CauseWired

Ben Casnocha, the author of My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley has interesting post on his blog about a young Duke University student with a rare disease who has - in part -used Facebook Causes in his battle to fund life-saving research. Ben writes about Josh Sommer, a junior who was diagnosed with chordoma, a rare bone cancer with low survival rates:

He and his mom launched the Chordoma Foundation to promote research of potential cures and galvanize the research community. He works 30 hours a week in Duke labs with professors who have agreed to study the problem. In the meantime, he lobbies congress to implement legislation that would better prevent the accumulation of toxic mold in buildings as toxic mold in his house partly caused his disease.

A few weeks ago, Josh raised $4,200 over three days for his foundation on Facebook “Causes”. By securing the most individual donations within a 24 hour period, he won Facebook’s $1k prize. About 1,300 people (mostly college students - like me) contributed small amounts of money to the cause. Talk about micro-philanthropy!

Micro-philanthropy indeed. I’ve said a bunch of times that the actual funds raised through Causes may be small, but the large numbers of people participating actually sets the table to future involvement and larger fundraising. Here’s a full profile of Josh in the Charlotte News & Observer.

The CauseWired resume is a good one to have these days: the New Organizing Institute, formed to train online organizers to work on campaigns, reports a huge supply-demand imbalance in the market for people who know how to use online tools to help candidates and causes:

We are seeking to fill an urgent need among progressive campaigns and organizations. Right now, they’re hitting a brick wall when trying to fill new online organizer or Internet director positions. A network of talented, sophisticated and experienced operatives simply does not exist in the field of online organizing the way it does in the established areas of field organizing, fundraising or campaign management.