For a healthy heart: be happy, be helpful, be connected

According to the health and lifestyle website RealAge (started by celebrity doctors Mehmet Oz and Michael Roizen) new British research   shows that the happier you are with your life, the lower your risk of coronary heart disease.

At the Mashable Social Good Summit, Yossi Vardi spoke about the joy that comes from doing good. Vardi’s prescription for happiness: helping others without expecting anything in return. Dr. Oz agrees and weighs in on the happiness conversation with six other prescriptions for a healthy life:

1. Be nice to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up!
2. Connect with others. The benefits are huge!
3. Be grateful. Keep a journal to write down what you’re thankful for.
4. Be active. At least 30 minutes of physical activity a day.
5. Meditate.
6. Help others.
7. Go outside.

Fundly   is grateful for the support of its users and for all of those dedicated to helping others. We’re proud to offer an easy-to-use social fundraising platform   that allows people to connect with each other to help others.

Have you considered using Fundly to boost support for the cause most important to you? Check us out. We think you’ll be happy with what you find.

The rewards will be great.

Fundly raises $5 million (and non-profits raise $220 million with Fundly social media platform)

 

 Mark Goines

This morning Fundly announced that we have achieved two more significant milestones for the company:
First off, Fundly landed another $5 million in Series A investment   which we will use to build even more cool features for Fundly’s users!  We have already hired a team of new awesome developers to make it all happen (you know who you are).

However, I could not think of a better way to celebrate this success in our company’s life than the simultaneous passing of another big milestone: the 1,000+ cause based organizations that use Fundly in the US have now raised a collective $220 million!

Our new investor is Morgenthaler Ventures. Mark Goines has joined Fundly’s board of directors. We are very excited to have him. He was an early investor in consumer finance products such as Mint.com and WePay.  The Fundly investor group already included luminaries who invested in social media companies like LinkedIn, Zynga and Twitter. We are now adding Mark’s wealth of financial application experience to the team.

Large non-profits like Teach For America as well as smaller ones like TERI have already discovered the power of social media. You should never allow a donor to drop off a check and then just drive away. When they come to your website to donate to your cause, they already have their hearts and wallets open— this is the peak of engagement and it’s crucial to seize the moment.  Adding Fundly to your donation page(s) or setting up a campaign page with Fundly will automatically ask all your donors to spread the word with their friends.  As the old saying goes, “You don’t ask; you don’t get.”

So, take a couple of minutes and setup a Fundly campaign page   for your any of your own non-profit fundraisers  !

Social Good Summit 2011: Awakening responsibility, potential, humor and happiness

After four days of social goodness, we wrapped up the summit on Thursday.

The second annual Mashable Social Good Summit   brought together some of the world’s greatest leaders, thinkers and entrepreneurs at “a time when new technology and social media are changing the world.” They gathered at New York’s 92Y but were joined by thousands of other digital participants who tuned in for the livestream.

  

Their goal: to connect with each other and to learn from each other in order make the world a better place. The summit’s impressive lineup of dynamic speakers   – which included Lance Armstrong, Geena Davis, Richard Gere, Christy Turlington, Ted Turner, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu – discussed a range of global issues, from maternal mortality to literacy and education. With a rich variety of backgrounds and areas of expertise, the speakers certainly covered a lot of ground.  They also proved to share quite a bit of common ground.

All speakers agreed that the best 21^st century leaders and entrepreneurs are using digital tools to make a difference in our world. They are using these tools to educate, to advocate and to empower.

On the first day of the summit, Ted Turner joined us in shared responsibility: “We have enormous global communications today that we didn’t have 100 years ago, and we can do things today that we couldn’t 100 years ago and more should be expected of us… it’s no longer you or me, it’s you and me, and we’re either going to make it together or not at all.”

On the second day of the summit, Elie Wiesel reawakened our potential: “Human beings all change. Not what they are but who they are. We have the power to change what we do with our life and turn it into our destiny.”

On the third day of the summit, Archbishop Desmond Tutu inspired our goodness: “We hold on to the fact that people are fundamentally good, and each one of us has an instinct that allows us to hone in on goodness… People at my age, the revered, aren’t usually the powerful, the macho. You could say a lot of things about Mother Teresa, but macho would not be one of them.”

