“$15 for $25 worth of microloan credit to help global entrepreneurs on Kiva.org.”

My first thought upon seeing this was: who pays the other $10? The [not-so] small print below today’s Groupon says that it’s paid for by Groupon (and sponsors). Up to $500,000 of the $800 million to $2 billion in revenues the Chicago-based startup will reportedly take in this year.

That’s a hefty write-off donation for most, and possibly a perk for some Groupon sponsors, and a nice, lucky penny pitched into the pond by a company that allegedly turned down a $6 billion or so buyout offer from Google earlier this month.

Billions in revenue. Huge numbers. It’s important to note how individuals and corporations choose to spend their philanthropic capital and I really like the way Groupon does it here: Empowering regular people to give by subsidizing our donations. I’m sure Groupon wishes it could boast about the kind of repeat transactions that a Kiva.org — where the average user has made 6.5 loans — and what better way to grow it’s community during the holiday giving season by encouraging the habit of giving (or lending) while otherwise luring subscribers to habitually consume on first site of bargain.

Last month, a Kiva.org Groupon raised lead to $100,000 in microloans and Oprah Winfrey promoted Kiva to her audience (for her part, Winfrey was the most charitable celebrity of 2009 with $40 million in donations to various charities, according to The Giving Back Fund. Today’s Kiva Groupon was trumped by a DonorsChoose coupon, which was 60 percent subsidized by the Pershing Square Foundation ($10 for $25). Last May, Groupon and Pershing Square teamed up with DonorsChoose to raise $1 million in funds for public school classrooms in need.

Last week, 17 billionaires, including Steve Case, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill and Melinda Gates, Warren Buffet, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Icahn, announced their intention to give the majority of their wealth to charity — the Giving Pledge.

In an age where it’s so easy to set examples — for better and worse — it’s comforting to see more and more bold acts of goodwill.

I’m a repeat Kiva lender. Are you?

Looking forward to hobnobbing with the Hollywood greenies at this Saturday’s RETHINK:GREEN charity event in Culver City.

The event benefits LA’s Environmental Charter Schools and includes an award presentation from the Environmental Charter High School‘s (in Lawndale) Green Ambassadors. Winners include Matt Petersen, President & CEO of Global Green USA; Mark Gold, President of Heal the Bay. ECHS is celebrating its tenth year and Environmental Charter Schools opened an accompanying middle school this fall.

Attendees will be privy to a an organic & sustainable wine, spirit and local food tasting and organic food truck cuisine. There will be a silent auction including works of art by Shepard Fairey and others as well as travel, spa, fashion and other lifestyle items from environmentally sustainable businesses.

Featured celebrity hosts include Ed Begley Jr., Rachelle Carson Begley, Lisa Ling, Anna Getty, James Kyson Lee, MTV’s Buried Life Crew.

RETHINK:GREEN Event — Saturday, Nov. 6th, Celebrity & VIP Arrival 6pm, general admission 7pm at 3121 S. La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90016. More info at Rethinkgreenevent.org. Tickets.

Originally posted at LAist.

Online fundraising platform Razoo launched a new DonateAnywhere widget this month and I’m excited to be selected to the #ZooGooder team of a dozen or so chosen to lead a series of discussions on fundraising in the digital age of social media.

Join us for our first weekly Twitter chat at 6 p.m. PT / 9p.m. ET and. John Haydon will be co-hosting the first one. To participate, use your favorite Twitter client or service and follow the #zooGood hashtag.

In addition to these weekly chats, I chose to raise funds for One Economy Corporation with a goal of raising $8,000 by the end of the year. Not an easy choice given the breadth of my endeavors and pet projects and the 1.5 million or so fundraising causes listed on razoo.com. But after much internal deliberation and debate (and cross-research on sites like Charity Navigator) I decided that One Economy will have the most effective global reach with the money I raise as part of the #zooGood campaign. One Economy brings broadband into low-income households and builds and maintains virtual and physical community centers to provide underserved communities the training and tools needed to leverage the internet for information and local resources on education, jobs, health care and other vital issues.

More about One Economy in the video below:

This is a cause that I have long been passionate about and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to focus on it more publicly in the coming months. One Economy Corp is a top (4-star) rated charitable organization according to Charity Navigator and it has been expanding its geographic focus areas over its 10-years to cover the Middle East, Africa, and North America. More recently, One Economy launched PIC.tv, the Public Internet Channel website, which has boundless potential that I find very exciting as a long-time web producer and content creator myself.

So let’s see if we can hit $8,000 in two months, while helping to bolster One Economy Corp’s profile as a leading charitable protagonist for leveling the playing field, proliferating the spread of broadband and computer ed into underserved communities, and creating opportunities and local resources in cities and villages worldwide.

I’m dropping my first $10 in the bucket and you can too — the widget is on the right side of this blog. Your support is greatly appreciated – if you’d rather not donate money, thanks for reading this far and for your generous re-Tweet and/or Facebook share! You can also fan One Economy on Facebook and check out the Digital Connectors page (some of whom met recently with FCC chairman Julius Genachowski in SF).

Thanks and see you on the #zooGood hashtag!

