Kevin Bacon, famous for the well-known (and really hard) drinking game Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon, has teamed up with Network For Good to create Six Degrees, a charity badge sharing site that lets you give money to the favorite charities of your favorite celebrities or to the charity of your choice. The badges that you or people like Seth Green and Ricky Gervais created can be put on any webpage, and you and your crew can keep track of the donations. The donations are processed through Network For Good, which takes a hefty cut of 4.75% that the donor can choose to absorb or pass on to the charity.
ChipIn is a flash widget that you can also put on any website that allows you to accept and track donations through others’ badges. Unlike the Network For Good badges, the ChipIn widget has a handy-dandy little thermometer that shows you how close you are to your goal, and the donations go through PayPal, which takes only 2.9%. The downside is that you can’t customize the buttons at all, and let’s face it, celebrities’ faces tend to be more attractive than the ChipIn logo.
I think ChipIn is clearly the better project, but Six Degrees has the Network For Good marketing muscle behind it. This is one of those unfortunate instances where the better marketed product is not as good as its lesser-known competitor. Bummer.
The difference in fees is something that really can’t be overstated. And ChipIn supports a clear trend in online philanthropy: the preference of people to support individual projects rather than organizations. You can give to a particular project within an organization, which might annoy many orgs but please the new breed of online donors who abhor overhead costs and worship at the altar of efficiency.
Plus, there are plenty of worthy causes that are not charities registered with the IRS that ChipIn can support. If your kid’s soccer team needs new uniforms or your neighborhood wants to buy the local homeless guy a sleeping bag, ChipIn is flexible enough to accomadate you, while Network For Good will only deal with nonprofits that have been blessed by the IRS.
I gotta admit, Six Degrees is clever and slick. Good site design, a brilliant jiu-jitsu style transformation of a drinking game into a charitable endeavor, and famous celebrities. Not the washed up, B grade ones, either. It certainly has a bright future, and I hope they can steer the absurd cult of celebrity in this country to support worthy causes instead of fragrance lines and shampoo companies.
But I hope people don’t lose sight of ChipIn, a less glitzy but ultimately more solid offering.
Tags: Kevin Bacon, Six Degrees, Network For Good, ChipIn, nptech, philanthropy, donations
8 Comments so far
Leave a comment
Non-Governmental Imagination 
Dear Sirs:
Comment by Cecilia Esuivel de Arias January 22, 2007 @ 5:47 amI’m the president of “ORATORIO DON BOSCO SOR MARIA ROMERO” a Costa Rican non profit organization.
We work with “street kids” (boys and grils from 7-18 years old) and give them education, food, cloth. But we also work with their families because the kids go to their homes after being the whole day at the institution.
Right now, we are in a very difficult economic situation and we will appreciate any help. For more information visit our website. You will find there the differents programs that we have with the kids, all of them sponsored by the government institutions of the country.
Sincerely
Cecilia Esquivel de Arias
cecitica@yahoo.com
Another website that specializes in online philanthropy is . The difference between Firstgiving and Chip-in is that Firstgiving directly transfers the funds to the non-profit organization. They can do this because they are partnered with GuideStar, a national registry of nearly 2MM non-profits. That way no one has to worry about where the money is going or even set up a paypal account.
It’s a very simple website to use and easy to personalize with a picture and personal message. Also Firstgiving has a widget that provides a real-time gauge of your fundraising progress and a direct link to your page. Using Firstgiving.com is an excellent way to connect your online network with your favorite non-profit!
Comment by Brittany January 22, 2007 @ 4:21 pmSeth,
Greetings. Chipin widgets today have a very limited customization feature set. We have been working the past several months on a completely revamped Chipin product that should be ready soon. We will have multiple levels of widget customization along with very robust reporting for each widget based on where they are located. The current Chipin site has been frozen while we are in development. We are also in talks with partners to provide a payment option for funds to go directly to NPO’s (via guidestar’s list) More soon!
Comment by carnet January 24, 2007 @ 8:54 amYep very true. Guys have you looked in to PeerDreams.com . Because its a very new site projects get automatically promoted by the site marketing team. Charities who don’t have much much
Comment by Niro June 13, 2008 @ 12:27 amIf you want to get the products of your choice, online
Comment by amazon singapore April 8, 2013 @ 10:30 amshopping is the best way to go ahead with. When you shop online, you can
get what you want quickly. I will generally just select everything on
the page and copy it into an email manually.
It’s a costume that features a straddle that fits tightly around your pets chest. Available in five rich color combinations, including Malachite, a moss green and rich beige duo. It shouldn’t be any different from your gifts for fathers day.
Comment by Shana May 24, 2013 @ 8:17 amIf you are tired of all the trendy toys out there, this is
Comment by lego iron man June 22, 2013 @ 7:27 ama classic you can’t go wrong with. Almost everyone can probably recall playing with them as a child, putting together figures and taking them apart without any regard for what they were doing. With so many different characters, the option to play the story as a villain, and so many activities to do on Lego Batman, it can be played over and over.
Odors are generally caused by bacteria and particles that travel through the air, so by eliminating those particles, you
can see a smell go away relatively quickly.
Keep this plant away from pets and small children, as it is toxic if eaten.
You will find more information that will help you as regards or other related oreck air purifier review, corinthian, neoair enviro plus air purifier neoair plus two, air filters purifiers reviews.
Comment by http://technorati.com March 6, 2014 @ 2:48 pm