On the final day of the summit, Yossi Vardi prescribed our happiness: “There are many ways to prescribe happiness but there is one way that is available to everybody, it’s not very expensive … it’s very democratic, and everyone has acesss to it. It is: Find someone who needs help and help him for no ulterior motive.”
Fundly   can’t wait until next year.

Until then, our social fundraising   platform will keep connecting people and organizations in the name of #socialgood. The sky’s the limit.

Startups for Good Challenge singles out one special solar system

Congrats to the inspiring 19-year-old and Thiel Foundation Fellow Eden Full for winning Mashable’s Startups for Good Challenge! Full’s extraordinary system, SunSaluter, rotates solar panels to face the sun and has the potential to increase their efficiency by up 40 percent.

  

Full’s solar system outshined seven other extraordinary projects and was selected the winner by a panel of four distinguished judges: the U.N. Foundation’s Aaron Sherinian, Mashable’s Sarah Kessler, entrepreneur Yossi Vardi, and the Economist’s Matthew Bishop. Her award: $10,000 and a social good award from the U.N. Foundation.

Keep up the good work, Eden! We will continue to follow and champion you!

Note: Eden, we apologize for not getting the best picture of you at the 92Y, you were in high demand for attention!
Fundly encourages all of you involved in social entrepreneurship to utilize our social fundraising   tools to power your projects and campaigns for social good.

Empowering Youth to Change Our World

Today was yet another incredible day at the Mashable Social Good Summit in New York and the presentations continued to be informative and engaging. Barbara Bush, daughter of former president George W. Bush and CEO and co-founder of the Global Health Corps, had an interesting discussion with Pete Cashmore, CEO and founder of Mashable. Their segment, entitled “The Power of Youth: Mobilizing Communities Through New Media,” presented some valuable ideas and resources for young people to use who want to enter into the non-profit sector.

The primary purpose of Global Health Core is to equip young leaders to help others throughout their careers. By teaching leadership and professional skills and through providing mentorships, the GHC plans to invest in its fellows in a lifelong process of learning and giving back.

With a passion for youth, Bush stated “It’s a huge missed opportunity if you can’t engage young people in being a huge part of the solution.” This is evident as more than 40 college age students are chosen as fellows to carry on this important mission to the “frontlines of the fight for global health equity in year-long fellowships. Our fellows have a measurable impact on the health of the communities in which they work, and draw upon that experience and the GHC alumni network to deepen their impact throughout their careers.”

Bush suggested some powerful ideas to young people who wish to start up their own charitable organizations. First of all, technology is probably the biggest resource and tool to get the word out about your project. Social media can reach countless people throughout the world. Secondly, create alliances with other non-profit agencies who are already established. Finally, learn from others. You don’t have to recreate the wheel and with technology, it’s easy to find out what others have done. We can access ideas to know what works and doesn’t work.

Equipping the youth of today is one of the greatest ways to change our current issues. Through social media we can equip, teach and connect to millions of people in a way as never before.

Fundly, the largest online social fundraising platform in the United States is innovating daily to produce the best and most easiest to use social media fundraising tools that will empower causes to promote their story, build support, accept donations, and strengthen relationships with their supporters.

Happiness: the Great Dividend of Social Entrepreneurship

“Try social entrepreneurship.”

Yossi Vardi, one of Israel’s top entrepreneurs , explained why at the final day of the Mashable Social Good Summit.

“When you succeed, the profit is in the best currency: joy.”



In a quick seven-minute presentation, Vardi distinguished for-profit entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Though for-profit entrepreneurship can be social, Vardi said, it is complicated by many other pressures.

Vardi shared the story of meeting the dean of a medical at a Silicon Valley wedding. Vardi learned that the man was a “happiness doctor.” He told Vardi about research that suggests that well-being effects the immune system. To help his patients consume fewer drugs, Vardi said, the doctor prescribed happiness.

“How do you subscribe [sic] happiness?” Vardi asked him.

Find someone who needs help and help them, with no ulterior motive, the doctor responded.

This week’s series of inspiring Social Good speakers have shown us that the returns of social entrepreneurship are great and far-reaching. Vardi reminds us that these rewards are also very personal.
Check out Fundly’s super easy social fundraising platform to jump-start your own social entrepreneurship. In the process, you just might lower your blood pressure.

