Social Venture Partners Minnesota is proud to work with GiveMN.org to offer GiveMN.org users the opportunity to help some of the most innovative and effective social entrepreneurs working in Minnesota today. The Social Entrepreneur’s Cup is an annual competition to recognize Minnesota’s homegrown social entrepreneurs and the organizations they lead. Social Entrepreneur’s Cup finalists represent a broad spectrum of social issues including the arts, health, poverty reduction, and sustainability. We applaud the finalists for their innovation and the hope they bring to our world. By clicking on their link, you can make your online donation to any of the finalists. The 2010 Social Entrepreneur’s Cup finalists are:

Acara Institute

The Acara Institute brings together a collection of talents, minds, and resources - represented by diverse teams and individuals from academia and industry - to collaboratively launch viable businesses to address societal change while teaching social entrepreneurship to aspiring students. 

Bright New Ideas

Bright New Ideas designs, manufactures, and distributes affordable solar-LED lamp systems for people around the world for the 1.6 billion people in the developing world do not have access to electricity.  

Mind Body Solutions

Fifty-four million people in America live with a disability, making it the nation’s largest minority group. Mind Body Solutions delivers a mind-body approach to those living with trauma, loss, and disability, as well as to their caregivers, with the goal of transforming the disability and rehabilitation experience.

Springboard for the Arts

Springboard for the Arts provides programs that help artists access high quality, affordable health care. Springboard’s Artists’ Access to Healthcare program applies the creative process to a complicated system to help uninsured and underinsured artists get the care they need.

You may have seen the introduction of the Facebook “like” buttons on GiveMN.org. Perhaps you just discovered that GiveMN’s nonprofit search engine now provides suggestions based on your friends’ recommendations. So, you’re probably asking yourself, “What does this all mean?”

It all started on April 21, when Facebook made an announcement regarding a new wave of “social plugins” including the “Like” button, which “offers users a lightweight and consistent way to share the things and topics that interest them.”  Our Product Development team at Razoo thought this would be an excellent way to encourage donors and nonprofits to leverage the Facebook social networking platform to spread the word about giving opportunities they care about.  While GiveMN users can already login using Facebook Connect, the addition of “Like” buttons further integrates the Razoo and Facebook platforms to promote charitable giving by encouraging friends and family to check out your “likes.”

Here’s what you need to know about the new Facebook “Like” social plugins on GiveMN:

• Each organization, project, and fundraising page on GiveMN has a “Like” button at the top and bottom of the page that also displays how many other people and which of your friends “like” that page

• Assuming you have a Facebook account and are logged into it, when you click on the Like button, a message will appear on your Facebook profile and in your friends’ News Feeds.

What will appear in your Facebook profile:

What will appear in your friends’ News Feeds:

• On your GiveMN profile page and on the search engine, a box entitled “Your Facebook Recommendations” will display popular pages that have been shared by your friends and other GiveMN users.

• For more information on the Like button, including FAQs about managing your Facebook privacy settings, please see Facebook’s Help Center section on social plugins.

Now that you know what it’s all about, go ahead and “like” away!  And please feel free to let us know what you think of this new feature by commenting below.

Adding value and giving back to the community is what One Man Minneapolis is all about. We think we do that in a fun way that not only puts the spotlight on great guys in the community, but also non-profit organizations, big and small, that are doing great work.

One Man Minneapolis is an event that identifies the one man, aged 24-44, in the Minneapolis St. Paul area who represents the best of the Twin Cities from the perspectives of community involvement, personality, intelligence and fitness.

Twenty finalists have been selected and each guy has selected a charity to affiliate with.  You can meet these guys and learn about them and their charity at two remaining happy hours between 5 - 7 p.m. at Martin Patrick3 May 13 or at Om restaurant May 20.

You can vote for your favorite guy at www.onemanminneapolis.com, where you see photos and video clips of the guys, along with information about their charity.

The main event will be held at the Pantages Theatre in downtown Minneapolis on Saturday, May 22 at 8 p.m. Fine finalists will be announced and the final five will participate in a live competition involving fashion, pop culture trivia, informal interviews and fun...

