Today, we’ve learned that Joe Green, co-founder of Causes and NationBuilder, will be stepping down as president from the latter. Green, who is also an investor and advisor to Asana, will be joining Andreessen Horowitz as as an entrepreneur in residence. He also mentioned that he has some things in the works and will share them in the coming weeks, Last March, NationBuilder raised $6.3… → Read More
Activism platform Causes has just acquired political advocacy startup Votizen. With Causes’ massive 186 million-strong user base and Votizen’s tools, together they’ll break down barriers to civic engagement to allow anyone to influence elections. Negotiated by mutual investor Sean Parker, the deal gives people a way to turn out votes for candidates who support the Causes they’re passionate about. → Read More
When push-comes-to-shove, people love to donate, especially when they believe that their donation (be it money, time, food or possessions) will make a real difference. While online charity and fundraising platforms have made it easier than ever before to donate to causes, charities and non-profits, web-based philanthropy still has plenty of room for improvement.
Today, donors, especially those… → Read More
One of the things that I’m really passionate about is helping charitable causes and organizations in any way that I can. A lot of my friends and family try their best to give, either money or time, but have a hard time finding the right organization to donate to. It’s a good idea to stick with a cause that you care deeply about and find the right organization from there.
Google dropped a post… → Read More
30 million slaves in the world need help, but startups are more sustainable than charities. So rather than raise donations, Causes.com is crowdfunding anti-slavery group Not For Sale’s new beverage startup REBBL. The company will employ freed slaves in the Amazon, and reinvest proceeds into projects that combat human trafficking.
Two weeks in, REBBL is half way to its goal of raising $150,000… → Read More
As you may have heard, today Facebook held its fourth f8 developer conference, showcasing an array of new features that represent what Facebook says are the biggest changes to its Platform since it launched in 2007. The changes include a completely redesigned profile and a new Open Graph API that gives third-party applications and sites more flexibility (and eyeballs) than they’ve had before. → Read More
This guest post was written by Joe Green, the Founder and President of Causes. Causes is the largest online platform for activism and one of the original Facebook Applications. Green’s approach to building online tools is rooted in his offline experience as a grassroots political organizer for federal, state, and local campaigns. He recently wrote a guest post on Facebook Smart Lists, and, as a… → Read More
As Japan works to recover from the horrendous earthquake and tsunami that struck last week, many companies and citizens are donating what they can to help. One of the easiest ways to help is to send a text message to the Red Cross (text REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $10 donation), but there are plenty of other options, particularly if you’re looking to support a certain charity or organization. → Read More
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… → Read More
Causes, the startup that helps users leverage Facebook and other social sites to raise money for charity, has closed a $9 million Series C funding round led by NEA with participation from Founders Fund, Marc Benioff, Dustin Moskovitz, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, and Karl Jacob. Scott Sandell of NEA will join as an observer on the Causes board. Causes CEO Joe Green says that the company will be… → Read More
Former President Bill Clinton is looking to turn his 64th birthday into an opportunity to counter malnutrition in Colombia, reduce childhood obesity in the US, and improve lives around the world. And to do it, he’s turning to Birthday Wish, a service powered by Causes that makes it easy to ask your friends for charity donations in honor of your big day. Clinton will be sharing his Birthday Wish… → Read More
Last week we wrote about a friendly challenge between super-angel Ron Conway and entrepreneur/VC Sean Parker over who could raise more money for their favorite causes.
The results are in. Conway has raised $40,600 for the UCSF Foundation. He’s beaten Parker, who raised $32,130 for Malaria No More. TechCrunch readers donated to both causes generously, including by simply going to see Avatar with… → Read More
Sean Parker (Founders Fund, Facebook, Plaxo, Napster) and angel investor Ron Conway are doing a little smack talking over who’ll raise the most money for charity. Conway is raising for the UCSF Foundation, and Parker is fighting Malaria through Malaria No More.
So far Parker is in the lead, with more than $15,000 raised (he’s tying it to his 30th birthday party tonight). Conway, who started… → Read More
GOOD, an integrated media platform for people who “want to live well and do good”, has announced that it has recently closed a Series A round of funding led by its co-founder and CEO Ben Goldhirsh and a number of angel investors including Nicholas Negroponte. While the amount remains undisclosed, newly appointed President Craig Shapiro says it was in the “single digit millions”.
The company – not… → Read More
Sean Parker is no stranger to Internet success. He’s 28 years old and has already helped start four very well-known services on the web: Napster, Plaxo, Causes, and of course, Facebook. And now he’s taking his impressive resume to Yammer, where he is joining the enterprise microblogging service’s Board of Directors, we’ve learned.
