Sevenly is one such company, and it uses the Web with aplomb. It has only been around since June, but it has raised over $175,000 for charities so far. Sevenly chooses a different charity each week, and it sells limited-run t-shirts and hoodies for that charity for seven days only. The hype is driven by Facebook and Twitter. "About 85% of our sales come from social media," Palmer says. The campaigns work by putting the cause right at the top.

Sevenly co-founder Dale Partridge tells the story this way: "Sitting in my office after an 8 hour discussion on the topic of fighting poverty I realized... the problem is not the millions of people who go in need everyday, It's the billions of people who watch it happen and do nothing about it." Sevenly allows those people to keep shopping for clothes, as they're wont to do, and diverts some of their resources to good causes.

It's not a new idea, but it's an excellent execution. Sevenly has its act together. It's transparent and data-driven, and it employs great design. But that's just the Web geek's take. Sevenly is raising lots of money for great causes. And you don't want to ask me about fashion, but I bet you'll like the shirts. Check them out at Sevenly.org.

Author Susanna Alakoski, pop singer Niklas Strömstedt, music journalist Fredrik Strage, director and actor Felix Tobias Herngren and television host Gry Forssell are among 15 noted Swedes who have spent the past week Tweeting for Stockholms Stadsmission, a charity that focuses on homelessness in the Swedish capital. More than 500 people have forked over the equivalent of $4 U.S. to follow the celebrities in the fundraiser, which ends Wednesday.

The group behind the campaign notes such Paywalls could solve push-button activism, a common complaint about social media awareness efforts. "People who are homeless can't fill their stomachs with Facebook likes. Retweets will not keep them warm at night," the group said in marketing statements on its Web site.

"The tweets behind the wall are on all sorts of topics," the group said in a release. "Famous Swedish writer Susanna Alakoski tweets about politics and how Sweden has failed to provide for those in need. Journalist Sofia Mirjamsdotter tweets excerpts from her alcoholic, now deceased, father's diary. Another journalist, Niklas Orrenius tweets about the situation for the homeless in the town of Malmö."

There's value in all that stuff. Los Angeles-based startup KarmaGoat is working on capturing it, and then giving you 900 ways to give it away to charity. Sell your excess stuff online and donate the proceeds to the cause of your choice. It's just an experiment for now, friends exchanging things with one another. But lots of folks are buying a new phone every year. What do they do with the old ones? If KarmaGoat can scale up, all those phones could be re-sold as a swarm of little mini-fundraisers for any of almost 1,000 causes (so far).

Homes are full of excess stuff. Not everybody has excess stuff, of course. Not everybody has homes. But an economy driven by consumption generates, in the aggregate, lots of discarded stuff. Clothes, plates, CDs, books we'll never read again, loose leaf paper, the wrong brand of something or other we bought by accident at the grocery store. All of this has resale value. We could just re-sell it ourselves and keep the money. But that would take work. Sometimes, it's worth it. iPhones re-sell for lots of money. Other times, it's too much trouble. In that case, it's a sunk cost. But that's wasteful, and consumers could put this waste to use.

For RWW readers, gadgets are an easy example. We probably have more gadgets than the average bear, and even old gadgets are worth something. Not just in raw materials, recyclable things, spare parts. We have phones that would work. Somebody might need that restore disk. Classic iPods are the best. I'm sure somebody would pay good money for some of that. But it's just sitting there, right? It's no loss to you. It might only fetch $9.88, anyway. Why not donate the proceeds to a good cause?

Building Karma

When KarmaGoat is ready, it could help us do that on a grand scale.

"KarmaGoat is an online marketplace where you transform your stuff into the stuff people really need in the world," says founder and CEO Jonathan Lehmann, "like drinkable water, medical kits, school supplies, or a goat." The Heifer Project - which donates livestock to people in poverty, providing them a living, breathing economic lifeline - is one of KarmaGoat's founding partners, hence the name. KarmaGoat lists almost a thousand causes to which sellers can donate their proceeds, and users can submit their own.

