Tattooing My Body “LIVESTRONG” for Cancer Research
Updated 3/13 at 6:30 p.m.: We have raised $3600. Thank you to the more than 60 donors to date!

As some of you know, I have a close relative came down with cancer last year (he chooses to remain unnamed, but his cancer is now in remission). It turns out that my Cousin Paula (photo below) also came down with breast cancer last year, too (also in remission). That’s why I have decided to donate a little piece of my body to fundraise for cancer research with the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

If I successfully raise $5,000 by midnight on Sunday, I will literally get the LIVESTRONG brand tattooed on my body in Austin at SxSW on Monday. Here’s the donation page, please contribute today. Further, changeblogger and friend John Haydon has committed to getting his own tattoo if we reach $6500 in donations!
Before you laugh too much (OK, go ahead), I just want explain a little bit. The family cancers caused me to become interested in related charities. . There was a possibility of a three year old toddler without a parent, and how we were all going to help out the surviving parent. After my cousin Paula was diagnosed for breast cancer (early stage), she could not get health care coverage for three months. I believe we can change this.
And yes, I am no stranger to tattoos. This would be my seventh, and yes, I can live with LIVESTRONG on my body. I don’t think this is everyone’s cup of tea (see related post)…
So on to SxSW. And with your help, a nice contribution for cancer research and a new tattoo.
P.S. Check out this blog post about the LIVESTRONG brand, where I discussed people tattooing LIVESTRONG on their bodies!
Popularity: 64% [?]
Introducing the Zoetica iPhone Application
Today we launched the Zoetica iPhone application, which provides a complication of nonprofit tech blog feeds handpicked by our CEO Beth Kanter.
Now anyone can read the best #nptech minds and their social media tips from their iPhone (download now). Content feeds included on the application include:
- The Zoetica Link Feed
- The Case Foundation Blog
- Chronicle of Philanthropy Give and Take
- Great NonProfits
- Allison Fine’s Blog
- Social Edge Blogs
- Care2’s FrogLoop
- Britt Bravo’s Have Fun, Do Good Blog
- Working Wikily
- Kivi’s NonProfit Communications Blog
- IdealWare Blog
- Philanthropy 2173
- The NTEN Blog
- Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog
We want to thank AppMakr for partnering with us to build and develop this iPhone application. If you do download, and you have feedback on the application, please let us now.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Choose the LIVESTRONG Tattoo
As many of you know, I am raising money for cancer research in honor of two family members by donating some real estate on my body for a LIVESTRONG tattoo. John Haydon has umped the ante and joined the fundraiser. The response has been outstanding, and we are looking at roughly $500 a day so far in cancer research.
Will we make our goal of $5k? It’s going to be tight, but with a few big hits, who knows? Best to prepare…
In that vein, if successful my tattoo will happen on Sunday night at 10:00 p.m. in Austin at Golden Apple Tattoo Studios (come on by if you’d like). John will get his later on in the week. We need help choosing the design. Here are the three we like… Please choose your favorite, or add a new design in the comments section. And don’t forget to donate.
1)

2)

3)

Popularity: 8% [?]
TrashTalk

TrashTalk is a new initiative from the SENSEable City Lab and inspired by the NYC Green Initiative that’s studying waste management (image by Nevada Tumbleweed). Specifically, the effort seeks to use technology to understand our removal chain as well our supply chain.
The effort uses hundreds of small, smart, location aware tags to examine how we get rid of waste. In the end, the minute details could provide great amounts of data that could yield a more sustainable future.
As we move forward, understanding waste will be a critical component of green life. A recent CauseCast article noted there are three kinds of waste:
1. Primary packaging is what we handle as consumers.
2. Secondary packaging is the term used for the larger cases or boxes that group quantities of primary packaged goods for distribution.
3. Transit packaging refers to the wooden boards, plastic wrapping, and containers that load, transport, and unload these goods.
Recycling has been a past topic, and one that can seriously impact our carbon footprint. In fact, we already see a savings of 300 million tons of carbon a year in the U.S.
There’s so much focus on producing new sustainable products it seems like we forget how important it is to be mindful about what we already consume. I like it when I see initiatives like this with a robot that helps to intelligently recycle plastics. This seems to be the best of both worlds.
What do you think? How can we best address reusing our current products for long-term sustainability.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Winning Online Competitions: A Coalition of the Giving

