Remember the thrill of finding Easter eggs as a child, plucking colorful eggs from behind bushes and other discreet places? It was always such a satisfying feeling to be able to tick one less egg off of your list. Now that we are older and more mature (Oh, who are we kidding? Easter egg hunts are still the coolest), it is time we move onto a different kind of scavenger hunt. The kind that we can look back on and say, “Hey, that was really cool.”

Which brings us to non-profit organization Do Something’s Scavenger Hunt, an 11-day challenge where various acts of giving back to the community take place each day, starting Monday, July 11. The challenge of the day varies in topic, from animal welfare to poverty & homelessness to recycling & reuse. Challenges of the day can be found on the website or if you register with your cell phone number, it will be text messaged to you. After completing the challenge, teams must write to Do Something about their experience and include a picture. Those who complete a challenge early and turn it in have a chance to win prizes along the way.

The scavenger hunt is a great way to hang out with your friends (there is no team size requirement) while doing something (no pun intended!) that will help someone out along the way. Not only can you say that you spent eleven days of your summer giving back to the community, but there are also prizes that can be won. Always a bonus. The Grand Prize winning team will win a trip to LA to attend the Do Something awards. The show awards one of five young finalists who have given back to their community $100,000 for their hard work and dedication. Celebrities will be in attendance presenting awards and giving speeches, with past participants having included Glee’s Jane Lynch and R&B artist Usher.

So what are you doing the next two weeks? How about you head on over to Do Something’s website and  register you and some friends to take part in this fun and worthwhile summer activity!

deniscollins:

If you were managing a nonprofit aimed at inspiring teenagers to engage in community service, how would you appeal to them?

Do Something, a national nonprofit group that works to involve teenagers in civic activities, had to go mobile. No longer could it rely on its Web site to motivate young people to take part in social activism. Instead, it would rely on mobile technology in the hopes of substantially increasing its reach and impact.

The goal is to use mobile technology to sign up 3.8 million members by 2014, up from 1.2 million in 2010 who were involved in at least one of the more than 50 “campaigns” Do Something runs each year. Recently, for instance, teenagers ran drives that collected roughly two million books that are being donated to public schools in New Orleans. “It has to be things that don’t require money, an adult or a car,” Ms. Lublin said.

Teenagers become members by completing a project suggested by Do Something or one they have created themselves and uploading photos or other evidence of their efforts to the organization’s Web site.

“Teens receive, on average, over 3,300 texts a month, and their phones are part of their social tissue,” said Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn and a new member of Do Something’s board. “I’m convinced this is the best way to move teen philanthropic action to a new level in terms of scale and effectiveness.”

Several charities here have used text messaging to rally people for demonstrations, protests, town hall meetings and other activities, but most nonprofit groups see it primarily as a fund-raising tool. “I don’t think very many social change organizations, even the well-funded, sophisticated ones, are paying nearly enough attention to the technology available for engaging support and enhancing their missions,” said Alberto Ibargüen, chief executive of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which made a $1.5 million grant to Do Something to support its mobile strategy.

Do Something does not raise money from its members — it does not even collect information on the sex of its members — and Ms. Lublin insists it will never sell its membership list the way that charities sell the names and addresses they have collected for direct-mail solicitation to one another. “Never, never, never,” Ms. Lublin said. “It makes my skin crawl.”

Although many schools around the country require students to devote a specific number of hours to a community service project, Ms. Lublin said Do Something members did not seem to be volunteering because of an educational mandate.

“We want to be more like shopping at the mall with your friends or playing soccer, something you choose to do, something you love, something that doesn’t involve your teacher telling you to do it,” she said.

As for the teenagers themselves, texting does not feel invasive as it sometimes does when adult donors receive messages from charities.

Then, in May, when Do Something sent a text message urging teenagers to find ways to live a week without using oil, she responded. “It kind of sucked me in,” Ms. Keefer said.

First, however, she made sure she was not just communicating with a computer. “Is this a real person or a machine?” she asked after receiving one response.

In fact, an intern in Do Something’s offices was answering her, and one of the challenges in the new strategy is how to keep the costs of such “cause concierges,” as Ms. Lublin calls them, within the organization’s annual budget, $3 million in cash and $6 million in products and services. “This is going to have to be very personalized and customized, so that when a kid texts in to say, ‘My principal is not psyched about all this canned food in the lobby — help!’ someone is there right then to respond with a suggestion,” Ms. Lublin said.

alltothegood:

Happy “A Good Week” to everyone! This week, from June 20th to the 26th, has been deemed the first-ever “A Good Week,” a global celebration of good. We at The Goodness are super excited about this initiative, because it’s all about getting a global conversation going about what living well and…

Today, we’re excited to announce that we are recipients of a grant from DoSomething.org and American Express for the growth of our pilot program this fall. Long ago, we identified Do Something as a strategic partner in our work and we are excited to build on our initial relationship with this grant. Specifically, the funding will be used to build upon our outreach and engagement efforts as we launch in the next few weeks integrated campaigns to introduce myImpact.org to organizations, potential partners and schools and colleges around the country, and build our user base in order to deem our pilot phase a success by the end of the year. 

Look for more updates as we go forward about our work with DoSomething.org!