Another Success for Online Fundraising: SocialVibe Reached $100,000 in Donations

I have received an interesting piece of news about a new success for SocialVibe - a new project that is intended for its users to raise money for charities via social media. The company announces that over the 6 months since the product was launched in public beta its members reached an important milestone: $100,000 raised for various participating charitable organizations.

I have realized recently that we often talk too much about the applications, services or networks that serve for entertainment only while I think that the applications that are devoted to improving our world in any ways that they can definitely deserve more attention. We have already talked about Kiva here - the community that operates on microlending model to help fight poverty in developing countries. This is the most visible project dealing with making the world a better place but there are numerous other examples, and I think every single success they achieve deserves a notice.

As for SocialVibe itself, it basically operates by allowing the site members to raise funds on their own using various social media resources, including their blogs and profiles on social networks they participate in. For this to work the service connects its members, their favorite brands and charities. In this scheme the users endorse the causes they are passionate about and the brands they like so it works somewhat like indirect advertising - site members display badges wherever they want endorsing the brands they choose and earn points that are then used to send money to the charities they support.

SocialVibe was launched in public beta back in February and is now proud to announce its first achievement of 100 thousand dollars in donations sent to 27 charities with the help of SocialVibe members. So obviously any powerful social media participant could use this power to the better by helping charities of his or her choice to bring this figure higher.

The only problem I see here is that this amount of $100,000 dollars seems to be not that significant when compared to the funding the company raised in its Series A funding - $4.2 million from Redpoint Ventures last December. I can only hope here that the company can accelerate the growth and bring more members and can bring more brands to make the donations possible. At the same time it will be good to be moderate when it comes to their own expenses - to make sure that the donations raised outweigh the venture capital.