Check out the other ‘zooGooders causes and websites at the links below:

• Andre Blackman of Pulse and Signal.
• Tom Dawkins of Out There and Back Again.
• Nicole D’Alonzo of Niki’s Notes
• Abby Flottemesch of Atlas Corps
• John Haydon of his eponymous blog, http://www.johnhaydon.com
• Rachel Matthews of A Southern Fairy Tale
• William Neuheisel of DC Central Kitchen
• Armando Rayo of El Mundo de Mando
• Jennifer Roccanti of Miriam’s Kitchen
• Amber Rodriguez of Noah’s Kitchen
• Jenna Sauber at Lagniappe
• Andy Sternberg of his eponymous blog, https://andysternberg.com/
• Andrea Weckerle of CiviliNation
• Jennifer Windrum of WTF Lung Cancer

Read more about the ‘zooGooder program on its main page.

Thanks especially Geoff Livingston for contacting me about this campaign on behalf of his firm Zoetica.

Unable to attend a CitizenGulf Benefit tonight? You can still donate directly by clicking the icon below. Tag your tweets and photos #CitizenGulf so we can see them here. Thanks for your support.

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PHOTOS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY:

The main DEETS:

The Central Social Aid & Pleasure Club — 1348 14th Street, Santa Monica (former 14 Below space, now fully revamped and reopened)

An 18-minute Katrina documentary will be screened at 8pm, introduced by the (Venice-based) filmmakers.

3 bands will perform! Le Switch, Big Moves, and Hiram Rimmer. Stranger Danger DJ duo will bookend the night’s music to keep us dancing until bar close at 2. Bar opens at 5 for happy hour. Event start is 7:30.

There will be an entire room of art inspired by and depicting the Gulf Coast from Katrina in August 2005 to the present day Oil Spill disaster. Some will be available for a charity auction.

HOW MUCH: Just $10 toward a fund set up specifically for this CitizenGulf National Day of Action. Citizen Effect and Catholic Charities of New Orleans will put forth all of the proceeds from these 20 events toward extending an after school program that was started in New Orleans after Katrina into coastal parishes and provide fifty children with a safe environment that will give participants access to interactive learning opportunities, self-esteem building workshops, therapeutic art activities and other activities and services needed by the children affected by the spill.

There will also be a food truck in The Central’s private lot — Dante Food Truck

All the main details and RSVP at http://citizengulfla.eventbrite.com (shorturl: http://bit.ly/CitGulfLA)

The main DEETS:

The Central Social Aid & Pleasure Club — 1348 14th Street, Santa Monica (former 14 Below space, now fully revamped and reopened)

An 18-minute Katrina documentary will be screened at 8pm, introduced by the (Venice-based) filmmakers.

3 bands will perform! Le Switch, Big Moves, and Hiram Rimmer. Stranger Danger DJ duo will bookend the night’s music to keep us dancing until bar close at 2. Bar opens at 5 for happy hour. Event start is 7:30.

There will be an entire room of art inspired by and depicting the Gulf Coast from Katrina in August 2005 to the present day Oil Spill disaster. Some will be available for a charity auction.

HOW MUCH: Just $10 toward a fund set up specifically for this CitizenGulf National Day of Action. Citizen Effect and Catholic Charities of New Orleans will put forth all of the proceeds from these 20 events toward extending an after school program that was started in New Orleans after Katrina into coastal parishes and provide fifty children with a safe environment that will give participants access to interactive learning opportunities, self-esteem building workshops, therapeutic art activities and other activities and services needed by the children affected by the spill.

There will also be a food truck in The Central’s private lot — Dante Food Truck

All the main details and RSVP at http://citizengulfla.eventbrite.com (shorturl: http://bit.ly/CitGulfLA)

The TWEETS:

3 bands 2 DJs 1 food truck. Original film + art. Will YOU be there Wed. 8/25 to support Gulf kids? http://bit.ly/CitGulfLA

Weds. @TheCentralSAPC $10 Gulf Coast Benefit @BigMoves @LeSwitch @HIRAM_RiEMMER_ 2 DJs original film + art + @kfcrip http://bit.ly/CitGulfLA

Los Angeles! #CitizenGulf is tonight! $10, help gulf kids, enjoy 3 bands 2 DJs, food truck, art, film. http://bit.ly/CitGulfLA

Let’s support education for Gulf Coast children – 5th anniversary of Katrina; families distressed from BP Oil Spill – http://bit.ly/CitGulfLA

What Your $10 #citizengulf Donation Does: The After School Assembly
Program to benefit the kids of fishermen http://bit.ly/dwaZ19 Join
us!

1 day left until #citizengulf! $10, help fishermen’s kids get a better
ed, enjoy summer’s last party. Register today! http://bit.ly/citgben

Thank you for your support on #citiznegulf. Don’t forget to
register. $10 goes a long way to help a Gulf child. http://bit.ly/citgben

Thanks!

via Mathew Ingram at GigaOm:

If you want to see a Twitter mob in its larval stage, just do a search on Zynga or Farmville and Haiti and you will see one emerging over a report that the social-gaming company kept 50 percent of the money that it raised in donations for the country in the wake of a devastating earthquake. The report originally appeared in a Brazilian magazine called Superinteressante, which did a feature on Zynga and Farmville and mentioned in the piece that it had only given 50 percent of what it raised to Haiti. That was in turn picked up by a leading Brazilian newspaper called Folha de Sao Paulo , which said that Zynga had admitted to only sending 50 percent of the money it raised for Haiti to that country.

