Social Actions Roundup3 - New Financing, New Launches, and New Campaigns!

Acquisitions:

Network for Good acquires ePhilanthropy Foundation: http://tinyurl.com/6dy3cn

Mal Warwick Associates Announces Acquisition of Donordigital - http://is.gd/1iwE

New Financing:

WeTheCitizens receives a whole lot of financing ($1.5 million) - http://is.gd/1ip2

Endeavor, a nonprofit organization in NYC that finds and supports individual entrepreneurs in emerging markets has received a $10 million infusion from the Omidyar Network. Hat-tip - Lucy Bernholz - http://philanthropy.blogspot.com/2008/08/syndication.html

New Platforms and Platform Updates:

Razoo (re)launches alpha site - with new giving guides - http://www.alpha.razoo.com Re-launch of Razoo's Facebook app is promised for September - http://is.gd/1iuX

Everyclick opens search engine to all UK charities - http://is.gd/1ivb

Betterthworld is set to launch for Fall 2008. (Imagine raising money for your cause, simply by surfing the Internet...) (Hat-tip - Tom Watson - http://causewired.com/2008/08/04/links-for-2008-08-03-deliciouscom/

Bettertheworld also includes an interesting "Resources for Charities" page (features Kiva, Idealist, Facebook Causes): -- http://glimpse.bettertheworld.com/resources-for-charities

TogetherChange.com is also slotted for Launch Fall 2008. (Hat-tip - Beth Kanter - http://netsquared.org/blog/kanter/nptech-roundup-grasshoppers-and-a...)

Knight News launches Knight News Challenge Garage - http://garage.newschallenge.org/ -- "the place to tinker with your great idea for the News Challenge before you apply" for their grants, which total upwards of 5 million each year (Hat-tip - DigiDave - http://is.gd/1izk)

http://www.discoverscholars.org/ applies the citizen philanthropy model to college scholarships. (Launched May '08)

Sector News:

MGive lights up the mobile giving scene! Joanna Fritz of About.com covers Alicia Keys use of the tool to raise $40,000 from more than 8,000 people during her recent concert tour. - http://is.gd/1iz7

"Another extremely cool tool offered by mGive as a part of this product is a widget that you can embed in a website, blog or online social network which will initiate the text message to your phone. You can see that in action at the Keep a Child Alive site." -- Michael Stein, Raising money from text message donations

How to Avoid the Curse of Vision Overload - A great post by Andrew Mason, Founder of ThePoint on GigaOM -- http://is.gd/YCY "In our case, we spent nine months developing extra features to accommodate our grand vision instead of focusing on what our users would really need..."

Direct-giving Web sites rely on fees to help cover costs - http://is.gd/1ipl Write-up on the fees charged by social action platforms, quoting Peter Deitz/Social Actions, Tom Williams/GiveMeaning, Charles Best/DonorsChoose, Keith Taylor/Modest Needs, and others.

David Karp of FirstGiving writes about their "Summer social media fundraising promotions" (includes tagging, Digg, Twitter, and Facebook)

Andrew Mason of ThePoint publishes a manifesto - http://is.gd/1iws

New/Noteworthy Campaigns:

Lois of FirstGiving highlights how one FirstGiving used YouTube to raise funds for Children's Hunger Fund and the WWF - http://is.gd/1itN

The Filmmakers of TheDelegates use an upcoming deadline and a huge national event (The Democratic Convention) + Chipin to fundraise for their film -- http://is.gd/1ivW

Sean Tavis, Runing for State Representative in Kansas uses a web comic + PayPal to raise small contributions from 3,000 donors! - http://is.gd/UPJ

Social Actions Updates:

Kare Anderson of MovingFromMetoWe blogged about Social Actions & Interviews Peter Deitz (podcast) - http://is.gd/1ipq

SocialActions' Joe Solomon launched Twitter.com/OnlineGiving - A mashup of blogs and news in the digital fund raising field.

Social Actions Labs launched the DonorsChoose.org WordPress Plugin! http://is.gd/1cen