We love anything that benefits charitable organizations around here at The Next Web. We especially love when entrepreneurs give up their time to give back to charity. There’s no greater social good than leveraging your experience to raise funds and awareness for something like J/P Haitian Relief Organization, Artists for Peace and Justice and the Happy Hearts Fund.

Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity founder Elon Musk is participating in an online auction which will benefit these three worthy non-profits in partnership with this weekend’s Carnival in Cannes, which benefits Haitian relief work.

Thanks to Charitybuzz, you can now bid on spending the day with Elon Musk in Los Angeles, and the bidding is currently at $16,000.

Here’s what you’ll get to do during your day with Musk:

- Spend the morning at the SpaceX offices, discussing the company’s space exploration programs.
- Head over to the Tesla Design Studio to see the inner-workings of the electric car industry, including a ride in Elon’s personal Tesla Roadster, followed by lunch.
- Finish your VIP day with a personal tour of the SpaceX rocket factory, with Elon as your guide.

The bidding ends this Thursday, May 17th, so be sure to head on over and do some social good and have a pretty geeky day with Elon Musk.

We told you about a new charity initiative from San Francisco based EXEC a few days ago, which allows you to “rent” time from some of the top founders in the valley for $100 an hour, with the money going directly to Donors Choose.

Initially, the founders involved were Alexis Ohanian, Steve Huffman, Matt Brezina, Tikhon Bernstam, and EXEC founder Justin Kan. I reached out to Kan to see how the program was going and it appears to be a massive success:

We’ve had such high demand (over 60 requests scheduled so far) that we’re now bringing on Michael Seibel, CEO of Socialcam as well.

If you’re familiar with Kan’s previous endeveours Justin.tv and Socialcam, you’ll be familiar with Michael Seibel. He’s currently the CEO of Socialcam and helped Kan start Justin.tv.

Here’s a bit of info on Seibel if you’re interested in “renting” some of his time on Saturday for charity:

Founder / CEO, Socialcam; Founder / former CEO, Justin.tv

Michael enjoys helping early stage companies. He has a simple set of rules that he believes most early tech companies should follow, and is happy to share them with you.

EXEC only recently launched and is only servicing San Francisco at the moment, but has plans to expand. You can use the service to hire people to handle any number of tasks that you or your company need taken care of. So far, people have been hiring folks to put IKEA furniture together or run errands such as picking up groceries for employees.

The company hopes to fulfill as many requests for the founders’ time as possible, and posted this update on its blog:

Saturday, between 11am and 5pm PST, the founders are going to try to fulfill as many of the requests as possible. Because we’ve seen such large demand, we’ll be preferencing people who scheduled their requests earliest and trying to get through everyone we can. Unfortunately at the moment it is likely that we’ll run short on time and not everyone will get a chance to talk to someone. This is simply due to the large demand and the small number of founders fulfilling requests. Also, we can’t guarantee all requests will happen at the scheduled times: please be patient and we’ll try to make sure a founder gives you a call.

It should be an exciting day and I’m interested to see if EXEC will make this a regular occurrence. Right now, it’s not something that service offers, but could become an interesting feature for execs and consultants to fill up a pipeline of customers, and all from the comfort of a brilliantly designed iPhone app.

➤ Rent a Founder on EXEC

It might be a bit of a stereotype that college students like playing video games or messing around on the Internet when they’re not in class, but it’s something that could actually help them pay their way through school if Grantoo has anything to say about it.

Grantoo is a social gaming platform that wants to reward students for playing games in two ways; first, social gaming tournament winners get grants towards their college tuition and secondly, get to give a portion of their winnings to a charity of their choice. This model teaches students that it’s nice to receive as well as give, and it sounds pretty awesome to me.

The idea came to co-founder Dimitri Sillam in 2007 and has taken until now to completely form into a company. Not only did Grantoo have to build a gaming platform, it had to solidify the advertising model to find the money to give to students and charities, as well as becoming a non-profit itself. There are a lot of moving pieces here, but at the end of the day it kind of makes sense for everyone involved.