That story got written about in several places around the Web, including at Social Media Today (in a post that has since been removed and replaced with a different one featuring an altered headline) as well as at the opinion site True/Slant, where Marcelo Ballve — a former Associated Press reporter in Brazil — summarized the Falho story about how Zynga had misled Farmville players into thinking 100 percent of their donations would be going to Haiti for earthquake relief (he has since posted an update). The story was also written up at Gawker, which also repeated the allegations.

The Folha story, however, blurs together two Farmville campaigns to raise money for Haiti: One was set up before the earthquake, and specifically said that only 50 percent of the money raised would be sent to Haiti (a screenshot is embedded below). The second, which involved the purchase within the game of special “white corn” for a user’s farm, said that 100 percent of the proceeds would be sent to earthquake relief. According to an emailed statement from a Zynga spokesperson that I’ve embedded below, this is exactly what happened (a similar statement has been posted at the bottom of both the True/Slant post and the Folha story, and referred to by Gawker, but not by Social Media Today, although the latter has since posted an update and apology). The initial campaign for Haiti raised $1.2-million for the country, and the subsequent “white corn” campaign raised an additional $1.5-million.

Meanwhile, dozens of Twitter messages are still being posted every minute (based on a recent survey of the social network) saying that Zynga “admits to keeping half the money it raised for Haiti,” despite the repeated efforts by Zynga CEO Mark Pincus to rebut such claims through his own Twitter account. The eagerness with which people seem to believe such claims could have something to do with the language barrier between the initial reports and those who have repeated them — but it could also be a result of some negative press that Zynga has received in the past, alleging “scammy” behavior related to lead-generation offers within its games.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Rusty Boxcars.

via gigaom.com

###

Is this backlash deserved or exaggerated?

Personally I was turned off by Zynga’s Haiti campaign before I finished reading the first paragraph of the Press Release that hit the wires 48 hours after the January 12th earthquake:

Starting tonight, Zynga (www.zynga.com) will run a special relief campaign in three of its top games that reach over 40 million users daily.

It seemed to me that this blatantly took advantage of PR Newswire and others’ waiving of distribution fees for Haiti earthquake-related news.

I was speculating but I’ve always been skeptical of such campaigns by hard-to-trust startups. I was impressed by Zynga’s earlier partnership with the World food Programme over the holidays but hadn’t seen any mention of its results.

You can’t be too transparent when acting in the wake of any disaster. While Zynga made no mistake in clearly mentioning it’s user base (both daily and monthly) the press release — especially if it was distributed gratis — should have elaborated on Zynga’s existing relationship with WFP to avoid any fingerpointing / confusion.

All in all more than $572,000 was raised and it was an unforgettable, intimate gig for all at the 1,300-capacity theater. Here’s the setlist:

Edit this setlist | More Radiohead setlists

Video from the show…

Radiohead “Everything In Its Right Place” live at Fonda (Haiti relief)

Radiohead – “Morning Bell” (1.24.10 Haiti Benefit in LA)

Radiohead “Weird Fishes” live 1.24.10 Henry Fonda Music Box

by Gigi Graciette, Fox 11 News

Posted via web from Andy Sternberg’s posterous

Intellectual Property Developers

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Caution! The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files. The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we’re just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of “24” in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it free.

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators — in this case, the young, fledgling songwriters who can’t live off ticket and T-shirt sales like the least sympathetic among us — and the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content. Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product. Note to self: Don’t get over-rewarded rock stars on this bully pulpit, or famous actors; find the next Cole Porter, if he/she hasn’t already left to write jingles.

Bono’s insinuation that content must be tagged, tracked, and protected in the interest of the creator is an uneven (if not borderline fascist) suggestion.

The biggest problem with this is that bandwidth regulation affects not just entertainment (whether downloaded, streamed, for pay or for free) but everything else that operates in the digital space.

Which includes education, charity, government, and most ironically, the development, production, and broadcast of creative content itself.

Read up on Net Neutrality Bono. The movie industry is booming (in spite of a relative abundance of poor content). But the service providers aren’t just stuffing their pockets with profit, they’re limiting both consumers and creators by throttling bandwidth.

Don’t wage war on the Internet, Bono. Talk about putting your back up against the wall… please don’t go singing that song.

Please comment at ADigitalAge.com

Posted via web from Welcome to the Digital Age

(l-r) Jeff Pulver, Beth Kanter, Stacey Monk, David Armano, Randi Zuckerberg, James Young, Scott Goodstein,Tikva Morowati

Many more recent studies and examples of this including this pdf white paper. Geoff Livingston is even teaching a class on Social Media for Social Good at Georgetown this semester.

Below, the rough takeaway — er, walkaway by myself and Shira Lazar: