Charitable Gift Giving

The Urgency Network is a new idea in charity fundraising and awareness-raising that’s built for the Social Media generation. It sort of takes the idea of an old fashioned raffle and brings it into the 21st Century.

Here’s how it works. There’ll be a bunch of “Grand Prizes” you can win. These prizes won’t just be your standard run-of-the-mill charity prizes, but will be, in their own words “Larger than life” experiences. As of the launch date today, the prices consist of the following:

• A personal meeting with Sir Paul McCartney. You can win roundtrip airfare for two to San Francisco, VIP passes to the 2013 Outside Lands Festival, 4 nights accommodations, attending Paul McCartney’s soundcheck, dinner backstage, and a signed copy of “Wings Over America”.
• A personal meeting with Sir Richard Branson. You can win roundtrip airfare for two to New York, 2 nights accommodations, and and meet and greet with Sir Richard Branson and many of the leaders in the environmental industry.
• A personal meeting with Sir Linkin Park. Okay, Linkin Park has not got their knighthood (yet), but you can win a trip to Tokyo and rock out at the 2013 Summer Sonic Festival to Metallica, Nas, M.I.A., Fall Out Boy, Alt-J, Linkin Park, and more.

The raffles support all kinds of campaigns, from Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic to Carbon War Room’s Ten Island Renewable Challenge to Power the World’s efforts to get safe, clean energy to the world’s poor. As time goes by, we’ll no doubt be seeing many more charities and grand prizes (including, it appears from the video below, a trip to space courtesy of the aforementioned Sir Richard Branson).

Additionally, The Urgency Network will provide top-performing campaigns an opportunity to win a portion of The Jackpot, which is fueled by foundations and corporate sponsors. The first Jackpot up for grabs will be a $1 million dollar media grant provided by PVBLIC Foundation who harnesses the power of unused media space to help nonprofits amplify their message.

So how can you enter the contest? Well, each time you “take action”, you’ll get another entry into the raffle. “Action” can take many forms, from donating money to signing a petition to watching a video to “liking” the charity on Facebook or following it on Twitter,  to telling a friend about it. The more actions you take, the more entries you’ll get.

You can also buy merchandise on the site, which will also get you entries. As of this writing, the merchandise ranges from a $25 water bottle to a $15,000 drum set owned by Linkin Park’s own Rob Bourdon. There are also cool little prizes scattered about; for $100, you can have Linkin Park mention you in a Tweet!

Here’s more information about it:

The ingenious part about this idea is that it taps into our constantly plugged-in culture. Instead of Tweeting about what you had for breakfast today, how about a Tweet that helps a great cause, and may get you the experience of a lifetime?