Zoetica has decided not to counsel potential clients on how to win contests like Pepsi Refresh, but many of you are asking for tips. That’s why when the opportunity came up to publish this guest post by Dan Morrison, CEO of Citizen Effect, I said yes. Hopefully, some folks will find it useful.
Philanthropy competitions are the new fad and mode for giving away millions of dollars to innovative organizations trying to save the world. Last year the Chase Giving Challenge gave away $5 million to 100 nonprofits and this year Pepsi allocated $20 million of its Super Bowl ad budget to launch its Pepsi Refresh Project that is giving away a total of $1.2 million a month to innovative ideas that will save the world.
While most of you have never heard of Scott Beale and Atlas Corp. you need to for two reasons. Atlas Corp is creating a new spin on the Peace Corp that will benefit your organization, and Scott is kicking your butts in these online giving competitions.
In the last 2 years, Scott and Atlas Corp have won $325,000 from online competitions, including $125,000 from the Chase Giving Challenge. And he just did it again by winning one of the ten $50,000 prizes from the Pepsi Refresh Project. This is impressive. But it is borderline unbelievable when you consider Atlas Corp’s 2009 budget was $400.000, they only have 1,700 friends on Facebook, 1,215 followers on Twitter, and an email list of about 12,000 people.
So how did they do it? Scott’s plan to win the Pepsi contest was ingenious and will likely have Chase, Pepsi and other online contests rethinking their rules in the future. Introducing the “Coalition of the Giving.”
The recipe for forming the Coalition of the Giving is simple: part good-hearted collaboration, part reality-TV show Survivor, and part persistence (or spam, depending on your threshold for receiving emails, Facebook updates and Tweets).
The Pepsi Refresh Project included hundreds of ideas from all over the country and Scott knew he would need more than Atlas Corp supporters to win. So how could Scott get people to vote for Atlas Corp that had never heard of them before, much less care about their mission?
Easy, ask another organization competing in the Pepsi Refresh Project to market Atlas Corp to their supporters. This was possible because every voter was given ten votes a day, but each voter could only vote once for a specific organization. That left nine useless votes… unless you could form a coalition and trade votes in a “I’ll vote for you if you vote for me” arrangement.
Scott found six other organizations competing in the contest (two vying for $50K, three for $25K, and one for $250K) and told them that every time he asked someone to vote for Atlas Corp, he would also ask them to vote for everyone in the coalition, as long as they did the same. Here again, Pepsi’s rules worked in Scott’s favor because there were ten prizes of $50,000, so it was not a “winner take all” competition and open to benefiting a collaboration.
Pepsi does not share the number of votes, but let’ assume that 70% of Scott’s supporters still only vote for Atlas Corp. That means that 30% of his supporters will vote for other coalition members. Thirty percent does not seem like a lot but multiply that by six and consider that everyone can vote every day. If Atlas Corp is able to pick up ten voters that vote every day through the coalition, that is 280 votes over the course of the February contest. That may not allow someone to go from worst to first, but it is highly likely that it can move you from a contender to a winner.
The results tell the tale. Six of the seven coalition partners won, that is a combined $225,000 for the coalition.
The strategy was ingenious in part because it was selfish as much it was selfless. Rather than just a “vote for me” play, Atlas Corp adopted a “vote for me and consider these other guys,” play. The better the coalition members did in the standings, the stronger the incentive was to continue with the plan and not defect because if they did, they would be dropped from the coalition and loose all those potential votes.
I am not sure voting contests are the most efficient way to allocate millions of dollars for innovative ideas since they reward innovative voter mobilization strategies rather than innovative projects. But at least in the case of Atlas Corp, both were rewarded, and we all learned a lesson that sometimes collaboration is better than competition. Thank you Scott and best of luck in the next competition, we will be watching.
For more information on Atlas Corp, email Scott Beale at scott@atlascorps.org and learn more about Atlas Corps at www.atlascorps.org. For more information on the author, email Dan Morrison, CEO and Founder of www.CitizenEffect.org, at dan.morrison@CitizenEffect.org.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Photos from the End of the World
At the end of Latin America, across the Strait of Magellan (pictured above) you will find an island called Tierra del Fuego, the island of fire. Part Chile, part Argentina, this magical land plays home to the end of the Andes. As you can see, they just seem to drop into the Ocean down by the Beagle Channel.
You realize Ushuia, the city, is the last port of call before the three day boat ride to Antartica. It’s also the southern most city in the world. It’s kind of stunning and wild to think about.
Tierra del Fuego is an incredible place, sizable and yet surreal. There’s a bizarre feel of calmness to it.
And the wildlife is just amazing as you can see below. I hope you can visit some day. Or if you prefer, check out the whole photo set on Flickr…
Popularity: 6% [?]
Run for Water: Two Weeks Into Training
I work out a lot and 6k or 3.73 miles doesn’t seem like a long distance, but running is a completely different kind of exercise. So I decided to train in advance of Washington, DC’s Dow Live Earth Run for Water on April 18.
