The instant I started watching this commercial the rhetorical elements of dramatic music and landscape cinematography settled in. Nissan delivered an effective cause statement and although it ends with a hug from a cute polar bear, one thing is clear from their conclusion: our daily choices affect more than just ourselves.

This is not just another push to "go green," but a realization that innovation is being delivered during alarming environmental trends. Progess is always a good feeling.

Enjoy,

Amy Chait

Project 10¹⁰⁰ (pronounced "Project 10 to the 100th") is a call for ideas to change the world, in the hope of helping as many people as possible.   Google, the sponsors of the Project, committed $10 million to fund up to five ideas selected by their advisory board. What they got were 150,000 entries at the close of October 20,2008.  Now, more than two years later, winners have been announced with the focus of education being a prime ingredient.  Check them out below and make sure to view the nifty video too!

Idea: Make educational content available online for free
Project funded: The Khan Academy is a non-profit educational organization that provides high-quality, free education to anyone, anywhere via an online library of more than 1,600 teaching videos. We are providing $2 million to support the creation of more courses and to enable the Khan Academy to translate their core library into the world’s most widely spoken languages.

Idea: Enhance science and engineering education
Project funded: FIRST is a non-profit organization that promotes science and math education around the world through team competition. Its mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders by giving them real world experience working with professional engineers and scientists. We are providing $3 million to develop and jump start new student-driven robotics team fundraising programs that will empower more student teams to participate in FIRST.

Idea: Make government more transparent
Project funded: Public.Resource.Org is a non-profit organization focused on enabling online access to public government documents in the United States. We are providing $2 million to Public.Resource.Org to support the Law.Gov initiative, which aims to make all primary legal materials in the United States available to all.

Idea: Drive innovation in public transport
Project funded: Shweeb is a concept for short to medium distance, urban personal transport, using human-powered vehicles on a monorail. We are providing $1 million to fund research and development to test Shweeb’s technology for an urban setting.

Idea: Provide quality education to African students
Project funded: The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) is a center for math and science education and research in Cape Town, South Africa. AIMS’ primary focus is a one-year bridge program for recent university graduates that helps build skills and knowledge prior to master's and Ph.D. study. We are providing $2 million to fund the opening of additional AIMS centers to promote graduate level math and science study in Africa.

-Lizette Romero

Hello nonprofits!!

Here's  an easy way to promote your volunteer opportunity and/or event for free within a community of caring people (YourCause.com).

If you are on YourCause, make sure you have administrator access.  If not, you will not be able to do any of the following.  To find out how to gain administrator access to your nonprofit page, email Charity@YourCause.com for more information.

Here's how it works:

• Sign up at YourCause.com (if you haven't already)
• Log on (must have administrator access)
• Add your volunteer opportunity

The volunteer opportunity will then be shown on your charity page and our community volunteer page while quickly transforming into it's very own 'event' page (keep reading to learn more about event pages). 

Here's a behind-the-scenes image of what an administrator adding an event looks like:

Easy enough, right?

You can choose an Event/Volunteer Name, Type, Time, Date, Venue and more!  You can even say what skills are required, depending on the volunteering assignment or function. 

From there click "add" and within seconds it will automatically show on your charity page and be fed into the YourCause community..you will even get your own event page!

See an example below:

Within the event/volunteer page you can upload photos, share the event and more.  Think about it this way - you now have your personal URL to email, tweet or facebook your special volunteer opportunity/event!

YourCause focuses on creating tools for nonprofits that allow them to harness the power of the web.  Our volunteer functionality makes it easy, accessible and functional for nonprofits to promote their volunteer events.  Along the way you will get some great free web space and hopefully a few volunteer sign ups along the way!

Best of luck and again, if you ever need any support or want to figure out just how to get involved email Charity@YourCause.com!

-Lizette Romero

Within this video (in under four minutes) employees, volunteers and donors will get a better understanding of how BIG the nonprofit sector is.  The video "Know Your Sector" made by Philanthropy Reports, reveals surprising facts such as the nonprofit sector makes more than a trillion dollars in revenue and employs 10 percent of all U.S. workers!  

For some, this may not be a shocker.  For others, they have no idea how many people, goods and services nonprofits provide.  They do not realize that nonprofits are important economic engines of the U.S. economy. Not only are they a well oiled machine with big hearts, they create some of the biggest technological advances, cures, etc.!  But I don't have to tell you.  Just watch the video for yourself....

-Lizette Romero

We are proud to announce that we've partnered with HelpAttack, an Austin, TX venture that turns online activity into charitable deeds.

At  HelpAttack  you can pledge an amount of money for each action you take in a social network, and then give it to your favorite nonprofits. For instance, HelpAttack enables Twitter users to set a charitable donation amount (including maximum budgets for the month), choose a charity, and start tweeting.  Each tweet earns a penny or nickel for your charity.  At the end of the month, HelpAttack! bills your credit card and makes your donation for you. 

YourCause will be sharing charity data with HelpAttack! to make sure charities are 501(c)(3) approved, secure and operative.  YourCause pulls data from the Internet’s leading charitable resources, NetworkForGood.org and GuideStar.org , which provide up to 1.8 million charitable organizations in the YourCause database. 

As a running business that already has the nonprofit data information, YourCause partners with HelpAttack to support their initiative, inform an even broader audience and enable users to make better decisions based on their charitable giving (at no cost).

“Our partnership with YourCause has allowed us to very quickly add more than 5,200 nonprofits who can start receiving donations” said Ehren Foss, Chief Technology Officer of HelpAttack.  “We think that continuing to collaborate and share nonprofit profiles will make both our services, and the causes and nonprofits we serve, stronger.”

I just love the little character graphics at HelpAttack! Check more of them out here.

- Lizette Romero