Listen to your Elders: ‘Great Change can Happen in a Single Generation’

We’ve always been told to listen to our elders. At Day 3 of the Mashable Social Good Summit, our elders gave us a lot to hear.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former President of Ireland Mary Robinson took the stage in an afternoon session moderated by Lisa Witter. They spoke out against child marriage and had an important and startling message to deliver: 10 million girls are forcibly married each year.

Responding to a call from Nelson Mandela, some of our greatest, most established world leaders have united to end child marriage. They call themselves The Elders. As leaders of what they refer to as a global village, they are on a human rights mission to end child marriage.



Two of their most useful advocacy tools? Young people and technology.

“Young people are awesome!” said Tutu, who said he’s continuously amazed by their idealism and technological prowess. He encouraged the audience to tweet about child marriage and to let their voices be heard.

Tutu and Robinson gave us the facts today – 64% of illiterate adults are women, and many girls worldwide stop going to school the day they get married. They also gave us some great encouragement and inspiration.
“Great change can happen in a single generation,” Desmond Tutu said in a short film produced by the Elders that was shown during the session. “I know this to be true. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

In the same film, Robinson encouraged us to imagine what would happen if we connected all those working to end child marriage. The film ends with a powerful plea: “Let girls be girls, and not brides.”

It’s getting easier and easier to imagine what could happen if advocates connected. Social media and social fundraising platforms like Fundly are connecting advocates and donors around the world. Continuing to engage and recruit supporters of human rights issues like this one is a key step in supporting women and girls worldwide.

Tutu and Robinson remind us that anything is possible and advise young people to stay positive and maintain a sense of humor.

But even the Elders can’t do everything.

“Do you tweet with God?” Witter asked of Tutu.

“Nooooooo,” he chuckled.

Girls and Women in the Media: Breaking Down Stereotypes

It doesn’t take a Netflix account or an expired Blockbuster card to know that gender inequality in the media is alive and well. This is exactly the issue that Academy Award winner and UN Ambassador Geena Davis addressed at the Mashable Social Good Summit in New York yesterday.

In an interview with Brian Gott, Publisher of Variety, Davis shared some interesting facts and observations pertaining to perception of women and girls and the global impact that the media has on gender equality. I had no idea that 80% of the media worldwide is created here in the United States. That both amazes and terrifies me as I flip the channels on my television. What messages are we giving to the nations around the world about who we really are? It is that thought that has motivated Davis to further her pursuit to increase the use of strong, complex female characters to do the unconventional and unexpected.

In a 20 year study of women in the media, the majority of female roles are not surprisingly stereotypical and highly sexualized. Davis commented that, “The more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she thinks she has.” Furthering this thought, Davis mentions that 81% of characters in G rated movies who have an occupations are male while the women who did hold jobs did not pursue careers in the science, law,
medical, political or business fields.

As an ambassador for the UN, Davis believes that “raising up women around the world will impact hunger, the environment and all of the other issues that we’re dealing with.” Through creating a strong female image, women will be able to do things beyond the confines of gender roles and girls can begin to dream big.

The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, continues to conduct the largest study on gender issues in film and media. As a respected actor, she works closely with producers and executives to bring awareness to this disparity and hopes to see real change by 2015. With the slogan of “If they can see it, they can be it,” Davis encourages Hollywood decision makers to cast more leading roles to women to show their complexity and potential to young girls around the globe.

Join Geena Davis and her mission to break down the stereotypes and help them raise money online using Fundly to benefit women in media.

21st Century Education: Engaging, Connecting and Transforming with Technology

For hundreds of Manhattan parents, the question of sending their kids to school is where. For one hundred million primary school-aged kids worldwide, the answer is nowhere.

At Day 2 of the Mashable Social Good Summit, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute, discussed the “poverty trap.” Those who are unable to get an education because their basic needs – safe structure, safe water, and food – aren’t being met at school are the same people who need an education to meet their basic needs. The cycle is vicious and even more complex, Sachs said, for countries in conflict.

