游戏邦注：本文谈论的慈善社交网站Causes.com是由Facebook创始人马克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）的室友乔·格林（Joe Green）和Facebook前总裁西恩·帕克（Sean Parker）联合创立。

Sean Parker（左）和Joe Green

在线行动主义平台Causes.com最近迁离加里福利亚州的伯克利，转而搬到旧金山的金融区，游戏邦发现，伯克利堪称线下行动主义的精神家园，而旧金山则是对冲基金以及其他类似投资的精神领地。

公司如今坐落于办公大厦的顶楼，独享城市全景及露天平台，Causes联合创始人乔·格林本周在NetworkEffect访谈中表示，该地方此前为一家日本对冲基金公司的办公地点。

这似乎有点不协调，但格林表示，这里的租金比旧金山SOMA（IBM所推服务）邻居Twitter附近不尽人意的办公场所要便宜得多，同时也是近来初创公司争相入驻的热门地点。

Causes从2007年开始就一直通过为用户和非营利性机构提供互动来支持行动主义和慈善事业。游戏邦获悉，该公司从NEA和Founders Fund等风险投资商那融得1600万美元的资金，格林希望把非营利性机构市场化，让各大机构就捐赠人数和捐款金额进行竞争。

格林表示，美国的慈善机构每年募款3000亿美元，而音乐行业的营收也就120亿美元，“慈善领域是唯一未经互联网洗礼的行业”。

格林表示，Causes和Facebook生生相息，“从很多方面来说，我们可以算是Facebook平台的一大幸存者。”Causes最初仅是一款Facebook应用，如今发展成了基于Facebook Connect功能的网站，游戏邦获悉，该网站用户现已达1.5亿。

在1.5亿名用户中，有100万名用户曾在Causes捐过款，1200万名签过请愿书。Causes当然希望探索新方式，让更所用户加入网站。

从很多方面来看，Causes的发展轨迹和社交游戏颇为相似，游戏显然是迄今为止Facebook上最成功的应用。游戏邦认为，二者从本质上来说都是借助病毒式传播渠道进行扩散的，通过邀请朋友来扩大用户群。

但从某些方面来看，游戏实际上比Causes更胜一筹。Zynga本周一宣布，其通过向游戏玩家出售虚拟商品和向Lady Gaga粉丝出售手镯为日本地震海啸的灾后重建工作筹集了300万美元的善款。Zynga从2009年以来陆续为慈善事业募款1000万美元。

而Causes从2007年至今也筹集了3000万美元的善款，本月又为日本海啸募款80万美元。

Causes

但光就募款金额进行比较显得有失公平。Causes可以实现用户同2.5万家非营利性机构之间的互动，且参与的方式并不拘泥于捐款，还可以通过签定请愿书。游戏邦认为这相对于购买虚拟的商品来说，是个更丰富的体验。

即便如此，游戏行业还是很多地方可供借鉴。Causes最近和3家社交游戏支付方式公司达成合作关系：TrialPay，SocialVibe和SupersonicAds。这些公司为Causes用户提供视频广告，网站用户每浏览一条广告，就可为某社会事业筹款0.1美元。

所以除了捐款之外，用户还可以通过“捐出时间”为公益事业做贡献。早期的测试发现，Causes用户一天就把网站的视频广告资源消耗殆尽。

在在线活动中融入慈善捐款并非新点子，如Freerice.com，但游戏邦认为，有趣的是Causes直接和社交游戏“交易性广告”供应商进行合作。

Green表示，“我们并不打算成为游戏公司，但我们和游戏公司确实存在有趣的相似之处。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

What Causes.com Has Learned About Non-Profit Fundraising From Zynga

Tweet SharePrint The online activism platform Causes.com recently uprooted itself from Berkeley, CA, a spiritual home of offline activism, to the financial district of San Francisco, a spiritual home of hedge funds and other such ventures.

The company now occupies a top-floor office–complete with wraparound views and a deck–that was, in fact, recently left unoccupied by the departure of a Japanese hedge fund, said Causes co-founder and Joe Green when NetworkEffect visited him there this week.

It’s a bit incongruous, but Green says the rent is cheaper than a crappy office near Twitter’s in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood, the far hipper place to house a start-up these days.

Causes has, since 2007, been trying to facilitate activism and philanthropy by connecting users to non-profits and one another. Backed with some $16 million in funding from venture capitalists like NEA and Founders Fund, Green wants to make the non-profit world more of a marketplace, where organizations compete for givers’ participation and dollars.

Charity–worth $300 billion annually in the U.S., compared to $12 billion for the music industry–is the “last industry not revolutionized by the Internet,” Green said.

Causes has always been tightly linked to Facebook (Green shared a dorm room with the founders at Harvard), and is “in many ways one of the great survivors of the Facebook platform,” said Green, having grown to 150 million users originally as a Facebook app and now as a Web site powered by Facebook Connect.

Of those 150 million users, about 1 million have ever made a donation on Causes, and 12 million have signed a petition. Causes would obviously like to figure out ways to get more people to participate meaningfully.

In many ways, the trajectory of Causes mirrors that of social games, the most successful category built on top of Facebook to date. They are both inherently viral, built around users inviting their friends.

But in some ways games are actually beating Causes at its own game. Zynga on Monday announced it had raised $3 million for recovery efforts for the recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami, from a combination of virtual goods bought by its players and a physical bracelet bought by fans of Lady Gaga. Zynga has raised more than $10 million for charitable causes since 2009.

Causes, meanwhile, has raised some $30 million since 2007, and $800,000 this month for tsunami relief efforts in Japan.

But it’s a bit unfair to just compare dollars to dollars. Causes enables users to connect to more than 25,000 different non-profits and participate by doing things like signing petitions rather than just donating money. It’s a richer experience than buying a virtual doodad.

Even so, it’s obvious that games have figured something out. So Causes recently enlisted three social game monetization partners: TrialPay, SocialVibe and SupersonicAds. The companies offer Causes users video ads that pay out $0.10 to a chosen cause every time a user watches.

So instead of giving money, users can “give a minute” to charity. In early tests, Causes users have exhausted the company’s video ad inventory on a daily basis.

Enlisting simple online actions that trigger a charitable donation isn’t a new concept–see, for instance, Freerice.com–but it’s interesting that Causes is going directly to social games’ transactional advertising providers.

“We’re not trying to become a gaming company, but there’s some interesting similarities there,” said Green.（Source：NetworkEffect）