Sussex-based lawyer Hilary Thorpe has become what is thought to be the first person in the UK to serve a court summons via Facebook, using a case in Australia as inspiration to seek permission from a local County Court.
The Telegraph reports that Ms Thorpe found it difficult to get a debtor to attend court to answer questions about their finances, trying all traditional methods of contacting the individual. She recalled a case in Australia that saw a lawyer, who was representing a financial lender, serve legally binding documents to a couple and wondered if the same could be done in the UK.
Enquiring as to whether a British court would allow a summons to be served using a similar system, Ms Thorpe received permission from Hastings County Court, meaning she was then able to log in and serve the court order via the world’s most popular social network.
She said yesterday:
“It is great to see that the courts are willing to embrace new technology.
Being able to use Facebook to do so will certainly assist in the case and allow our client creditor the possibility of obtaining further information to enforce the debt.”
The request was submitted by Ms Thorpe’s employer, legal firm Gaby Hardwicke, which had to prove that the defendants frequented Facebook and state the reasons why serving documents via the social network would be appropriate.Image Credit
Thanks to the social web, each of us has the unprecedented ability to offer not only monetary support but also the reach of our own online networks in support of a cause. Non-profits can also tap into a myriad of sites enhanced by social media to turbo-charge fundraising campaigns and galvanize supporters.
Picking up where last year’s list left off, here are some of the best funding sites that leverage social networks and online crowds to help you do some (social) good. If there are others that you find worthwhile, please share them in the comments.
Fully integrated into the world’s largest social network, Causes lets Facebook users launch and participate in online campaigns for collective action, like fundraising, signing petitions and garnering attention for a cause or organization.
For Donors: The Causes application prompts individuals to create grassroots communities or “causes” in support of specific issues or non-profit organizations and then invite their Facebook friends to join them in their efforts.
For Non-profits: Non-profits can use Causes to build communities of supporters, run fundraising campaigns, distribute petitions and build a volunteer base for free. In order to accept donations through Causes, a non-profit must be a 501(c)3 that is also registered with GuideStar. Non-profits still must pay the 4.75% processing fee via Network for Good.
Crowdrise offers online tools for personal fundraising, event fundraising, special occasion fundraising, team fundraising and sponsored volunteerism. Star power from co-founder Edward Norton and social media-powered, high-profile fundraisers have helped set this crowdfunding tool apart from others.
For Donors: In addition to starting a fundraising campaign, giving to one, volunteering or interacting within Crowdrise, you can accumulate points for your activities. You’ll earn 10 points for every dollar raised or donated and double points for giving to a featured charity. Top point winners get prizes such as electronics, clothing and giftcards.
For Non-profits: Non-profits can benefit from Crowdrise’s turn-key solution meant to complement their existing fundraising and volunteer activities. Basic accounts are free, and there is a $299/year cost for a Featured Account. Crowdrise deducts 5% on donations made through their site with a $1 transaction fee for donations under $25 or a $2.50 transaction fee for donations of $25 and up.
This site provides a secure donation system that powers the online fundraising efforts of many non-profits. It also has a Volunteer Network to connect individuals across the country with more than 200,000 virtual, local and global volunteer opportunities.
For Donors: Some people may not ever come into direct contact with Network for Good until they make an online contribution to a non-profit that uses DonateNow behind the scenes. But you can go to the Network for Good site and make donations and manage your giving history directly. You can also set up automated monthly giving, buy a charity gift card, or download a badge for your favorite charity to add to your website or blog.
For Non-profits: Using the DonateNow service, you can select from three plans: “Lite,” for a 5% fee per donation; “Main,” with a one-time account setup fee of $199.00 and a monthly fee of $49.95; and “DonateNow Deluxe” for $99 per month. The latter two plans have a 3% donation fee. They also offer a service called EventsNow powered by givezooks with transaction fees of 5.5% and $0.99 per ticket or donation and a fee-based e-mail service powered by Emma.
This site vets every classroom project request submitted by teachers and processes donor transactions. They then purchase all related classroom materials, ship the items directly to the schools and notify the principal of the pending shipments. They close the loop by providing photos of each project taking place with teacher and student letters and a cost report showing how donations were spent.
For Donors: You can donate to the classroom project of your choice and then invite your social network friends, fans and followers to join your efforts.
For Non-profits:Teachers are encouraged to submit classroom projects to the site and to use social media to garner support. Projects less than $400 have the best chance of being funded.
This site empowers individuals to raise money for causes easily and provides non-profits with fundraising campaign management tools.
For Donors: The site provides individuals with the tools to raise money or donate to a cause. Donors can choose to cover the fees that are normally passed on as a transaction fee to the non-profit.
For Non-Profits: FirstGiving partners with non-profit organizations so they can plan, execute and measure their online fundraising campaigns. Non-profits can sign up for an account and receive donations weekly, less a 5% fee. Non-profits can also let their supporters know that anyone can create fundraising pages on behalf of the organization.
