Ahead of the upcoming anniversary of the September 11th attacks, McCann Worldgroup has partnered with a motorcycle club called “Ride with the 40″ to raise money for a national memorial at the Flight 93 crash site. According to AgencySpy, 3 producers from McCann have joined Ride with the 40 on a cross-country road trip to generate funds by utilizing social media throughout the journey.

The concept is to encourage people to donate to the cause via their web site and via text message, but also to create a community effort by inviting people to participate in social networking with Ride with the 40 and fellow followers. Ride with the 40 are utilizing Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare to document their journey, which began in Newark, NJ last week and will end in San Francisco. read more

It looks like Tumblr has had its fill of the oil fiasco that has now turned the bluish green gulf of Mexico into a red and black dead zone that is threatening wildlife (as the image above shows).

In order to encourage users to help fund efforts to protect what’s left of the gulf ecosystem, Tumblr has changed everyone’s dashboard background to a “heart-of-BP-executive black” unless they choose to donate $5 to a specific charity. read more

Drew Carey, or @DrewFromTV on Twitter, wants more followers. He also wants to donate money to Lance Armstrong’s charity organization Livestrong. So why not do both at the same time? If Drew Carey gets 1 million followers by December 31st this year, he’ll donate $1 million to Livestrong. And if he gets less? Well, it’s a buck a follower, so it’ll be money for Livestrong no matter what. Right now @DrewFromTV is at 73,814 followers, but that’ll probably change. read more

DonorsChoose.org managed to raise $275,000 for public schools in last year’s Social Media Challenge. This year’s edition is sponsored by HP, and up and running already.

For the competition, each competing blogger and twitterer creates a unique “Giving Page” at DonorsChoose.org filled with his or her favorite classroom projects. A “leaderboard” at http://www.donorschoose.org/social-media-challenge-2009 displays the Giving Pages and tracks the live competition progress by total amount donated.

Naturally they want to do even better this year, and you can participate with your own blog as well.

There is a street named “@arjanelfassed”, after the Twitter account with the same name. Isn’t that amazing? Well yes, it is, but it’s not as big as it sounds. There is a Dutch website that sells street names in a Palestinian refugee camp, giving the proceeds to the Palestinian Child Care Society. Wired’s Epicenter have the full story, with quotes and details. So while it is not as big as having a street named after your Twitter account in central New York, it is for a good cause.

23andme, the biotech company co-founded by Anne Wojcicki AKA Sergey Brin’s wife, has given the topic sponsored tweets a new spin. According to Techcrunch the company has agreed to pay $1 for the first 500 tweets with both the hashtags #blamedrewscancer and #23andme.

#Blamedrewscancer is a Twitter campaign which went viral very quickly after Drew Olanof was diagnosticized with cancer earlier this year. Ever since then Drew started blaming his cancer for everything, also via Twitter. On 09.09.09 Drew organizes a 24hour Blame-A-Thon which is also sponsored by 23andme. All proceeds of the Twitter publicity stunt and the Blame-A-Thon will go to the Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong Foundation.

We all know that blogging is a rewarding endeavor. Now imagine if you could take that joy and add in an element of philanthropy? ActionAid Australia, an international anti-poverty agency, is planning to send up to 10 bloggers to poverty-stricken countries, in an effort to establish a network of outreach blogs.

Part of the gig includes setting locals up with the equipment and know-how they need to tell their stories. read more

If you like to give a little to charity without actually giving anything, you can install the new SocialVibe widget on your WordPress.com blog. What it does is that it lets you pick one of the available causes, and then a sponsor will pay every time the SocialVibe widget is loaded, of course showing the sponsor message to cover the bills. Doesn’t cost you anything other than screen real-estate, which it might very well be worth. More details on how it works in the WordPress.com Support area.

Self-hosted WordPress users can nab the plugin, and everyone else can find a suitable solution on the SocialVibe website.

The results of last month’s Blogging for a Cause are in (in fact, they were in last week but I was on vacation so missed the announcement).

Though it was a fairly small online campaign by some standards, it generated over 400 blog posts in support of around 60 charities and not-for-profit organizations. read more

Zemanta will give away $6,000 to the most blogged about charities during May as part of the Blogging For a Cause challenge.

Three grand will come from the prize money Zemanta won at the Change The Web Challenge last week, while the other half will come from partner Weber Shandwick’s Social Innovation Greenhouse.

Zemanta’s CEO, Ales Spetic, said, “It doesn’t matter what you normally blog about, we want you to write at least one post this month about the cause or charity that matters the most to you. read more