You have probably been asked many times to donate a dollar or two at the checkout of
your grocery stores. Did you ever wish that your donation would benefit the nonprofit you
care about the most? Or if you work at a nonprofit, did you wish that your own organization
would be at the receiving end of the donation?
After the Haiti earthquake, tens of millions of people donated by sending short-text-messages
on their cell phones. And the American Red Cross received over $40 million after the earthquake
from mobile donations. Did you ever wish you could donate to your cause as easily as sending
a short-text-message?
We provide a service that fulfills such needs of the consumers and the nonprofits. It’s
more flexible than the donations at checkout, and even easier than mobile donations. The
consumers can shop and donate at Amazon, buy.com, iTunes and nearly 200 other well-known
online stores; they can choose to donate to the nonprofits they care about the most;
and the best part is, the donation is completely free for the consumers, because it comes
out of the normal price consumers pay at the checkout. And it’s also completely free for the
nonprofit organizations to participate.
Causemunity is an online community for causes and their members. Causemunity was founded in 2008,
and is located in Kirkland, WA. The founder Wayne Liu is a software engineer/entrepreneur who
had many years of experiences at Microsoft as a developer. He has deep technical background in
software engineering, including web development, database development and Object Oriented
Programming with emphasis on advanced and highly efficient algorithms.The features and components
he developed are widely used in many Microsoft products, including World Atlas, MapPoint, Streets
& Trips and Virtual Earth.
At Causemunity, our mission
is to empower individuals to make an impact for their causes, through online
purchases, and social outreach. Making an impact for one's cause is extremely easy, it takes just one click
at Causemunity, and a portion of the purchase will be donated to one's designated cause
automatically. There’s no extra cost
to the nonprofit organizations, and absolutely no additional cost to our users either! (To prove that our
users’ purchases indeed benefited the nonprofit organizations, we list each purchase on our web site,
with the sensitive private information removed.) We believe a lot of us each contribute a little bit
can make a big impact for our causes. So we integrated email, social media and other social/viral
features into Causemunity, to increase user engagement, drive user awareness, and help grow your
community of givers.
And more importantly, Causemunity helps build long lasting affinity between the nonprofit
organizations and their members. With Causemunity, donation is no longer a once-a-year event,
it becomes part of the daily lives of our users. Whenever our users shop online, they'll be
thinking about supporting their causes,
and the nonprofit organizations will receive continuous and sustainable support from their members
year round, and year after year!
Causemunity is available as a stand-alone website, and also as a Facebook application. Our
users can use either the Causemunity website or the Facebook application
to easily search, shop and give to their causes.
If you need to contact us, please send your email to:
- Wayne Liu - Founder and President: wayne@causemunity.org
We want to build and grow a vibrant online giving community to help our users donate
to their causes. And we make it extremely easy for our users to share their causes among their
circles of friends. When you support causes that you truly believe, would you encourage your
friends to support your causes too?! At Causemunity, our users can share their causes with their friends by simply
publishing news stories on their Facebook pages so that all their friends can see them. By leveraging the
powerful viral technology, our users will be able to spread the word for their causes faster than ever
and reach out to all their friends to support their causes!
Don't wait, start now and
become part of a giving community of your own cause!
The Causemunity website is the easiest way to shop and give to your causes. When
you make your online shopping through the Causemunity website, you don’t need a user
name or password. You can just go to your cause's unique Causemunity URL, shop at our
affiliated merchants, and a portion of your purchase
will be donated to your selected cause automatically. And you can view your
purchases on the cause’s purchase history page.
The Causemunity Facebook application has the same functionalities as the
Causemunity website. The only difference is, you'll need to have a Facebook account,
and log in using your facebook username and password to use the Causemunity Facebook
application.
It’s simple and takes just one click. Just go to your causes's unique Causemunity URL,
click your favorite merchant to shop; or take advantage of our powerful product search engine
to search and find the best deals on tens of millions of products instantly! Once you make a
purchase, we'll donate a portion of your purchase to your cause automatically.
To use the Causemunity Facebook application, once you authorize the application, make sure to bookmark the
application so that you can easily find it later. And please also enable email notifications,
so that when we send the donation to your causes, we can notify you via email.
If you are a cause director, please sign up your cause with us!
By signing up your cause with Causemunity, you’ll provide your members the easiest way to micro-donate to your
cause. We also have a short video on the signup page that describes the benefits of
becoming part of our giving community!
After you sign up at Causemunity, we'll add your cause into our system, and assign your cause a unique
Causemunity Url, such as 'YourCause'.causemunity.org. Then we'll contact you with information
to quickly get started with Causemunity. If your supporters go to this unique URL, click their favorite
merchant to shop, or search a product and then shop, we'll donate a portion of their purchases to
your cause automatically.
We strongly recommend you to submit your cause's logo to us. This logo will replace the default cause
logo on your unique Causemunity page. You members will be delighted to see the logo of their favorite cause
when they shop online!
To send us your logo, please email it to wayne@causemunity.org.
The key to achieve success through the Causemunity program is to mobilize
as many supporters as possible to start using Causemunity to shop. Depending on your
organization's communication methods with your supporters, you can talk about Causemunity on
your
- Email newsletters
- Newsletters by post
- Website
- Regular meetings
- Events, such as fund raising events, sports events and etc.
- Facebook groups, or Facebook pages
- Twitter messages
Combine as many methods as you can to get the words out, and ask your supporters to try
to use Causemunity. Once your supporters get used to micro-donate to your organization
through Causemunity, you'll receive constant donations from your supporters month after month,
and year after year!
First of all, we have different widgets that you can embed to nearly all your online communication
channels, including your websites, social network pages, blogs, and even emails. The widgets make
Causemunity's network of merchants and functionalities easily accessible to all your donors, from
anywhere. We have the regular Causemunity widget that is more feature rich, including the powerful
product search box, the total donation amount, and can be embedded into
your websites; and a "light weight" widget called WidgetLite that can be embedded into your social network
pages and blogs. And you can also add the WidgetLite as part of your email signature, to make sure it's
available to all your email recipients automatically on all your emails. You can experience the
widgets at our widgets page.
Second, we have integrated Facebook and Twitter directly on our site. Your supporters can easily
spread words for your cause among their circles of friends and their followers. By empowering your
individual supporters to be your advocates and fund raisers, you CAN
empower your supporters to make an impact for your cause, with every purchase, and through
social outreach.
Last, but not least, we have a
Causemunity Facebook application.
for the Facebook users among your supporters. This application has the same functionalities as the
Causemunity website, and provides another convenient way for your supporters to shop and give to
your cause right inside Facebook.