SFist Cares ... About One Million Dollars
SFist is a bit conflicted. On the one hand we love, and support, local bookstores and libraries - a position which tends to be at odds with Amazon.com. But Amazon is doing a great thing and, as it turns out, we can be bought.
Amazon.com has chosen 10 finalists, from nearly 1000 entries, to win its first Nonprofit Innovation Award. The organizations go all out to raise money during September. They use Amazon's 1-Click system to collect the money, and each contributor can only donate a maximum of $1000 (the point is to get new, individual donors interested in these organizations). At the end of September, the one that raised the most wins. They keep the money they've already raised and get the $1 million prize.
Two of the finalists are based in San Francisco - EARN and KickStart. How do you vote for them? You vote with cash, baby!
EARN, founded in 2001, works to end poverty locally by helping working people acquire assets. Asset-building is, as you may imagine, a difficult thing to do when you live paycheck to paycheck and barely scrape by but having assets is what marks moving out of the ranks of the working poor and into long-term financial stability. They provide this aid largely in the form of an Individual Development Account (IDA) called EARN 2-for-1 where EARN matches the money each person saves - $2 for every $1 saved. The money can be used to purchase a home, a small business or fund a college or vocational education. Investors also receive financial management education appropriate to the kind of asset they want to acquire. Donate to EARN here.
KickStart, with offices in SF and Nairobi, works to help end poverty in Africa. That sounds like a big job, but they've got an innovative way to do it. They develop and market new technologies (and we're not talking Web 2.0 here - these are really affordable, manual products) and then sells them to local entrepreneurs who use them to establish small local businesses. Which then hire local workers and give people a chance to work their way out of poverty. Donate to KickStart here.
Stanford Business School's Center for Social Innovation helped Amazon narrow down the 1000 entries to twenty-five and then a panel, which included people like Muhammad Ali and Henry Kissinger (and also Tea Leoni. We know why, we just find her weird), picked the final ten.
And now you can help pick a winner. One million dollars could make an enormous difference to these organizations - all ten are very worthy.
This is a totally aside complaint, but why when Amazon.com's pages say something like "Learn more about ... at www.url.com" is the www.url.com not hyperlinked?! Is that just too much trouble?! Why does Amazon hate urls?