I've been really fascinated by how online activism has continued to grow and thrive in the last year or so.
(At least my awareness of it has grown.) Just recently, I added a little widget to the sidebar on your left from a site called
Ripple, which works in a similar way to
The Hunger Site. Different from The Hunger Site, however, is that when you click on the Ripple widget, you're taken to a page that gives you 4 categories of donation: water, food, education, and money. Whichever category you choose to click, you're taken to a page with an advertisement and the revenue for that ad is donated to a non-profit organization that fits the category
(eg., Grameen microfinancing in the "money" category or WaterAid in the "water" category). So, essentially, companies
(often with an insatiable thirst for logo recognition) will give money to one of the Ripple-sponsored charities just to win some ad space on your computer screen for a few seconds.
The other way that Ripple works is through
Google Search. Every time you use Google through the Ripple site, the search giant gives money to Ripple who pass 100% of the proceeds to their 4 charities.
This is a remarkable and innovative way to raise money for good causes, especially given that annual online ad revenue
climbed from about $2 billion in 1998 to
more than $21 billion in 2007. Way back in 2000,
Naomi Klein quoted a 1998 UN Human Development Report that said the growth of global spending on advertising "now outpaces the growth of the world economy by one-third."
(Makes one wonder how the pace has continued to climb in the last 10 years!) With that kind of spending in the ad industry, my hunch is that there is plenty of room for further innovation in filtering a chunk of that revenue to good causes,
à la
Ripple and
The Hunger Site.
CLICK HERE to read an article about other ways in which to use the web to promote justice and social change. Also, have a look at
THIS ARTICLE to read more about the potential in social media for social good.
