images and impacts about each of these significant places.

Mixing social networking, familiar Google Map technology and Green Map’s award-winning iconography, Open Green Map will create a common platform for Green Mapmakers, Green Map users, and a global public that is becoming more and more adept at living green. Users of OGM will be able to select the themes they are most interested in, and explore the world from a fresh vantage point. They will also have quick access to the unique ‘traditional’ Green Maps published locally in each city, town or region.

We believe that every community has resources to help individuals build healthier, greener communities together. But up until now, too many people lack the awareness and access they need to find and connect with those resources. Open Green Map will energize the booming green innovation, ‘go local’, regeneration and ecotourism movements with social networking and interactive mapping, empowering widespread participation in critical local environment, climate and equity issues worldwide.”

It’s all about the cause: YourCause, JustCause, FreeCause, Cause Wired, CauseCast, FoxyCause.

“Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” –Albert Einstein

The theme of this post is quite clearly “the cause”. It’s a term with a lot of meaning, and it’s integral to many new online brands. Most of these serve to support good causes, such as nonprofit charities, by providing online platforms and tools to assist in raising funds, awareness, and/or in-kind donations. As we’ve seen, there are many other companies in this space. These just happen to be the ones with “cause” in the branding…that are also not the Causes application on Facebook and MySpace.

YourCause.com is a new social networking platform that empowers individuals to create their own personalized causes, rally support for them, and generate donations for relevant charities. There are similar models, but YourCause is unique in how it enables people to start their own causes. It’s like being able to form your own charity without having to form a 501c3 and file for tax-exempt status. So it makes a distinction between Causes, which are created and driven by the community, and the actual Charities, which stand to benefit from the Causes members start.

For example, we started a cause called “End Our Fossil Fuel Addiction“. We described it, entered a mission statement, and tagged it. Based on this info, YourCause recommended compatible charities with a similar mission. Or you can search by keyword and location in order to select the charity yourself. We didn’t find any that matched perfectly, so we went with Conservation International to start. The charity has its own platform and set of tools. You can change the charity your cause supports if you later find a more appropriate one.

Once “your cause” is set up, there are a number of tools for recruiting supporters (i.e. MySpace friends with a purpose), promoting it, and raising donations that go to the associated charity. YourCause is built on a “freemium” revenue model, where an upgrade to premium features such as collecting donations for a particular goal, loading pictures for your cause, and writing blogs costs $9.95/month. There is also some display advertising throughout the site as a secondary revenue stream.

YourCause is backed by Blastoff Ventures, a Dallas-based incubator whose services include “financial backing, marketing direction, idea development, and entrepreneurial execution. BlastOff Ventures seeks to develop new ventures that have a legitimate opportunity of generating $20 million in revenue within five-years, become cash flow positive within three years, and that are lead by intelligent, passionate, and execution oriented individuals.” The firm is actively seeking “entrepreneurs and ideas for new venture concepts.”

Just Cause is a media company with a print magazine and an online counterpart, JustCauseIt. “The mission of JUST CAUSE is to shine a bright light on individuals, corporations and the change agents who are working for the greater good. To inspire people to get involved, to reveal and help people understand the relationship between charity and community, to educate people about how to MAKE A DIFFERENCE and impassion them to TAKE ACTION; to give them a technology platform to enable that action.”

The online platform is rich with content while allowing members to create causes and group blogs for free. As with the print version, it appears to be supported by advertising. Family Farming and Burners Without Borders (Burning Man) are among the most popular causes to date.

FreeCause has worked with nonprofits like Susan B. Komen and AnySoldier.com to design and deploy social networking (Facebook) applications and custom browser toolbars that facilitate donations.

“FreeCause has created custom browser toolbar, available for download at no charge, to help users navigate the internet while raising funds to help support Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s promise to end breast cancer forever. The toolbar, loaded with features specific to the Komen community, allows supporters to feel constantly connected to the organization while also financially contributing to the cause without spending a dime!”

In some ways, this is a form of “green search“, since Yahoo! is built into the toolbar. Your search queries generate ad revenue, part of which goes to the charity. FreeCause generates revenue from this as well, though it isn’t entirely clear from the company’s website. It’s also not clear whether these charities knew that their members would be participating in countless affiliate programs through the browser toolbar. Joe Solomon commented about this on a related blog post:

[FreeCause] allows any of these groups to easily customize a toolbar for FREE so that they can then get all of their members to install it. In theory, a toolbar is an excellent way to engage with your constituency so a nonprofit would be very much inclined to encourage their thousands or millions of members to install a fully customized, branded toolbar.

And for every member who installs the toolbar, FreeCauses likely generates a significant & quite sustainable revenue. There are over a dozen affiliate programs that are built into the toolbar and FreeCauses likely gets a cut of all the revenue generated from the ads that get clicked on when people do a Yahoo search (which is the toolbar’s main feature).

Back to the facebook conversation — if you install the toolbar through the Facebook app, some of the money goes to Breast Cancer, right? — but if you get a toolbar from the site directly, ALL the money goes to the MIT grads who started FreeCause. As far as I can tell, anyway. They don’t really discuss this stuff on their website. This raises a lot of questions…about transparency, revenue-sharing, and how we should be engaging pro-social institutions.

The point is not so much that FreeCause is making money but that it’s not made clear how they’re doing it to anyone, especially the end user who installs the toolbar or uses the Facebook app.

Entreprenur and journalist Tom Watson will soon release a new book on this topic: Cause Wired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World.

“While many books have covered the impact of digital media – from blogs to video to the rise of social networks – this will be the first to track the impact on causes, from the charitable to the political, and provide a road map to anyone serious about understanding the social impact on the social web. Technorati, the leading search engine for blogs and social media, currently tracks more than 118 million socially wired sites. Facebook is expected to pass 60 million members by the start of 2008 and a quarter million of them use the Causes application to raise money and consciousness for charitable and political causes. Clearly, the numbers in the Cause Wired movement are approaching critical mass, and this is an accessible, jargon-free business book on the impact of social networks on charity, politics, and consumer movements – one that explains the trend, offers real-world stories of success, and introduces the reader to some of the people–famous and almost unknown–powering this movement.”

Watson is also Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder of Changing Our World, a New York-based philanthropic consulting firm.

Slated to launch this summer, CauseCast will help you to “connect with the leaders, organizations, and people who inspire you; participate by uploading and sharing content, donating and volunteering for causes; and get rewarded by your community and leaders through exclusive events.” We’re anticipating a sneak preview prior to launch. Otherwise, that’s all we have.

FoxyCause is an add-on for the Firefox browser that is also scheduled to be released this summer. According to Joe Solomon, “FoxyCause’s goal is to leverage the entire Firefox community for philanthropy, which is approximately double the size of Facebook, in terms of active users. Through a Firefox extension, we want to make it super easy to give to your favorite nonprofits — just by searching the web & shopping online.”

It appears similar to other affiliate-based models that donate a portion of the fees it earns to charity. You can be certain, though, that Solomon and company will be 100% transparent about the revenue-sharing structure.

Let us know your thoughts about all of these cause-based business models and cause-happy entrepreneurs. Making a buck, making the world a better place, or a little of both?