We’ve got a lot of work to do in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals of breaking the poverty trap for primary school students. But Sachs, who shared the stage with Hans Vestberg, Ericsson President and CEO, and Stéphane Dujarric, Director of News and Media for the U.N. Department of Public Information, is setting the bar higher.

Vestberg projects that in 2016 those with Internet access will increase threefold. We’re moving into what Vestberg calls the “second wave” of the digital era in becoming a “networked society” – a society that Fundly’s social fundraising platform is fundamentally a part of.

In the United States, the big education debate is between laptops and textbooks. But in many communities worldwide, there are no books. Going digital is the obvious answer, Sachs pointed out, and allows for development of and access to differentiated curriculum.

Internet access is more than a technology issue or a social issue. It’s a human rights issue.

With digital tools and Internet access, people can read material – both local and global – that is relevant to them, from environment to disease to education. Many of these communities have already leapfrogged into the 21^st century.

“Technology is completely penetrating rural societies … even the poorest in the world,” Sachs said.
The “Connect to Learn” collaborative effort is on the cutting edge of the movement. Coupled with Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop per Child program (Negroponte spoke at the summit yesterday about his social experiment that will give children laptops to see if they can teach themselves to read), the future is looking bright.

The path, however, is uncharted.

“We need to rethink anything we’re doing,” Vestberg urged.

The future is full of possibility and technology has tremendous transformative potential that transcends the world of education. Doing serious rethinking means reevaluating how we approach communication and how we approach fundraising for the causes we care the most about. Fundly offers the tools in this networked age to engage and reach out to supporters of your cause.

Over $215 million have been raised with Fundly’s social fundraising platform. It’s amazing how things multiply when people connect.

Social Value Investing to Prepare a New Generation of Serving

Monday was the opening session of the Mashable Social Good Summit held in New York and I would be remiss to not comment on Howard W. Buffett’s amazing presentation entitled “Social Value Investing: A New Paradigm for Future Generations.” As part of a legacy of social responsibility and philanthropy, Buffet, who is the executive director for the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, exuded eloquence, passion and ideals to inspire and encourage others to make a difference in a tangible way.

Buffet is like a philanthropical fortune cookie of challenging statements and nuggets of wisdom. Each paragraph opened with a sentence that could be printed on t-shirts and sold in the conference lobby. Here are some examples:

“Doing good does not excuse us from doing better.”

“We are hardwired to care for each other… the purpose of innovation is to unlock the tremendous power of the human spirit.”

“In the philanthropic world the problem is the product. In the business world the product is the solution.”
“Don’t give money away; invest it.”

Now if those quotes weren’t inspiring enough, Buffet went on to explain some practical methods to get the biggest impact out of our non-profit organizations. With his “Social Value Investing” model, Buffet proposes that “innovation has no power without implementation.” Through smaller organizations joining together, the “human capital” can best be invested to focus on positive outcomes and not just on raising funds.

Furthermore, Buffet made an incredible announcement that his Aunt Doris Buffet is donating $5 million to the Learning by Giving program which equips young leaders to impact those in need. (Don’t we all wish we had an Aunt Doris!) This organization is implemented at various universities and creates courses in philanthropy and non-profit studies. Each school is given a $10,000 grant and the students are challenged to allocate those funds in the best way to benefit their communities. When they are finished, they are required to prepare reports about what they’ve done and what they have learned on Learningbygivingfoundation.org.

The primary goal of this new foundation is to give future leaders the tools to become problem solvers in their own communities and to adapt to future challenges. Investing in the future seems like a viable solution to me!
With similar goals to this foundation, Fundly empowers leaders and supporters the necessary social fundraising and marketing tools that enable them to build communities of donors and supporters around their campaign, while helping them raise money more effectively by doing it online… opposed to more traditional fundraising activities.

Being in such an ever-increasing competitive environment of tighter donor pockets, more causes competing for grants and donors, and the mass media… getting attention, engagement, donations, and the biggie – individual donor networks, can be incredibly difficult for all causes big and small.
However, Fundly has invested in talent, time, and energy to build and innovate a product that is simple to use and has helped many non-profits, schools, and other causes raise over $215 million online.

Learn more about how social fundraising online can benefit you at: Fundly

The Edelman Health Barometer: What Does it Say About our World?