Play games, win big

Grantoo is holding its first ever public tournament on April 8th and it will be make or break for the model that it’s trying to prove out. Here’s how it works: companies sponsor the tournaments by putting up prize money, Grantoo provides the gaming platform, students who win get tuition money (if they go to an eligible school), and a charity gets a donation from the winner.

Sounds great to me, here’s a video with a bit more flavor:

The first company to sponsor a tournament is WePay, a service that lets you collect money online, without the need for a merchant account. The company is offering up $5,000 that will be divided into grants for 12 students, the grand prize being $2,000. By signing up and participating in the gaming challenge, which currently consists of a quiz game, card game, and word game, students must give 10% of their winnings to one of the following charities; Pencils of Promise, GlobeMed, The Hunger Project, Millennium Campus Network, Partners in Health, MAMA Hope, or Engineers without Borders.

This seems to be one of those ideas that works out for everyone, and since Grantoo is a non-profit itself, it’s clear that the company isn’t looking to make a lot of money from it. We’ll be watching and will let you know how the first tournament goes and which lucky students win and which awesome charities get a donation.

➤ Grantoo

Online charitable donations are becoming commonplace with tools like Twitter and Facebook helping passionate individuals spread the word about their charity of choice. By being able to broadcast your passion for a deserving non-profit, tools to support that charitable giving are popping up left and right.

A new service called Everyone Gives invites you to create a “giving tree” which allows you to focus on a cause of your choosing and share it with your friends to get them to donate as well.

Since the site launched on February 22nd, over $490k has been pledged to 1,369 charities in 453 cities around the world. That’s an extremely impressive feat, and the site has some big names backing it. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has his own non-profit that is raising money using Everyone Gives, and is also asking others to get involved:

Measure your own impact

All you have to do to get started is create your own tree which serves as a “seed” for your fundraising campaign. You can then choose the charity that you’d like to benefit and then start sharing the tree on Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else you can think of. Donations can be made directly through the site, which gives the money directly to the charity and takes no cut whatsoever. As your tree grows, you’ll be able to track how much money has been raised and who has participated:

The site also tracks global giving throughout the site, letting you know which cities getting charitable support by users of the site. Clicking around on the map to see the global impact of Everyone Gives is quite fascinating, and sheds light on which areas need more support than others:

You’ll notice that charities in 61 countries have already received donations thanks to people using Everyone Gives in just a week since its launch. It’s clear that the site has struck a nerve and rather than focusing on the singular nature of any one charity, Everyone Gives is shedding light on how huge a collective community’s footprint can become through giving just a few dollars.

When all is said and done, it doesn’t really matter how you choose to give to a charity, as long as you do. What Everyone Gives shows us is that sharing your passion about giving is almost as important as what you actually give to the charity.

➤ Everyone Gives

Check out another donation platform called Givey that is also harnessing social media to raise money for charities that need it.

Mistakes happen to the best of us, and according to a cool poster and shirt from Fab.com, we should make mistakes more often, as they sometimes lead to better outcomes.

That was the case today when Mike Monteiro of Mule Designs felt that it was no mistake that Fab’s new items looked exactly like something he had made and was also selling online:

Hey @fab! You REALLY don’t want to do this. Me: 20×200.com/artworks/1141 You (but also me): fab.com/sale/3009/prod…

— Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) February 27, 2012

Here’s a look at the two designs, with Fab’s first:

Now Monteiro’s:

While I wouldn’t call them carbon copies, the two designs and messages are extremely similar. After Monteiro shared his displeasure with the similarities, others began tweeting their disgust with Fab as well:

with @fab ripping off @Mike_FTW, I’m seriously reconsidering purchasing anything from there again. For shame.

