Martin Penner with the World Food Programme spoke in the following video, telling StumbleUpon users, “My colleagues at headquarters have told me that thanks to Stumblers like you, we’re able to feed 3,000 children.”

In a later tweet from the World Food Programme, they put they actually put the number at 5,000. Hopefully, it’s increased even more since then.

As you may know, drought has devastated East Africa, and hundreds of thousands of Somalis have gone to the camp seeking aid.

“When the disaster hit, the World Food Programme turned to StumbleUpon to help drive greater awareness of the situation and feed starving people in Dadaab,” explains StumbleUpon Ad Operations Associate Ben Hardy. “The WFP created a site that calls stumblers to either complete a quiz to feed a child or donate directly to feed people affected by this catastrophe.”

“StumbleUpon donated credit in our Paid Discovery marketing platform to the WFP that brought these donation sites directly to members of our community,” he adds. “By stumbling, sharing, and engaging with the WFP sites, you, our amazing Stumblers, helped feed over 5,000 starving people in urgent need of help.”

Along with this news, StumbleUpon has launched a new program called “Stumbling for Good,” where each month the company will donate Paid Discovery credit to three non-profit organizations. People can recommend organizations by emailing good@stumbleupon.com.

They good do a lot of good with this (as they’re already doing). The StumbleUpon button has now been clicked over 25 billion times, the company revealed in another tweet.

Facebook also points to this release from the White House. 

Original Article: Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook support of the Change the Equation campaign. In a status update this morning, he wrote, "Our mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected – and we need to find the best talent to get there. That’s why Facebook is proud to support the launch of the Change the Equation campaign."

Change the Equation is described as a non-profit, not-partisan, CEO-led initiative to "solve America’s innovation problem." It’s led by former Intel CEO Craig Barrett, Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt, Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, Eastman Kodak CEO Antonio Perez, and Sally Ride Science CEO Sally Ride.

The organization actually has over 100 companies listed as members. Among these are Facebook, Google, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Samsung, AT&T, and Verizon. 

"Across the country, businesses, educators and community leaders have created innovative programs to advance STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) literacy in the United States. But far too few of our students—especially poor students and students of color—have access to programs like these," the organization says.  "Change the Equation will strive to replicate such programs in the communities that need them most."

Programs include: Advanced Placement Training and Incentive Program (APTIP), Engineering is Elementary, FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), Intel Math, Sally Ride Science Academy, The Science Career Ladder, UTeach.

"One social media element of the new Red Cross blood donor site is the ‘Blood Donor Community’ page, which enables donors and volunteers to share personal stories and encouragement of their experiences on donating blood, along with enabling them to send e-cards, link up via Facebook and view Red Cross videos," a representative tells WebProNews.

"Another social media element to the site is users can participate in ‘virtual blood drives.’ For example -  Michigan State Alums (spread around the country) can go to their local blood centers and donate – receiving credit for their virtual group," she adds.

There are also links to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube presences.

In addition to increasing blood donation, other objectives for the site include reducing costs related to site maintenance, and delivering a "world-class user experience." Previously, the Red Cross had over 30 different "Blood Region" sites with varying styles and content, but with this new site, they are all brought together.

"BusinessOnLine has done an outstanding job of creating an intuitive, user-friendly site which we expect to meet or surpass our business objectives.  Their end-user focused approach allowed us to put our resources where they mattered most," said Greg Haines, online marketing manager for American Red Cross Biomedical Services.

The American Red Cross considers the site the "go-to" solution for anyone wishing to engage with Red Cross Biomedical Services online. That goes fro blood donors, as well as volunteers and hospitals.

Of course it probably helps that the video was featured on YouTube’s home page. The video can be seen here:

The call to action in this particular video overlay says, "Give a person clean water. 100% of you gift directly funds water wells" and links to the proper donation page.

"The response from the YouTube community was overwhelming — thanks to you, charity:water was able to raise over $10,000 in one day from the video," writes Ramya Raghavan on the YouTube Blog. "That’s enough to build two brand-new wells in the Central African Republic and give over 150 people clean drinking water for 20 years!"

YouTube is encouraging other nonprofits to add a similar call to action overlay. To do, they simply need to go to "edit video" and fill out the fields in the section marked "Call to Action overlay." There, users can add a short headline, ad text, a destination URL, and upload an optional image. The overlay will appear every time someone watches the video.

