It’s only ten days til Valentine’s Day (ugh — err, yay!), which means many of you are vaguely aware that you should do something special for your significant other. And this year there’s a way to give your sweetheart a nice gift while also giving back to charity.
Causes has just launched a special promotion available at Causes.com/valentines. The concept is simple: buy a gift through the site, and you get to donate $10 to a nonprofit, like Campaign for Cancer Prevention or Invisible Children. You can also choose to donate the money to any of the Causes you’re part of on the site. Pretty cool.
Causes is essentially donating the affiliate fees they’d typically receive from their retail partners. The promotion is using different retailers for twenty countries around the world: in the U.S. it’s Proflowers, Spain has Aquraelle and Serenata Flowers, and so on.
Causes founder Joe Green says that the company’s main goal this year is to make as easy as possible for people to give — and this is about as easy as it comes. But the service did run into one snag: Causes has viral sharing down to an art, but they’ll have a hard time getting this promotion to go viral because writing “Jason bought some Roses on ProFlowers” to my News Feed would spoil the surprise.
Fortunately the service will still tell my friends that I donated $10 to a charity, so they’ll think I’m a good guy. For bonus points, donate your $10 to your sweetheart’s favorite charity (and don’t be shy about telling them).
Causes, launched in May 2007, applies viral principles to altruism and social causes. The company was founded by Sean Parker and Joe Green and is designed to help passionate supporters of causes—charities, religions, political parties and candidates, etc.—organize online movements to raise awareness, advocate and fundraise. Whenever someone creates a cause or joins one, it shows up in their news feed for their friends to see. Information about the cause is also included in the profile itself, including total amount...
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