— jwtdesign (@jwtdesign) February 27, 2012

Instead of this turning into something ugly, Fab’s CEO Jason Goldberg decided to put the back and forth to rest and end it on a positive note. In a blog post, Goldberg cleared up the speculation that Fab ripped Monteiro off by stating that “Make Mistakes” is the company mantra and it’s actually something he got from its CTO, who has this sign on his wall:

Having said that, Goldberg took the clearing up a step further by offering to donate proceeds from Fab’s items to charity:

At Fab we believe this make mistakes stuff; but learn from them and adjust quickly. Yo Mike! Here’s what we’re going to do. Let me know your favorite charity. For every $1 of profits from selling our Make Mistakes poster or tees on Fab, we’ll donate $2 to your favorite charity. We’re not in this for the money. We believe this Make Mistakes stuff. We live it every day here.

Even if Fab’s design group had made a mistake and lifted someone else’s design, it appears that these mistakes and confusion have led to something far better, a charitable donation to the organization of Mike Monteiro’s choice:

The folks at @fab admit their mistake, agree to give profits to charity of my choice. (Planned Parenthood btw.) bit.ly/xCG3kk

— Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) February 27, 2012

It’s nice to see a Twitter spat end in something that benefits others.

That’s right, to raise money for charity: water Hassan Hassan will sing any song and dance along to it in a video for your gifting pleasure. When this email came through, I chuckled and thought “Who wouldn’t want to receive a dancing a bear video AND a donation to charity as a gift?”.

The Raise5 project was launched in Toronto during the last Startup Weekend in November. The site hopes that the service will enable anyone to leverage their skills, talents, knowledge, and creativity to raise money for charity $5 at a time.

Of course this is a brilliant bit of marketing to get the site out there, but there’s a genuine social good implication here which shows that you don’t have to be famous or popular to raise money for charity and make a difference. All you need is a bear suit and some dance moves:

➤ Bear suit video for charity on Raise5

While it’s easy to compare Facebook and Google+ because they’re both social networks and write off the latter because it doesn’t have quite as many users, Google+ has done an amazing job building tools that help facilitate strong communities. Google’s social network is only a few months old, but it has quickly become a top destination for photographers to hang out, chat, and share their work.

Some of these photographers decided that it would be a great idea to put together a book of their work. The twist is, the proceeds from the book are going to Kiva, its chosen charity. They call the book the “Plus One Collection“.

The project has turned into a standard book, e-book, a limited edition version, and soon, it will have an accompanying iOS app. With 520 photographers taking part by offering up their work for free, the book is yet another example of how people are leveraging Google’s social platform to express themselves, whether they’re a professional or not.

Here’s how the project creators explain the idea:

The idea is simple.

We, a group of photographers from an online community on social network Google+ thought, hey, why not publish a photography book together? We spent a lot of time talking photography online, share and look at each other’s work, and even meet together to socialize and shoot. Why not collaborate on a project together? That’s how the idea of this book was born. When the call to contribute came, 520 photographers, both known and less known, from all over the world responded, willing to donate their art for the project.

The cost for the limited edition printed version of the book is $200, and all of the net proceeds go to Kiva. A standard version will be available on February 21st. You can see a full list of photographers that made it into the printed version here.

➤ Plus One Collection

Social presentation service SlideRocket is all about thinking outside of the box. We told you about Hanna Phan last November, who wanted to work for the company so badly that she created a presentation using the service to explain why. She got the job because SlideRocket recognized that using the product to get a job with the product took some creative thinking.

SlideRocket is looking to give rewards for creativity again, this time it’s for the greater good. The company recently announced its “Make an Impact” contest, which is open to anyone who’s passionate about a cause.

Here are the rules posted by the company:

The contest is open to staff at 501(c)(3) non-profits as well as people who would like to support their favorite non-profit by winning the contest on their behalf. You can enter any time between January 17 and March 28. We will publish the leaders with the most presentation views on a daily basis, and you can always check your SlideRocket presentation analytics to see how you’re doing. It’s a fun way to compete and do some good in the world!

The top four presentations will each win $5k for its charity, and this is a simple way to stretch out your brain for social good. SlideRocket provides the platform to create the presentation and all you have to do is make it and get it out there in the social world. The top 25 presentations with the most views will be reviewed by a panel of judges, from which the four winners will be selected.