Why 6K? It’s symbolic of the distance Africans traverse every day for fresh water, a major daily task. The Dow/Live Earth effort will benefit a ton of charities working on water issues.
I began running and cross-training per the Active plan recommended by Live Earth.
My legs were so sore the first run! I actually ended up going to Fleet Feet and getting new shoes, which have much more cushion. Since then no problems…
Last week during my business trip I took the shoes to the Bay Area. All in all Yesterday was my fifth run, and I am a little ahead of schedule with 30 minutes of running down. I estimate my pace at a mile every 10-12 minutes, so I am roughly 2/3 of the way there.
I feel confident that the 6k will be a piece of cake. Best yet, and I am actually starting to enjoy running.
Geoff Livingston is a regular contributor to the Live Earth blog.
Popularity: 8% [?]
The El Show Episode 23: Spring Is Coming!!!
Episode 23 of the El Show began with a discussion of Spring and then the calamity in Chile. We then went into a variety of topics from Canada and SxSW and Sea World and funding.
Here’s a breakdown of Episode 23:
- Spring is coming, and it can’t happen soon enough
- Chilean earthquake: Prayers and thoughts
- Canada and its great win
- Speaking of Spring… SxSW – It’s time for the geek party
- The Health Summit – Will it spark a bill finally?
- A woman is still 21% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man
- Sea World in crisis: A discussion of how they handled it.
- The Wild Chase for Funding – Revenue vs Funding
Download or listen to the El Show Episode 23 today! Also available on iTunes!
Popularity: 8% [?]
Can a Villain Become an Antihero?
In a great ongoing conversation with Amy Sample Ward about Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and whether companies can authentically engage, we discussed whether they can simply create marketing fanfare or tell a genuine story. Authenticity must be something that truly reflects a culture, not some mechanized program designed to bluff stakeholders. This is particularly true of companies who have been publicly decried for great wrongs. It’s not easy to turn a villain into an antihero.
Not all companies are villains. But the point can be seen the same way. Trust in corporations hit an all time low last year. No one believes that companies — particularly public ones — wants to do more than turn a higher profit for their quarterly earnings statements. The resulting tensions with corporations’ burned communities — employees and customers alike — has resulted in the recent cause marketing turn to revamp and boost tarnished images (See David Conner’s 2nd CSR Internet Revolution post).
Makes sense to me. But to do so branding oneself as an angel doesn’t seem like an authentic path. If one considers the archetypal antihero, they are flawed, and lacking some of the attributes that make a heroic figure, as nobility of mind and spirit… But we love them anyway. Perhaps the best post I’ve read on the archetype is Jocelyn Harmon’s Dirty Harry story.
Perhaps a great example of flawed fanfare can be seen with Pepsi’s Refresh efforts. Surely $20 million in a free-for-all contest would impress many, but contest flaws have marred the efforts. Without a rudder or stated Theory of Change, the campaign seems to be marred.
As Zoetica CEO Beth Kanter said in a post last night, “This strategy is more appropriate for selling products, not social change. Let me say this. If brands want to be authentic in their social media for social good effort, they need a fusion approach that balances marketing with social change.”
Now authenticity isn’t showing flair or a rock song or even dropping $20 million. It’s about demonstrating a little heart and passion, even flaws. Be real, and that’s the problem with many corporate social responsibility programs. They lack a frank pragmatism about business and its internetworked ties to the community. To build trust, people need to believe you’re authentic. Thus over-glossed CSR programs without substantive cultural acknowledgment — even flaws — fail to compel people.
There’s no greater example of flawed CSR — of a villain bound to stay a villain — then WalMart’s current efforts (see Joe Waters: Ten Reasons Why CSR Programs Fail). As I discussed on Wednesday, the primary thrust of WalMart’s CSR effort is its green initiatives.
The big issue with WalMart isn’t the green contributions, which are substantive, albeit new. These are great and in the end are smart for the community… and the bottom line. The problem lies in its continued labor practices, it’s detrimental impact on local economies, and it’s terrible healthcare programs. When you read WalMart’s CSR page, you get no insight that the companyhas these flaws or is even trying to address them.
I wouldn’t like it if WalMart said we hire cheap to keep prices down, but I would respect it. Just like Dirty Harry may be abrasive, but does the right thing (sort of, in a very violent way). I would respect them even more if they invested in creating a more vibrant local economy and universal healthcare initiatives (WalMart does have healthcare initiatives, they just don’t directly address their own employees, just their customers).
Instead I get this, “We’re proud to be a “store of the community” for all of the communities we serve.” Still selling, still promoting. All of the local charity and foundation work does not really address WalMart or its problems. Thus for many, in spite of the fanfare, Walmart remains a villain.
Everyone understands business is business, but if you want CSR to work, a company needs to acknowledge its own place in the world, and its positive and negative impact in the ecosphere. An amends cannot be received if there’s no acknowledgment of wrong. Instead of selling and posturing all the time, simply try to be a part of and contribute, too. Show us who you (a.k.a. the employees and culture) really are.
Popularity: 15% [?]




