Yammer, which won the top prize at last year’s TechCrunch50… → Read More
For all the billions of dollars created here, Silicon Valley is remarkably stingy when it comes to giving. I first wrote about this when I moved here in the great Web 1.0 Internet bubble. Back then, as companies went public all around us, one-third of households earning $100,000 or more gave $1,000 or less to charity—roughly half what the rest of the U.S. gave per dollar earned. And those were… → Read More
Since the early days of the Facebook Platform, Causes has been one of the most popular apps. It’s also big on MySpace, and the company behind it recently announced that they had raised some $10,000,000 for various causes in two years. It makes sense; it’s using the social aspect of these platforms to spread the word on good initiatives. A new venture, TwitCause, from Experience Project, wants to… → Read More
Causes, the popular Facebook and MySpace application that allows users to donate money and build communities around various benevolent initiatives, has just released the latest stats on its fundraising efforts. The organization has now raised a total of $10 million in just over two years, a huge jump from the $2.5 million it had raised over its first twelve months. Even more encouraging is that… → Read More
Writing letters to elected officials and government organizations is a time-old part of political activism. More recently, citizens had the option of using email vs. snail mail to send out correspondence. Now, citizens will have the opportunity to send letters and messages to elected officials directly from Facebook. Bi-partisan Political and digital strategy firm Grassroots Enterprise has… → Read More
This morning you likely woke up to a flurry of nearly identical messages in your Facebook News Feed prompting you to get out and vote – the result of what may have been largest unified online statement ever as nearly 1 million Facebook members simultaneously changed their status messages. The effort was put together by Causes, the altruistic Facebook and MySpace application, which asked Facebook… → Read More
The TechCrunch team is on site at the Facebook Developer conference, and we’ll be live blogging the news. Mark Zuckerberg’s Keynote starts at 1:30 pm PST. Facebook’s press release is here. Live Coverage In a press briefing after the keynote, Zuckerberg stated “I wish I knew” when asked when the anticipated payments system would launch. He also hinted that Facebook is… → Read More
Update: Our live notes from Mark Zuckerberg’s Keynote are here. Today is definitely Facebook day as they hold their second annual F8 developers conference in San Francisco. Last year they released their developer platform, which led competitors to hurriedly release their own competing offerings. What’s in store for tomorrow? We’ve made our predictions, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg… → Read More
Causes, a Facebook and MySpace application that promotes viral donations of time and money to charities and nonprofits, launched a year ago. They’ve now released statistics today on their usage and donation numbers for that first year. The company says they’ve registered 12 million users who are now supporting more than 80,000 non-profit causes worldwide. $2.5 million has been raised… → Read More
Nadia Plesner made a T-shirt that she’s selling to raise money for kids in Darfur. Her shirt includes an image of a malnourished child carrying a sexy purse that looks like something out of the Louis Vuitton Desiccated Trophy Wife line so popular with the ladies a few years back. Note that it doesn’t have the LV logo, just a bunch of squiggles, and it bears a passing resemblance to the… → Read More
A few weeks ago I had the chance to check out an upcoming Los Angeles-based startup called Intent, which should launch publicly this summer. And while Intent is a for profit startup, the founders say their goal, like Causes, is to help people along the road to making money. The intent founders, which include Deepak Chopra’s daughter Mallika Chopra as well as Sarah Ross and Sal Taylor Kydd… → Read More
Causes is one of the most popular Facebook Applications, with over 300,000 active users. The service, which leverages virality to spread the word about worthy causes, aggregates 40,000 causes that benefit 13,000 nonprofits worldwide. In many ways, it’s a pyramid scheme for good. Now founders Sean Parker and Joe Green are leveraging another phenomenon to increase participation even further… → Read More
In discussing several things with my brother this Thanksgiving weekend, including what happens to human beings once the sun runs out of hydrogen and what presidential candidate is best prepared to deal with a Texas-sized asteroid hurtling toward Earth (what are we gonna do, blow it up and have several little asteroids hurtling toward us?), he brought up something Facebook-releated. See, he… → Read More
We wrote about Project Agape, a new startup that is applying viral principles to altruism and social causes, in late March (“Project Agape” is a working name for the service, it is yet to be formally named). Today, the service is launching as one of the initial Facebook Platform partners. The company was founded by Sean Parker and Joe Green and is designed to help social causes –… → Read More
Yesterday I sat down with Sean Parker at his offices at the Founders Fund in San Francisco to see a demo of his new and yet-to-be-named startup (the working name for the project is Project Agape). Parker is a larger-than-life twenty seven year old who co-founded Napster and Plaxo and was the founding president of Facebook. He’s been working full time on Project Agape for the last eight… → Read More
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