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Shop for the NSPCC – campaign on Amazon and Facebook

Congrats to the NSPCC and Amazon for partnering up to shift a slice of our Christmas shopping activity into the charities coffers. This is a simple idea which must have involved solid cooperation from both parties. Set up your Amazon wishlist through this site and the affiliate share (no clear percentage) of the stuff your friends/family buy will go to this children charity.

I spotted it because of an advert (above) on Facebook which I presumed was targeted?

We use something similar but no where near as direct for the Birmingham Conservation Trust and recommend (see also here, and here) some sort of affiliate arrangement as a largely painless and sensible idea for any charity which can get support form a network of people who shop online – whether for Christmas or their summer holiday.  It can be very lucrative.  At the moment if you sign up for Sky TV through our affiliate the charity gets up to £120.

Of course the best way to deal with Christmas waste is to donate directly to charity and make something instead – but I’m not like that. Few of us currently are.

How to make the £50 million Facebook Application?

The photo of Katie Derham swaddled in bank notes is from the flickr part of the promotional package for the People’s £50 million. In the next two weeks the whole nation will be invited to vote on which of 4 communal projects should win £50 million from the Big Lottery fund.
I want the Black Country Urban Park to win cos the Black Country is an astonishing collection of industrial villages which have a future as a remarkable place to live and work. Also I’m a Brummie and what’s good for our neighbours is good for us.

But I’ve got a tiny stake in this now. After a very recent casual conversation with a couple of people from the Black Country, Jon Bounds and I put together a very most Facebook app/button to help the cause along – (in exchange for similarly modest number of notes and no – nothing like the ones Katie is wearing).

It links to the place where you have to register and vote and also helps you declare allegiance to the cause. Donato Esposito has already set up a facebook group to suport the campaign.

There’s two weeks of online voting culminating in a telephone vote extravaganza. Clearly a much broader online campaign needs to evolve – but how do you reckon we should improve the application as we head towards the end of the vote?

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Charities missing an $8 billion gift token trick.

I can’t bear gift tokens. I usually forget to spend them. According to Seth Godin that is true of $8 billion dollars worth each year in the US (not sure of the source for his number).

Seth wants two things: For us to stop believing that gift tokens are more thoughtful than cash and for

a creative non-profit [to] start marketing alternative gift cards. They would consist of PDF files you could print out and hand over to people when you give them cash. It could say,

“Merry Christmas. Here’s your present, go spend it on what you really want. AND, just to make sure we’re in the right holiday spirit, I made a donation in your name to Aworthycause.”

Mommy CEO is uncompromising about all of us making an effort to not waste that $8 billion:

Think of what we could accomplish as a country of all that money was donated to a cause? Can you even imagine?

Yes I can – but if you do give someone a voucher make it an online voucher. Amazon sells just about everything so it’s as good as cash and then encourage people to spend it through your favourite charities online affiliate.