Meeting, Buying, Selling, Giving

Sellers list items on KarmaGoat with a photo, description, location and price, as well as their chosen charity. The KarmaGoat marketplace operates on what Lehmann calls a "meet-and-buy system." It's a two-step purchasing process. On an item page, the button under the price says 'Meet & Buy.' Clicking prompts the buyer to enter credit card information, but the card isn't charged right away. Instead, the buyer receives a password - "like, 'sillyrabbit,'" Lehmann suggests - and then arranges to meet with the seller. If the item meets the buyer's expectations, the buyer gives the password to the seller, who then enters it on KarmaGoat to complete the transaction.

Users are protected from fraud, and payments go straight to the seller's chosen charity. KarmaGoat keeps 15% of the transaction for itself. It's a for-profit enterprise. But 85% of a transaction made possible by KarmaGoat goes to the charity of the seller's choice. Proceeds are paid to charities in one check on the 15th of every month.

Once the company gets out of startup mode, KarmaGoat plans to draw up legal arrangements to make sellers' donations tax deductible, but the necessary legal expertise is out of reach for now. KarmaGoat says that's its "utmost priority" for the next phase.

KarmaGoat accepts payments from all major credit cards using Authorize.net, a company owned by Visa. "We're using all the industry-standard security measures to keep our users' information secure," says James Chung, head of technology and product. Chung worked for mobile retailer LetsTalk.com for six years, and he brings that experience with online payments and security to KarmaGoat.

The service connects to Facebook's Open Graph to pull profile pictures and info, as well as to share the social activity of buying and selling old stuff with friends. Hawking a used Xbox for charity on Facebook is also a great way to promote one's cause of choice. On the KarmaGoat side, the Shop Now page lets users filter for items their friends are selling, as well as by category, cause, price and location. On the MyKarmaGoat page, users can view their friends on KarmaGoat and browse their causes.

"The idea was to make this an experience among friends and other well intentioned, like-minded individuals," Lehmann says.

The site lists over 900 causes, and it allows users to submit more for the KarmaGoat team to add. People affiliated with the organizations can also control the content on their KarmaGoat cause pages. The Causes page offers browsing by category and features a menu of the causes added by community members. It also displays 12 featured charities chosen by the team, including KarmaGoat's three founding partner organizations.

Meet The Partners

In addition to the Heifer Project, KarmaGoat has two other founding partners. One is the United Way of Greater LA, which fights poverty in the Los Angeles area. It hosts an annual event called HomeWalk, which LA Lakers star Kobe Bryant is helping to sponsor this year. KarmaGoat and the United Way of LA are exploring the possibility of a drop-off donation system - as an alternative to meeting and selling - to support certain kinds of causes.

The other founding partner is the Somaly Mam Foundation, which fights human trafficking and sexual slavery. Somaly Mam and KarmaGoat recently teamed up for a fundraiser in Los Angeles, and they're working together on KarmaGoat's first celebrity campaign, which is yet to be confirmed.

The idea is to get celebrities to sell their regular old stuff on KarmaGoat for charity at a fixed price - rather than the typical practice of selling their collectibles at auction. This isn't intended as a primary source of fundraising, but rather as an inspiration to get everyone to sell their stuff to benefit the same organization.

With these key partners, KarmaGoat is brainstorming and getting some marketing advice. It's also reaching out to their existing donors to encourage them to use KarmaGoat to support the causes they care about.

Reaching Into Closets, Not Wallets

KarmaGoat's focus for now is developing the best practices for a local, in-person marketplace before expanding. There's no formal process in place for shipping items and the refund hassles that might be involved, but that's because the team is focused on building a good user experience and culture in a close-knit market first.

KarmaGoat was founded on the UCLA campus, and university populations are its first target market. The site launched in beta on May 19, and UCLA students are its testers. Anyone anywhere can use the site now, but the active community of buyers and sellers is at UCLA, and that's where the team is developing the service and its features for now.

"College students are passionate about causes," says Chung. "They might not have cash to donate, but they have stuff. Instead of reaching into their pockets, into their wallets, they can reach under their beds or into their closets to find stuff to donate and raise money."

Students on campus are also a concentrated population. Lehmann adds that close proximity enables students to easily meet up and exchange the textbooks, furniture, gadgets and other stuff they're already used to buying and selling all the time. The tight-knit campus environment helps KarmaGoat build a culture around donating excess stuff this way.

Once KarmaGoat, along with its initial partners and student testers, figures out the model that can have the most impact, it plans to expand its marketing message to "be everywhere." It can be used by anyone already, but the company is focused on developing local marketplaces to figure out how best to expand its formal presence.

Burning Man Values

KarmaGoat was inspired by the gifting culture of Burning Man, which is a playground for a large and growing portion of Web workers. The desert festival is built upon ten core principles that serve as guidelines there, and the principles of gifting and decommodification underlie KarmaGoat's values.

"Burning Man is a theater that can represent many experiences in your life," Lehmann says, "and one of the great wealths for me of the Burning Man experience is when you're able to reproduce [its values] outside in the real world. I've always like giving gifts and getting gifts, but before Burning Man, I never gave a gift to a stranger. This is something I discovered there."

"KarmaGoat hopefully will be this experience adapted to our existing online world," Lehmann says.

Where's My Goat?

KarmaGoat has a knack for social media, and the team uses Facebook and Tumblr to spread its message. There's a great photo album on the KarmaGoat Facebook page called "Where's My Goat" that shows off the KarmaGoat SillyBandz all around the world. The KarmaGoat Tumblr shares new causes, beautiful photos, general nonprofit news and more. The goat also tweets as @karmagoat (baaaaaa).

Be sure to follow KarmaGoat and stay tuned. This is the kind of Web startup that can change things on and offline. High technology is churning through our stuff every day. New devices replace old ones, or they replace dozens of paper books we don't have to lug to our next apartment. CDs are becoming vintage. There's all kinds of stuff we could give away that's still valuable to someone. And donating old stuff to charity through KarmaGoat does give something in return: the gift of having less stuff.

Burning Man photo credit: Josh Adler

Back in 2009, Olanoff and his friend Mike Demers, who also recovered from Hodgkin's, created Blame Drew's Cancer!, a website that aggregated tweets marked with the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer, which he used as a way of confronting his Hodgkin's lymphoma head on. The meme resonated across the social Web, resulting in a partnership with Lance Armstrong's LIVESTRONG campaign and creating new opportunities to support the struggle against cancer.

Yesterday's launch of I Had Cancer, a full-fledged social network, extends the idea, championed by Olanoff and countless others, that, on the social Web, the people are more important than the platform. Olanoff was not involved in the creation of the site, and he thinks that's "great, because I can use the service like I use any other service."

Mailet Lopez, the creator of I Had Cancer, survived Type 2B breast cancer. After recovering, she "wanted to help the next person who was affected," so she started a blog to chronicle and share her experience. The team at Squeaky Wheel Media picked up her story and approached her, and they built the idea into a social network. The site connects survivors, fighters, and supporters using geography, chronology, and type of cancer. It features a question-based discussion board, as well as a bulletin board called "Dear Cancer," which is reminiscent of Olanoff's "life-hack" of confronting his cancer personally.

Directly or indirectly, cancer affects just about everyone, as does the effort to stop it. Uniting us around a worthy cause is the way Olanoff wants to restore meaning to the word "social." He recommended that we share a link with you to Alex's Lemonade Stand, which is a foundation working to put an end to childhood cancer. You can learn more about Alex's Lemonade Stand and find a link to donate at AlexsLemonade.org.

SwipeGood's goal, according to co-founder Steli Efti, is to build a "simple, elegant solution to giving." By tying donations in to your regular spending habits, SwipeGood has certainly made it simple. The company rounds up to the nearest dollar on every credit card transaction you make, and then donates that lump sum to a charitable organization. That works out to a roughly $20 donation per person who's joined the platform so far - spare change adds up.

A new feature launching today with SwipeGood addresses that. "SmartGiving" allocates the donations based on users' actual spending habits. Rather than selecting one charity, SmartGiving means that donations are directed to multiple charities. Based on how your spending is allocated - groceries, housing, travel, for example - SmartGiving will automatically direct funds to food-, housing-, and eco-related charities.

The idea of simplifying charitable donations is a nice one, and on one hand I think people might be willing to turn over their "spare change" for this sort of endeavor. On the other, I'm not sure if people will balk at having their spending data analyzed for this sort of thing. Users' financial data is kept private here - this isn't quite a Blippy for charitable giving. Using the category data from card transactions, SwipeGood breaks down spending into 5 large categories - home, food, healthcare, education, and nature. Watching that allocation and how it plays out as a charitable contribution might prove interesting data for some folks to consider their lifestyle and purchase habits.

For the organizations and agencies that raise money to provide relief, this is a critical time. Potential donors are seized with the urgency of the situation - and are flocking to their websites.

Which means usability suddenly takes on even greater importance. Add one form field too many, program in an unnecessary intermediate step, put a button here instead of there, and you can lose those donors... and the money they might have given.

But unconsciously, that's exactly what happens: some part of our brain figures we've clicked one too many times, and bails on a cause we care about. Maybe that doesn't speak well of us as a species, but it speaks volumes about the importance of usability testing.

On the other hand, our less rational sides can sometimes make us donate when we perhaps should be taking a step back and looking critically at the recipient. The folks at Charity Navigator have a series of suggestions for you to consider before you make your contribution to help folks in Japan, and it's well worth reading.

How usability affects online fundraising is just one of the things I'll be looking to learn more about next week at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington, DC. I'll be cartoon-blogging the event; if you're coming too, be sure to say hi.

More Noise to Signal.

HelpAttack! is an Austin-based startup that connects your online activities with donations to the offline world and Twitter and Facebook are just the beginning for a company that looks to bring donations to the data-driven Web.

As the company says of itself, HelpAttack is a "new way for people to donate to their favorite nonprofits using online tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Every time registered users update their status online, they will automagically be donating a specified amount to their chosen cause. You Update, They Win."

The sign-up process is quick and easy, letting you pick a charity and estimating how much you tweet in a period of time to help you gauge what sort of donation you're looking at. And if you're afraid of going on a Tweeting binge, the site lets you put a cap on your giving.

Data-Driven Donations: It's A Homerun!

HelpAttack certainly isn't alone in the world of online donations, but the part that really stood out for us was the potential that COO David Neff spoke about with connecting online data to giving.

"We are big fans of the data-driven Web," said Neff. "The Twitter API is just the start, with the Facebook API and RSS coming up quite quickly on our HelpAttack! development cycle. Imagine donating to your favorite nonprofit simply by uploading a photo to your wall or hitting the LIKE button. Or tying your location based check-ins to giving."

We've all heard of those fundraisers where you pledge 10 cents for every bowling pin toppled or a couple bucks for every mile walked. HelpAttack is hoping to take that idea and move it online for your favorite sport or your favorite celebrity.

"Even better (in my opinion) is tying [HelpAttack] to real world offline actions," said Neff. "Imagine tying your micro gifts to MLB stats such as 25c for every home run the Texas Rangers hit."

The part we really like about this is that data-driven donations could even connect donations directly with the real-world problems they're trying to solve. In the future, maybe users could donate directly to their local animal shelter every time a new dog or cat was taken in. For every drunk driving incident reported in the local paper, a donation could be made to a local advocacy group.

For now, the service is tied in with your social media activity, but we look forward to a future when all this data floating around on the Web could be put to good use and better the world.

EFAC is essentially an affiliate advertising network that gives a majority (70%) of its profits to charity. With the popularity of social sharing on the Web and the rise of recommendation services, EFAC seems to be a perfect fit for the Web-savvy shopper looking to help raise money for a good cause.

The privately-funded startup is launching with 10 high-profile charities, including the American Red Cross, the Humane Society of the United States and Kiva.org. Other charities will be added to the site over time based on demand from user voting. Users can also earn points, badges and prizes based on their activity - a tenant of today's social Web that has been proven to drive deep engagement.

The company hopes to raise further private equity later this year and intends on using the money to develop mobile applications for both the iPhone and Android devices.

30 consecutive hours of music, variety acts, podcasts and other entertainment will raise money for local charity organizations. Will it work? Portland has a deep community of geeks and connections all around the web, so perhaps this group will be able to keep people entertained around the clock.

You can follow the event on Twitter at @30hourday.

Launched into public beta in Febraury, 2008, SocialVibe has partnered with numerous charitable organizations, including Stand Up To Cancer and actress Holly Robinson Peete and NFL quarterback Rodney Peete's hollyrod4kids initiative which focuses on activism and advocacy surrounding issues affecting children. In addition, SocialVibe has supported causes that include: charity:water, Direct Relief International, Children's Miracle Network, Donors Choose, Invisible Children, One Laptop Per Child, Partnership for a Drug-Free America, Surfrider Foundation, and World Wildlife Fund, and others. In total, there are 27 charities that have benefited from this application.

Now, with over $100,000 raised, there's proof that this concept does work and there's really no reason not to sign up unless you just shun advertising in all forms. But when the simple act of adding a widget to your profile page can help saves lives or save our planet, it's hard to find much fault with the app. You can sign up for SocialVibe here.

RFLofSL was a huge success last year, raking in over $100,000 dollars and attracting more than 1,700 participates in the virtual walkathon event. This year RFLofSL is looking to top themselves with their relay today. This year, the fundraising goal is $125,000. RFLofSL is also expecting to attract more than 2,000 participants.

Exceeding Expectations

So far, the event has raised over L$43,408,587 in Linden™ dollar donations, which is the currency used in Second Life. In American dollars, that's over $180,000! They've also raised over $4500 in donations outside of Second Life in the first few hours of starting. There's still more than 20 hours left on the clock and it looks like this event will exceed all expectations.

Get Involved

In the web relay,

The main difference is location. SL residents set up and decorate campsites, and sell small items to help raise Relay money just like at your local relay. However, since this is a virtual environment you may see some teams offering blimp rides, or holding sailboat races inside the park.

Show your support for the Virtual Relay and find out more information on how to get involved at the official Relay for Life in Second Life site.

Help China & Mynmar

Starting today, customers of Verizon Wireless in the U.S. can donate to a charity called "Save the Children," who has mobilized in this time of crisis to provide lifesaving assistance in these two affected regions. Verizon customers can text to the address 4SAVE (47283) with the keyword "quake" to contribute to earthquake relief or the key word "cyclone" to contribute to cyclone relief. They will then receive a reply asking them to confirm their donation of $5.00, which will appear on their next monthly bill.

In China, they're doing the same thing - China Mobile customers can text the number '10699988', and write the amount they would like to donate (from 1RMB to 30RMB) in the body of the text. The money will is deducted from either their phone bill or prepaid card.

Text to Give

PayPal has had a section of their web site devoted to charities that you can donate via text. Currently, the charities you can donate to this way include Amnesty International, UNICEF, and Starbright.

Anytime you see an ad that says "Text To Give," it's simply a matter of texting the code to the number provided. PayPal calls you back to confirm your donation and then you'll receive your receipt by email.

To use PayPal mobile, you must first activate your phone. Then, select one of these current codes:

• Text AMNESTY to 78787 to donate $10.00 to Amnesty International
• Text WATER to 78787 to donate $10.00 to UNICEF's program to help supply those in need with clean drinking water.
• For the Starlight Starbright foundation, you can donate one of three different amounts to help seriously ill children: Donate $5: Text 5 to 78787
  Donate $15: Text 15 to 78787
  Donate $30: Text 30 to 78787

Of course, once your phone is registered, you can send money to anyone via PayPal's SMS commands.

Mobile Giving/Social Giving

There's also a new site that's involved in allowing people to donate to charities via text. The site is called mGive, and here, non-profits can register themselves and the keyword they want in order to receive a short code for mobile donations. The texters pay the donation amount on their mobile bill and mGive collects that from the cell companies and distributes it back to the non-profit.

