This week, we released a Facebook application to allow meaningful gifts. We’re quite proud of it. The premise is simple.
Facebook has a program that lets you send someone a gift for a buck. That’s a nice way to give someone a cheap gift, and Facebook displays the gift on the receiver’s profile.
We’ve taken the concepts in ChangingThePresent into that virtual world. Now, you can send someone a gift for a buck, but this gift is different. That dollar will go toward any of 200 nonprofits that currently participate. We recognize that small credit card purchases are inefficient, so we allow you the option of covering that cost, and we also allow you to tack on 25 cents to help us keep the light on if you want. Any nonprofit that signs up for a premium listing on ChangingThePresent can participate.
We let you browse gifts by cause or nonprofit, and let you choose the facebook friends that you want to receive a gift. My favorite way to give is the pay-it-forward option. Someone gives you a gift, so you choose to send a gift to someone else.
If this application catches fire, everyone — everyone — wins. People get random gifts, so more people are smiling. And when someone starts smiling randomly, you smile too because you wonder what they did last night.
And while all of this smiling is going on, you can change the world, one gift at a time. Maybe you want to pay a buck toward making a blind person see, or give a kid his first book, or fund a few minutes of cancer research. Nonprofits involved in your favorite cause get more donations.
Here’s the cool part. We’re not just redirecting dollars that would just get donated somewhere else anyway. We’re changing the social norms for what it means to give a gift.
If you like the concept, log on to [Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2551062524) , add the app, and surprise someone you know.
Spend a buck or two. Start a fire.