David Armano, EVP for Global Innovation and Integration at Edelman Digital had an interesting presentation at the Mashable Social Good Summit held in New York this afternoon. He discussed the digital innovations that are available to aid in the greatest health challenges people face globally and how social media can impact behavior.



Armano stated that the Edelman Health Barometer 2011 was created by interviewing 15,000 individuals from around the globe to discover the extent of how people use the internet and how their choices on healthy living are determined. First of all, the term “health” has now become relative as the old idea of “absence of disease” is no longer the deciding factor. Functioning body, mental and emotional health and a balanced and nutritious diet all are contributing attributes. Armano explained that there is “not one global definition of what health is anymore.”

The second point of Edelman Digital’s survey was to determine how social media impacts health choices. They first acknowledged that there are different levels of internet involvement: 7% are “traditionalists” and are net active, 14% are “followers” and aren’t producing content but are consuming information, 23% are “offliners” and are not connected, 35% are “participants” and are engaged and comment on blogs, and 21% are “actionists” and actually are able to influence others to change their behavior.
Once these groups were established, the Edelman Barometer discovered that in developed markets 71% of participants tried to change their negative health habits with 46% of those returning to their former ways. In emerging markets, 45% tried to change their unhealthy ways and 61% of those relapsed.

So with all of this information, how does this influence the non-profit industry?

First of all, it is interesting to note the high percentage of people who use the internet and are active users. Secondly, many people try to change for the better only to go back to their bad habits. (Can anyone say “New Year’s resolutions?) Finally, Armano suggests that by making tools more accessible to those who need them, accountability and a sustainable change can be made. For example, he used an app he found for runners. By relying on one another for motivation, supporting positive behaviors and creating a support group, accountability is established and creates an environment for success. Who knows what we can achieve both with our health and with helping others through the use of the internet?

To read the complete findings discussed in this article, please go to: http://bit.ly/rllS0q
If your organization needs to raise money, set up and promote your non-profit fundraising campaign today using Fundly, the leader in online social fundraising.

Going Digital Counts: Two Supermoms Share their Stories at Mashable Social Good Summit

The Mashable Social Good Summit kicked off today with an impressive lineup of speakers. Fundly folks were happy to be in New York among some of today’s leading social and digital pioneers at the annual event that was streamed live to more than 1,000 plugged-in participants. The message of the day was clear: digital innovations are connecting people and doing good around the world.



In one afternoon session supermodel-turned-maternal health advocate Christy Turlington Burns discussed her work with Every Mother Counts, a non-profit she founded in 2010 to advocate for maternal health. Turlington Burns, whose 2010 film No Woman, No Cry documents the journeys of mothers around the globe joined renowned “mommyblogger” Heather Armstrong in conversation about two things that unite us all: stories and women.

The session, moderated by UN President and CEO Kathy Calvin, began in Turlington Burns’ own delivery room with the opening sequence from No Woman, No Cry.  In the clip, Turlington Burns narrates that the day her 8-year-old daughter Grace was born one “one of the best days” of her life “and also the scariest” as she remembers the alarming complications she experienced after giving birth. She goes on to state a disturbing truth: every minute a woman dies from a pregnancy-related and most of these deaths are preventable.

Turlington Burns’ film and message are certainly moving. They’re moving, largely, because they are intimate and personal. Both women are master storytellers who seem to realize the power of the human story. They’re also women who realize the power of sharing stories and have used social media, largely through Armstrong’s blog Dooce, to help make a personal concern a universal cause. The statistics seem to suggest that they have been hugely successful; over the past 10 years, maternal mortality in Bangladesh has dropped 40 percent.

Every Mother Counts is doing good work.

“Our voices can make a bigger impact together than on our own,” Turlington Burns said.
Armstrong added that using your voice means sharing your voice. The most effective advocacy work has gone digital. There are millions of untapped optimists, many of whom are women and stay-at-home mothers, just waiting to be tapped. They want to contribute to causes they care about. They want to share their voice. They want to give money.

Like Christy and Heather, Fundly believes in the power of the collective and the power of voice. We’ve built a social fundraising platform that honors both the social and the individual.

Doing good means making the person and the world a part of each other’s stories. It also means making the person and the world a part of each other’s priorities.