One of mGive's current campaigns involves Alicia Keys' efforts with the Keep a Child Alive Foundation, which is a response to the AIDS pandemic in Africa. U.S. users can text "ALIVE" to "90999" to donate $5 towards this cause. This service works on AT&T, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon.

mGive

mGive works with a group called the Mobile Giving Foundation, a newly launched effort with a large amount of support from Qualcomm. The Mobile Giving Foundation was set up to help move the money from the cell phone carriers to the charities. This organization is currently working with over 20 large charities, like Keep a Child Alive (mentioned above), and more. Since the foundation has just launched, there are only a limited number of campaigns running, but its current roster that includes ASPCA (text Give to 27722), Alicia Keys Keep a Child Alive Campaign (text ALIVE to 90999), and FIT to UNITED (864833). In the future, there will be campaigns with PBS, IFAW, and others.

More Soon

Mobile Giving is certainly a growing trend meant to capitalize on the ubiquity of cell phones and their heavy use by members of the younger generation. We'll definitely start seeing more of these "text to give" campaigns in the future, but it seems that, today, only Verizon seems to offer a campaign for China and Myanmar aid, which is disappointing.

A rise in mobile giving will also give rise to mobile charity scammers - in fact, it already has, both in China and in the U.S., so be on guard against unsolicated SMS text messages asking for donations.

Do you know of any good text-to-give campaigns? Let us know in the comments.

But, Microsoft has found some success with this type of program in the past. We reported on their i'm initiative last September, which pays charities when people use Windows Live Messenger. At the time, i'm had raised just $92,000 but Microsoft was touting new user acquisition percentage gains for Windows Live Messenger that were double the average of its three main competitors (AOL IM, Yahoo! IM, and Google GTalk).

Despite its slow start, at the end of April this year Microsoft donated $1.3 million to the i'm charities for the first year of charitable instant messaging. (Of course, each of the 10 charities participating had a $100,000 guarantee, from Microsoft -- so it is unclear how much of the total was raised by instant messenger usage -- it's possible all of it was, and it's also possible that just a small portion was.) A month ago, Microsoft added Windows Live Mail to the US-only i'm initiative, and another $200,000 has already been raised. Search and Give is also US-only right now.

Regardless of how much was or wasn't raised for charity directly by i'm, the user growth rates of 4-6% per month that Microsoft was experiencing on Live Messenger last year would certainly be welcome for Live search. It's a little odd that Microsoft's Search and Give isn't just part of i'm -- a program that already has a lot of brand recognition and has already proven successful. But then, Microsoft is known for brand confusion.

The bottom line here is that even though Americans are known for their charitable donations, it seems like a longshot that it will make much of a dent in Google's market share. That said, as we concluded about i'm last fall, the cost to charities is zero, the cost to users is zero, and the benefit to everyone involved is major, so in our opinion Search and Give is a great idea.

When giving online, you have to be careful that the charity you're giving to is reputable. With so many charities springing up it can be difficult to know which are legit. Fortunately, the Internet offers some great resources for determining how reputable a charity is. These are some of the best.

• GuideStar - Information on over 1.7 million not-for-profit organizations. Also offers for-pay premium services for researchers.
• Charity Navigator - Uses a four-star rating system to assess the financial health and responsibility of over 5,000 American charities.
• Give.org - The charity rating arm of the Council of Better Business Bureaus.
• CharityWatch.org - Non-profit organization ratings from the American Institute of Philanthropy.

Social Networks

Seems like everyone has a social network these days. And yes, there are even niche social networks for do-gooders out there. Below are some of the most prominent.

• Network for Good - Network for Good isn't so much a social network than it is a charity aggregator. They make it easier to donate to a large number of groups and keep an online record of your charitable giving. Since launching in 2001, they've helped people give over $160 million to charitable causes. Plus, they power some nifty widgets, such as those used by Yahoo! For Good or Kevin Bacon's Six Degrees, that facilitate giving in a distributed manner across the long tail of the web.
• Change.org - We were impressed when we reviewed Change.org in February 2007, and the site appears to be doing quite well (i.e., the 60 people who wanted to stop global warming last February is now a few thousand). Change.org is a social network in which people are encouraged to organize with one another around social issues to effect positive change and fundraise.
• Care2 - With over 8.2 million members, Care2 might be the largest charity-focused social network. Users (and non-profits) are encouraged to create groups on the site to organize around socially progressive causes.
• Facebook Causes - Okay, this one isn't a social network, but rather an application on one of the largest social networks in the world. Founded by serial entrepreneur and investor Sean Parker (co-founder of Napster, Plaxo, and Facebook), and Joseph Green, Causes is the first project from venture-backed Project Agape. It allows users of Facebook to turn their profiles into charitable giving hubs and solicit their friends for donations to causes they support.

