DigiActive.org

Tool: Using Squidoo to raise money for your cause

What it is: Created by marketing professaional Seth Godin, Squidoo is an online forum that allows members create lenses (i.e. pages) based on their most fundamental passions.  Additionally, users can gain earn ad money through the site.  According to the website:

Squidoo is a hand-built collection of half a million pages built by people just like you.

Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.

And Squidoo raises big money for charity every single day by donating money from the ads and links you see on every page.

How can it help activists? There are multiple benefits from using this tool: users are not only spreading awareness of their “passions” to other users (and creating passion from that), but they also have the above ability to raise money and interact in a forum that allows for a high level of collaboration.  These are the ingredients for getting things done.

While many people make lenses to earn themselves a little more, there are an increasing number of lenses being used to raise money for charity.  Some examples include Water Can Save the World, a Knitting Coop in Rwanda to spread world peace, and a philanthropic neurosurgeon who has saved thousands of lives. In fact, Squidoo initiated a Charity Challenge in April of this year, run by the Squidoo Activists.

I would expect similar tools to pop up in the near future, and it looks as though Squidoo still has several charitable ideas coming in the future…

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