Called “Causes on Facebook,†it allows you to create a cause, or promote an existing one to their friends You can pick from 1.5 million non-profits in the U.S. It uses Facebook’s “feed†feature to notify friends when you’ve joined a new cause. Finally, it allows you to promote the cause in other ways, building up points through a reward system, letting you show off virtual trophies that you win on your profile page after say, donating money. Ultimately, it wants to make it easier to raise money for causes. It launches with formal partnerships with ten non-profits.
A few things to note about Project Agape. First, the founder, Sean Parker, is most popular for his cofounding of Napster. Since then he’s led several high profile internet startups but this is his first philanthropic venture. He was CEO of Facebook at one point, and it was most likely this connection that allowed him to get early access to Facebook’s new platform, which was just announced today.
“Causes on Facebook” was announced today with the “intent to showcase the strengths of Facebook’s new “Platform,†a set of tools to allow developers to build applications upon Facebook. The screenshots over at Venturebeat are pretty cool. You can check them out directly here and here.
Another company that seeks to connect people with organisations that they care about is Firstgiving. Firstgiving is a website where anyone can create a free personalized fundraising page for practically any non-profit. The difference between FG and Project Agape is that you create a page with a unique URL and so you can promote your page all over the net. For example you can include a badge on MySpace, a widget on your blog, and a Share on Facebook. Using your personal fundraising page you can connect all your friends and online community with your cause.
And isn’t it better when everyone can participate?