Givezooks! is geared toward non-profits and provides them with tools to manage fundraising efforts. Fundraisers on givezooks! can be promoted using e-mail, widgets and through social media channels.
For Donors: While not specifically geared toward the individual donor, givezooks! provides a grassroots fundraising tool for non-profits. In turn, non-profits can encourage people like you to create grassroots fundraising campaigns on their behalf and individuals can tap into their own personal social networks for additional support.
For Non-profits: To get started, non-profits pick a plan, create a custom givezooks! fundraiser: a campaign, event or wish list. Organizations also select their payment gateway: Sage, PayPal, CyberSource, Authorize.net or AmazonPayments. The givezooks! Social Fundraising platform starts at $129 per month. Their Events product is priced separately based on a transaction fee starting at 2%.
HelpAttack! wants to make it easy and fun for anyone to “turn social actions into social good.” Anyone can pledge any amount of money for each action they take online (currently on Twitter and Facebook) and give it to their favorite non-profits. There’s a gaming and discovery component so users can unlock coins and learn about new non-profits and causes to support.
For Donors: Sign in to HelpAttack! with your Twitter or Facebook ID, choose a non-profit from the site’s database to support and pledge a specific amount per action for a 30-day period. Then simply go about your tweeting, commenting, uploading photos to Facebook, and engaging with your friends online. At the end of 30 days, the site tallies your social activities, and you can return to the site to make good on your promise.
For Non-profits: Any 501(c)(3) can be included in the site’s database and cultivate philanthropists from their fans and followers. The fee for non-profits is 4.75% via Network For Good. HelpAttack! has a freemium model with the paid upgrade costing $25 at sign up and an additional 4% from the donation stream.
Jumo, a registered 501(c)(3) organization, considers itself a social network that connects individuals and organizations. Created by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, its functionality is linked closely with Facebook.
For Donors: You must have a Facebook account to sign up and use. As a donor, you can find issues and projects to support, follow related news and support those causes. In some cases, you donate to an organization through a donate button on their Jumo page.
For Non-profits: Jumo is open to all organizations or groups with a charitable mission. Non-profits can add their organizations or projects by clicking on “Add a Project” at the bottom of every site page. In some cases, a page may already be set up in an organization’s name, and they can click “Become the administrator” on the page to claim it. To receive donations through Jumo, non-profits must provide their organization’s EIN. Donations on Jumo are processed via Network for Good so there is a 4.75% fee per transaction.
Founded 11 years ago, JustGive was created to help individuals find charities to support. The JustGive Guide narrows a database of over 1.5 million charities (from Guidestar) down to the 1,000 organizations that meet stringent requirements and then groups them into 19 categories. The site also offers various ways individuals can support their causes, such as charity gift cards, charity wedding registrations and charity gift collections.
For Donors: The minimum donation through the site is $10 and payments can be made via American Express, Discover, MasterCard, or Visa. You can also set up recurring donations to process on a monthly basis. Track the donations you make through your giving history, which helps at tax time.
For Non-profits: To create or correct their listing on JustGive, a non-profit needs to first register with Guidestar. Organizations can set up a JustGive donation page and download a “Donate Now” button to put on their website or blog and lead donors to JustGive to process donations. JustGive provides a record of donations downloadable as a CSV or PDF file. There are no setup costs but there is a 3% fee per donation.
Razoo provides tools to search for and donate to charities, create an online fundraiser with no setup fees or monthly subscriptions and collaborate through social media.
For Donors: You can find and support your favorite cause or non-profit or set up your own fundraiser. You can also organize a team or join someone else’s to raise money including races and mission trips.
For Non-profits: With Razoo, non-profits can accept online donations and create fundraising campaigns for specific projects or start a fundraiser for a good cause. You can also claim access to your organization’s listing (based on the IRS Business Master File) to share your stories for free on your fundraising page and use the DonateAnywhere widget to accept donations through Razoo. Razoo’s per donation transaction fee is 2.9% with an additional 2.0% for team fundraising tools.
SocialVibe is part of the social offerings from branding agency Svnetwork. The company refers to SocialVibe as a “social media utility” that connects people with brands in support of causes.
For Donors: By interacting with brands who have set up campaigns on SocialVibe, you can contribute to non-profit organizations partnered with the site. Each time you share branded content on your social media channels and blogs, you earn points that translate into micro-donations for the cause of your choice. The more social media accounts you connect to SocialVibe, the greater your impact. You can also add the SocialVibe app to your Facebook profile.
For Non-profits: SocialVibe is limited in how it works specifically with non-profits. It is currently affiliated with 40 charitable partners in the areas of education, environment, heath, hunger and poverty, animals, arts and culture, and peace and human rights.
Sparked is an online-only volunteer network that incorporates crowdsourcing principles to bring talented individuals together in support of non-profits.
For Donors: Instead of donating money, you’re giving time and in-kind contributions. And if you have a spare moment, Sparked will help you fill it. You provide the site with your specific skills, such as copywriting or graphic design. Specify what types of causes interest you such as environmental or health. You’ll then start receiving requests from the site to help non-profits on relevant projects such as developing copy and designing a new direct mail piece for a conversation project.