In response, Foretle said, "Well, we don’t agree with that! We displayed a note at the top of the Forestle result page that says, ‘only click on Google sponsored links if you are really interested in them.’ Also we saved 0.1 m² per search and not per click! So where did we offer incentives to click on ads?"

Either way, their partnership with Google ended in September after just Forestle just launched out of beta in August. David Chartier at Ars Technica reports now however, that Forestle has formed a partnership with Yahoo, and it’s back and more transparent than ever.

The site still has a Googlish look and feel to it, and in fact even still links to Google for image search, maps, videos (YouTube), and News. Really, there is no evidence on the Forestle front page that the site has anything to do with Yahoo whatsoever.

"Regardless, Google apparently never had a change of heart, so Forestle forged a two-year partnership with Yahoo and is back with a handful of noteworthy changes," says Chartier. He notes:

On the feature side of things, Forestle’s search results page has been updated with a new optional thumbnail preview of each page . Installing Forestle’s browser plug-in is now easier and also supports more browsers including Internet Explorer, Chrome, and even SeaMonkey, a Mozilla-based browser that includes clients for e-mail, IRC, and HTML editing. Forestle can now be added to iGoogle, and the engine has even been certified as CO2-neutral.

It will be interesting to see if Forestle’s interface becomes more Yahoo-like. I would think Yahoo would at least want some kind of acknowledgement, and would prefer Forestle linked to its own maps, news, images, etc.

However, non-profits that are members of the Google Grants program will be able to continue using the service for free until at least next year. Google Checkout Product Manager Prem Ramaswami writes at the Google Checkout Blog:

If your organization is already a Google Grants recipient using Checkout for donation processing, please make sure to link your Grants account with Checkout by February 15 to continue receiving free donation processing without interruption. If you are not yet a Google Grants recipient and you meet the guidelines for the program, we strongly encourage you to apply. If you apply for Google Grants by March 1, 2009 and you’re accepted, we will retroactively credit you for any Checkout fees incurred while your application was pending. For anyone who falls outside of our guidelines or who decides not to apply for a Google Grant, we realize this news may come as a disappointment, and hope that you’ll still find Checkout’s ease of use and competitive rates compelling reasons to keep using our product.

Google has been allowing non-profit organizations to ue Google Checkout for donation processing for free since 2007. At that point, 100% of contributions were going to the causes. I guess the economy is calling for Google to get their slice of the pie. It’s not all that surprising considering all of the company’s other money-saving moves today.

The obvious first step is for bloggers to add voiced audio posts to their blogs. Podcasting provides an important second step for bloggers’ voices to be heard around the world.

Once the voice medium has been established, interviews on radio, television, and other blogging media will follow. It’s becoming almost difficult for a blogger to actually remain silent!

Speakers are always in demand for many events. Bloggers are natural choices to give live presentations on their topics of experise. Who better to talk about your specialty than you, the blogger. After all, you write about all aspects of your subject matter on an almost daily basis. You know your topics as well as anyone.

As for speaking to business and non-profit organizations about blogging, you are already among the few real authorities in your own community. Think about it. In your own metropolitan area, you are likely one of only a literal handful of full time practicing bloggers. Who better to speak on the subject than you?

As a speaker, you will enhance your professional and business reputation in the community. You will interact with new and interesting people, who you otherwise would not be able to meet. The blogging, or any other topic you choose, would be your ticket into the door.

Contact local business and non-profit groups in your own community. You might become a noted speaker in your area of expertise. Offer to give a free presentation to the membership on your blogging topic; or even on blogging itself. Whatever you do, don’t use the platform to give a blatant sales presentation. Provide information freely and generously to everyone in attendance.

This is no place for hucksterism, if you want to develop a solid reputation as a knowledgeable professional.

Let the business arrive later, as a result of your newfound reputation, as an expert in your field and industry.

I am always available to speak to groups on various business and blogging topics. So are many other noted bloggers. You should be available to speak on your favourite subjects as well.

Make yourself available as a speaker.

Start talking today.

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Wayne Hurlbert provides insigtful information about marketing, promotions, search engine optimization and public relations for websites and business blogs on the popular Blog Business World.

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