Badge Brigade

Charity Badge is not the first widget of this kind. ChipIn was the first to offer an online community fundraising tool like this. Fundraising software providers GetActive, Kintera and Convio also have made their own badges available to clients.

Katya Andresen, vice president of marketing for Network for Good, an online charitable resource for donors, volunteers and charities that allows visitors to donate to the more than 1 million charities listed in its database, says the company’s creation of the badge was motivated by two things: 1) the general online trend toward user-generated content — YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, AIM pages, etc. — and 2) growth in the nonprofit sector of person-to-person fundraising, i.e., organizations using their strongest supporters to appeal to their friends and families to raise money.