Click to Give

You don't actually have to pony up cash to give to charity. There are a growing number of sites on the web that raise money for charity by selling advertising.

• The Hunger Site - Founded June 1, 1999, The Hunger Site might be the most famous click to give site, and the results bear out their popularity -- in 2007, visitors viewed enough ads to purchase 49,612,616 cups of food -- the third higest total in the site's history. The Hunger Site also operates sister click to give sites that benefit the fight against breast cancer, the rain forest, children's health, literacy, and animal rescue. Progressive social network Care2 operates their own click to give campaigns that are also worth checking out.
• FreeRice - When we reviewed FreeRice, a word game that promises to donate rice to starving people, in November we were skeptical of its legitimacy. But it turns out the site was founded by John Breen -- who also founded The Hunger Site -- and works directly with the UN's World Food Programme. Since launching on October 7, 2007, FreeRice has donated over 12 billion grains of rice (or, by our math, somewhere in the vicinity of 400,000 pounds).
• Charity Search Engines - Our network blog, AltSearchEngines, put together a great list in September of 10 altruistic search engines that donate to charity with every search. Many of them use top mainstream search engines (like Google or Ask) to power their results, so you don't have to worry about adjusting to a different quality of search results when you use them.
• Changing the Present Facebook Gifts - Changing the Present, a 501c3 non-profit organization that matches people with gift donations, has an application on Facebook that lets users give "meaningful gifts" that contribute $1 each to a progressive cause. We reviewed the app in full this past October.

Other Ways to Give

• FirstGiving - Have a web site or blog of your own? Consider using it as a vehicle for raising money for your favorite charity. Massachusetts-based FirstGiving makes it super easy to do, and as we noted in September, they've already helped over 100,000 people raise $50 million for non-profit organizations.
• Kiva.org - On November 23rd, 2007, Kiva.org crossed the $15 million mark in terms of microfinance loans given out to entrepreneurs in developing nations. That's an amazing number considering that they were at just $11 million in loans when we profiled the site in September. Also consider financing a loan through MicroPlace, a similar microloan site run by eBay, which we wrote up last October.
• DonorsChoose.org - At DonorsChoose.org, teachers with great ideas to help students learn but short on the funds to make it happen post proposals describing their idea and how much they need. Visitors can then choose to help fund the projects that interest them. It's a great idea and rewarding for donors because students are encouraged to reciprocate with personal thank you notes.
• GiveMeaning - This site is similar to DonorsChoose.org, but not restricted to public school education. At GiveMeaning, anyone can submit a proposal to create a fundraising page for their progressive initiative. Users then decide which initiatives they want to donate to.
• BiddingForGood.com - Not everything altruistic has to leave you empty handed. BiddingForGood.com is an online auction site where the proceeds from each item up for bid benefit a charitable cause. There are over 900 items up for bid today.
• GOOD Magazine - GOOD Magazine is true to its name. This socially progressive periodical donates 100% of the $20 annual subscription fee to charity, instead choosing to make money only from the advertising it sells. You get to choose exactly where your money goes from among 12 pre-selected charities. So far the magazine has raised over $522,000 (half way to its million dollar goal), and as a subscriber, I can personally attest to the magazine actually being quite good (no pun intended). You'll like it if you enjoy magazines like Mental Floss or Mother Jones.
• (RED) - Bono's (RED) campaign, which marries charity and consumerism, isn't strictly an Internet-based affair, but it has such a strong web presence we're including it on this list. The way it works is simple: companies make special edition versions of products you might already buy (such as Apple's iPod) and then a portion of the sales from those products benefits The Global Fund, which helps women and children with HIV/AIDS in Africa. However, we also like the parody, BUY (LESS) CRAP, which argues that buying more things is not the answer and encourages people to instead donate directly to a number of worthy charities.

Image credit: Mindful One