Randy's Blog 

Many of you probably remember way back to the days of those "email petition" chain letters from well-intentioned friends that used to inundate our inboxes. They never reached their target and they never had any impact.

My mother used to send me those all the time, and it would drive me crazy... so one day we threw together a little service called ThePetitionSite.com to let any individual or nonprofit start a petition, collect all the signatures in one place, and make sure they got delivered to their intended target.

About 3 weeks later, a woman from Alaska named Dorothy Keeler started a petition on the site to protect the wolves in Denali National park. The wolves didn't realize there were park boundaries, so if they wandered outside they'd get shot.  A week later, Dorothy's petition had over 1,000 signatures, so she printed them out and delivered the stack in person to the Alaska Game Bureau - helping to convince them to create a buffer zone around the park to protect the wolves.  At that point we knew we were on to something big – and since then thousands of individuals have created petitions on the site, we’ve worked with over 700 nonprofit organizations, collected over 60 million signatures, resulting in countless victories.

I tell that story to illustrate just how much has changed in the past 12 years.  The world of online advocacy and fundraising has gone from ineffective chain letter petitions to helping elect President Obama, raising millions of dollars through mobile fundraising for Haiti and Japan, and even now bringing down entire governments in the Middle East. It's been an incredible time full of innovation.

To honor those individuals using online tools to advance their causes, we created the Care2 Impact Prize, which I was privileged to be able to present this past weekend at the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference in Washington, D.C.

The prize recognizes someone who has made an outstanding impact on the profession of online advocacy, online fundraising or both. In winnowing down the pool of candidates to just five exceptional finalists, a panel of judges looked for individual contributions that were both measurable and influential, creating ripple effects to benefit the entire nonprofit sector. The nonprofit tech community then voted to determine who should receive the prize, which is a $1,000 cash award and an additional $1,000 donation to their favorite charity.

The five finalists were:

• Darell Hammond, CEO and Founder, KaBOOM!

• Phil Aroneanu, U.S. Campaign Director, 350.org

• Matt Flannery, Co-Founder and CEO, Kiva.org

• Joint nominees Bill Strathmann, CEO, and Katya Andresen, COO, Network for Good

• Madeline Stanionis, CEO and Founder, Watershed Company

The winner of the 2011 Care2 Impact Prize is Phil Aroneanu, U.S. Campaign Director, 350.org.

Phil helped build 350.org into an international online organization to fight global warming.  The organization helped launch over 7,000 rallies across the globe on 10/10/10 - CNN called it "the largest day of political action in the planet's history."

Congratulations to Phil!

Here's a video we did with Phil shortly after he received the prize:

Here’s a unique opportunity to help one of Care2’s deserving nonprofit partners get up to $1.5 million to combat hunger.  The International Medical Corps (IMC) is a fantastic organization that is among the five finalists in the American Express Members Project contest.

Your vote needed: The project that receives the most votes by Oct 13th will win $1.5 million. Second place gets $500,000, third receives $300,000 and the remaining two will each receive $100,000.    IMC has already done incredibly well to make it to this final round (over 87,000 votes were cast to determine the five finalists), and it’s great to know they’ll receive at least $100,000, but I’d love to see them put the full $1.5 million to fight malnutrition around the world.

I know many of you have already voted in the contest, but this final round starts with a clean slate – so if you have an American Express card, please vote today!   The project was submitted by Paige Strackman, of NY, and is called “Saving the Lives of Malnourished Children”.  IMC is the organization that will be doing the work around the world.  If you don’t have an American Express card, you can still help by spreading the word to those you know who do have a card.

Here’s some more information about the project from the IMC and Paige: 

“While my children go to bed with full stomachs each night, it is deeply troubling to consider that 5 million children younger than five die each year because they do not have the nutrients their little bodies need to survive,” says Paige Strackman, of Brooklyn, N.Y., who submitted the project to American Express.  “We can solve this problem with nutrient-rich, ready-to-eat food.  The number of votes during this round determines how many lives will be saved.  Every vote makes a difference.”

Hunger and malnutrition kill more people in the world than HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. As food prices rise, millions are being driven deeper into poverty everyday while trying to afford basic staples.  Many are at risk of having nothing to eat at all.    

“International Medical Corps is deeply grateful for the opportunity to work with Paige on a project that she feels so passionately about,” said Rebecca Milner, Vice President of Institutional Advancement.  “We also thank all those who rallied behind this cause to support our life-saving work.  Their continued support is going to be critical as we vie for the top Members Project prize.”

Through nutrition programs that provide relief while creating sustainable solutions, International Medical Corps brings nutrition-rich, ready-to-eat food to some of world’s most food-insecure environments, including Ethiopia, Somalia, Chad, and Sudan.  With a mission that focuses on training, International Medical Corps works to empower individuals and communities, providing education on how to treat malnutrition, identify warnings signs, and intervene before malnutrition worsens.

It takes just a minute or two to vote.  Thank you!