For Non-profits: Any non-profit can create a profile specifying their sector and needs. They can then post challenges that are distributed to the vast volunteer network. Note that this site does not provide fundraising tools.
Conclusion
Before heading to any of these sites, take a look at the trends in social fundraising outlined by Geoff Livingston and then go forth and do social good. Hopefully, these resources will help you be strategic about your asking and giving.
Special thanks to Beth Kanter, Maggie Christ, Debi Aronson Pfitzenmaier and Andrea Weckerle who contributed input during the researching of this post.
Interested in more Social Good news? Check out Mashable Explore, a new way to discover resources and information on your favorite Mashable topics.
The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck the coast of Japan Friday was the most powerful in Japan’s history. The earthquake launched a devastating tsunami that covered many of Japan’s northern coastal cities in water, created a nuclear crisis and set off tsunami warnings as far away as Hawaii and California. Japan’s prime minister, Naoto Kan, referred to the quake as Japan’s “worst crisis since World War II.”
While many reacted to the disaster on Twitter, others took the conversation to Facebook. The social network counted 4.5 million status updates from 3.8 million users across the world on March 11 that mentioned “Japan,” “earthquake” or “tsunami.” The animated graphic above plots these status updates at 10 points in time.
Most of these status updates shared news, reports and prayers. For some, Facebook provided a way to quickly get in touch with loved ones in devastated areas.
In the aftermath, the conversation continues as people post news and spread word about ways — including using Facebook — to aid the victims. A partnership between Zynga, Facebook and Save the Children allows users to donate money through the purchase of virtual goods in Zynga games. Users can also donate to either the American Red Cross or Save the Children‘s relief efforts using Facebook causes.
Facebook is to unveil a new daily discount deals service, similar to Groupon, that will provide its 500 million members with the opportunity to purchase products or services at significantly reduced prices.
Bloomberg reports that Facebook will initially offer deals in San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas, working with local businesses to highlight deals to users in specific areas and allow them to share them with their friends.
Facebook has confirmed reports, noting that the new deal service will launch in within weeks:
Local businesses will be able to sign up to use this feature soon, and people will be able to find Deals in the coming weeks.
By entering the daily deals space, Facebook will be able to leverage its massive userbase to provide very real competition to Groupon and other rival services that have had to build their communities from scratch. With Facebook Places Deals already live in North America and selected countries across Europe, users will already be familiar with location-based promotions and coupons.
Facebook has also partnered with third-party services, providing users with discount offers from companies including ReachLocal, Gilt City, Tippr, HomeRun.com, PopSugar City, KGB Deals, Plum District and Zozi.Image Credit
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
With more than 500 million active users on Facebook, there are more potential customers using Facebook than there are logging into eBay and Amazon combined.
Most of these users don’t see the site as a purchasing platform, but more and more businesses are adding an option to use the social networking site to browse and buy their products. These four Facebook apps offer flexible options for adding a storefront to your business page.
Free beta app Payvment allows you to handle your entire e-commerce operation through Facebook. The app allows you to accept credit card and PayPal payments, which are credited to your PayPal account. You can customize charges for shipping and choose whether to charge sales tax.
Unless you disable the option, your products will also appear in searches people make on other Payvment storefronts when they choose to search “all of Facebook.”
Other helpful features include selling multiple quantities of an item from one listing, give discounts to customers who like your page and adding options like sizes or colors to item listings.
Store owners have access to their selling histories and order statuses, and they are able to send messages to buyers through the app. Implementing Payvment’s instant payment notification can help keep on top of orders as they’re made.
Shopping cart software Volusion‘s Facebook storefront creates a tab on your business’s Facebook page that allows you to showcase items in your online store. Some templates include options to tweet or share specific items, and shoppers can search by customizable categories or with a search bar. In order to set the store up, you need to install the Storefront Social app. The basic package costs $9.95 per month.
You cannot use the store as your sole storefront because there is no way to complete a transaction using the platform. Rather, people who wish to buy your products are directed to the product URL that you provide.
If you are a seller on eBay or Amazon, you could link to your listings on those sites, as well.
Like Storefront Social, BigCommerce SocialShop doesn’t allow transactions. Rather, it directs users interested in products to an online store — in this case, a BigCommerce online store — and allows them to share their products on their walls.
Because BigCommerce is a full e-commerce platform, it’s a more extensive Facebook storefront tab option. At $24.99 per month for the most basic package, it’s also the most expensive.
E-commerce site builder Ecwid also has a Facebook storefront option, but unlike BigCommerce SocialShop, the app allows customers to drag and drop products into a shopping bag and check out without leaving Facebook. You can integrate the same store on your website, MySpace profile, LinkedIn profile, or Tumblr by copying and pasting a widget code.
Basic accounts are free, but selling more than 100 items will cost you $17 per month.
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