My friend Kara Swisher at All Things D needs a hand, so I told her I would reach out to my vast blog readership — are you listening, Mom? — in an attempt to help out. You see, Kara wants to have lunch with Yahoo co-founder and now CEO Jerry Yang. Actually, that’s not the real reason she needs a hand. The real reason is that she has set up a page at DonorsChoose.org, a Web 2.0 charity site that allows you to pick worthwhile school projects that need financing and then let others contribute to the cause.
Apart from the satisfaction of knowing that they are helping to finance educational materials and other projects for needy schools, the contestants in the blogger challenge get a chance at a number of awards from sponsors, including — you guessed it — lunch with Jerry Yang. Kara has set up a page with some projects in both San Francisco and Washington, D.C. and other leading bloggers have set up pages as well, including Fred Wilson and Lockhart Steele from Gawker Media.
The idea of Donors Choose — where individuals decide which worthy projects to fund, and then others can contribute, with each project and the financing thereof monitored by Donors Choose — reminds me of GiveMeaning.com, the site that Tom Williams started a couple of years ago now, which takes the same kind of approach to a whole range of different charitable efforts, from building soccer fields in Rwanda to building schools in Ethiopia.
At the moment, Kara’s competitive blood has to be boiling at the fact that Fred’s challenge is currently in the lead. Beating him would make lunch taste even sweeter, I bet 🙂 An earlier piece that Kara did about Donors Choose getting funded is here.
Update:
Kara has a video plea for donors up now. Check it out.