Here are some tips on making a killer presentation to win this competition for a lucky cause:

1. Choose a charity carefully

Don’t choose a charity because it’s “famous”, pick one that you’re really passionate about. Your passion will translate to a great presentation. Don’t worry about how many famous people support a charity, because at the end of the day it’s regular folks like you and me who can really make a difference. Try picking a small charity that’s based in your local area and bring that local flavor into your presentation. Presentations about topics you’re not well-versed on don’t end up too influential.

2. Do some prep work

Really research the history of your selected charity. Remember, this is a presentation, so try to tell a story about the charity you’re representing. While this shouldn’t just be boring graphs and numbers, explaining the story behind the charity as well as the story on why you chose the charity is a great way to get attention from the judges. By the time someone finishes looking at your presentation, they should be just as passionate and knowledgeable as you.

3. Make it social

Including tweets and posts from other people who support your charity will make for a fantastic presentation. By showing the judges that you aren’t the only one who is passionate about this cause and organization will make them feel like they want to be a part of it too. If you’re going to include a video in your presentation, make it short or edit one together on your own with highlights from others. Be sure to attribute the original works accordingly.

Just do it

With just a little bit of your heart and some of your precious time, you could make a real difference for a charity who can put the $5k to good use. If you’re not sure on how to get started, get a team of your friends together and collaborate on your entry. Have some fun and do some good at the same time!

➤ SlideRocket “Make an Impact” Registration

The Gates Foundation has focused on eradicating Malaria, helping third-world countries grow rice, and a crusade to end Polio.

Gates is carving out his legacy with his post-Microsoft efforts, which are both admirable and impressive.

Source: frugaldad.com

]]> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/01/14/bill-gates-philanthropic-efforts-have-helped-save-over-5-8-million-lives/feed/ 34 BillGatesBetterThanBatman photo http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/01/12/social-good-app-suggests-micro-donations-to-charity-instead-of-grabbing-a-coffee/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/01/12/social-good-app-suggests-micro-donations-to-charity-instead-of-grabbing-a-coffee/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:40:39 +0000 Drew Olanoff http://thenextweb.com/?p=312142
Giving money to charity is something we always have on our to-do list, but finding the extra money and remembering to actually do it is another thing. Most charities say...]]>

Giving money to charity is something we always have on our to-do list, but finding the extra money and remembering to actually do it is another thing.

Most charities say that it doesn’t matter how much money you give, because every little bit counts. App developer Ovenbits has come up with a unique proposition for you. When you’re at Starbucks, how about donating the money to charity instead?

The iOS app is called “Instead“, and it’s meant to get your charitable giving into gear by putting micro-donations into context with things that you give up and make a charity happy instead.

It’s extremely well designed and serves as a great reminder that giving a few bucks to any charity makes everyone a winner in the end.

Instead of coffee…

While this app won’t make donations all by itself, it does serve as a good reminder to give a little bit once in a while. I highly suggest giving prominent placement to Instead on your iDevice’s home screen, that way you’ll be sure to get in the giving mood one of these days.

After you open the app and set up a new account, you can tap the “Give” button, and choose a monetary value as well as what you’re giving up for the donation. The dollar value is completely up to you, but if you’re donating instead of buying a coffee, perhaps $4 will work quite well.

After you’ve chosen your dollar amount, you’re shown a huge list of different charities to give your money to. You can search for one, or simply scroll down until you find one that suits you. Once you’ve picked the right charity, the app spits you out to a mobile Safari page that will ask you for your credit card information. The reason for this, says the developer, is that Apple requires these types of transactions to happen outside of the app. That’s a shame, as it causes an unecessary extra step when all you’re trying to do is give money to charity. Having said that, it’s not a huge deal in the longrun.

The company is very transparent about the fact that it takes a 5% cut of the donation, since its handling the costs of keeping the app up, as well as processing the donations on your behalf. You can still write these charitable givings off on your taxes, as the company is a registered 501(c)3 itself.

What’s really nice is that Instead will track all of the times you decided to give to charity instead of doing something else. Keeping a log like that reminds you of the good work you’ve done and the charities you’ve helped. Even if you only give $4 instead of buying a coffee, you can make a real difference.

➤ Instead