We all know that in this down economy, charitable donations are bound to suffer.

I recently came across this interesting platform which seeks to energize charitable giving in a social way. SocialVibe is basically a social network, where you sign up, create a profile, connect with friends etc. But it’s all about choosing a “sponsor” from any number of big brands, then picking your favorite cause from their list, then enabling widgets which say “[Apple] helps me support [charity:water]” using all kinds of nice customizable graphics, which are posted like badges on your profile on all the other social networks you belong to. Then, the more clickthroughs you get from those widgets, the more donations your cause gets from the sponsor. So you don’t have to actually spend any money, what you are doing is leveraging your social power and leveraging your online influence. It’s a little complicated to explain; here’s a good summary from Mashable.

I am not sure how this translates for associations and their causes, if it does at all, but what I find most interesting about it is that it appears to be aimed at younger Millennials. As we know that is a huge generation which, if it grows up comfortable with the concept of supporting charitable causes through social influence and sponsorship with corporations (as well as more traditional giving and volunteering), will become the new leaders of associations in the future and will perhaps bring these ideas about “leveraging the social” into play in a hopefully much more far-reaching way than what we have today. One to keep an eye on.

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