I am sitting in the Zeitgeist Arts Café in Duluth listening to some awesome jazz reading an ebook by one of my favorite people, Katya Andresen.  I just had a great discussion with about 20 nonprofit leaders in the Duluth area about how to use the tools of GiveMN to increase their online giving.   (Special thanks to the MN Council on Nonprofits for organizing this event.)

The drive to Duluth from the Twin Cities was beautiful - a sea of green budding trees, picturesque farms and the breath taking vista when you come over the hill into Duluth. 

Sitting by the Lake Superior reminds me of one of my favorite people, my grandpa Tom Nelson.  My grandpa loved his lake - Clear Lake, Iowa - where he lived almost all of his 83 years.  Grandpa Nelson died last month and will be so very missed by those of us he left behind.  His visitation was a major town event with hundreds of people coming through to pay their respects to a man who had done so much for his community.   As a business owner in a small town, people looked to him as the leader that he was.

It was amazing to hear story after story as people came through... your grandpa encouraged me to go to college and then paid for my books, your grandpa was my boy scout leader and took us camping every summer, after my husband died your grandpa mowed my grass and shoveled the walk for years, I worked for your grandpa and he made sure we had a chicken dinner if we worked the Sunday shift... and on and on.

And there were the awards.  As we gathered photos and newspaper articles to make a memory board, I found awards from the Lion’s Club, the Lake Preservation, his church and more - all of whom he and my grandma had supported financially for decades.

My grandpa would never call himself a philanthropist.  He never really liked to talk about himself.  He loved people and his town.  It has helped me better understand why people support so many different causes and organizations - we are moved and motivated for deeply personal reasons.  He loved that lake and those who lived by it.  I miss you Grandpa - I hope I can teach my sons that caring about where you live is always the right thing to do. 

I’d love to hear from GiveMN readers - who inspires you to give?

Local election officials are currently recruiting 30,000 Minnesota voters to be election judges who will staff thousands of our polling places later this year. These workers are essential to our democracy because they help voters register and cast their ballots on Election Day. Election judges are allowed time off from work to serve and are paid for their services. Students age 16 and 17 can sign up to serve as election judge trainees, which is great opportunity for young people to gain knowledge about the election process and learn valuable leadership skills.

Nonprofits often work directly with communities that have lower rates of participation in our elections. This daily engagement provides nonprofits a unique opportunity to get new people involved as election judges.

Here is a creative way to build support for your nonprofit’s mission and contribute to our democracy at once: encourage your supporters to apply as election judges and commit to donating what they earn back to your organization once they are paid.  If you recruit just five volunteers who commit to donate, your organization can raise approximately $1,000.

Serving as an election judge is a great way to learn more about our election process and an opportunity to be a part of Minnesota’s proud tradition of providing free and fair elections. Those who support your nonprofit’s mission will enjoy this rewarding experience while knowing that their wages for those two days of service support the important work you do.

The Office of the Secretary of State, along with GiveMN and the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, encourage you to try this creative approach to fundraising and motivation for civic engagement. 

For more details about being an election judge, visit http://www.sos.state.mn.us/index.aspx?page=585

For sample text to help recruit judges who will donate, visit the Voter Mobilization section at http://www.mnparticipationproject.org/

Social Venture Partners Minnesota is proud to work with GiveMN.org to offer GiveMN.org users the opportunity to help some of the most innovative and effective social entrepreneurs working in Minnesota today. The Social Entrepreneur’s Cup is an annual competition to recognize Minnesota’s homegrown social entrepreneurs and the organizations they lead. Social Entrepreneur’s Cup finalists represent a broad spectrum of social issues including the arts, health, poverty reduction, and sustainability. We applaud the finalists for their innovation and the hope they bring to our world. By clicking on their link, you can make your online donation to any of the finalists. The 2010 Social Entrepreneur’s Cup finalists are:

Acara Institute

The Acara Institute brings together a collection of talents, minds, and resources - represented by diverse teams and individuals from academia and industry - to collaboratively launch viable businesses to address societal change while teaching social entrepreneurship to aspiring students. 

Bright New Ideas

Bright New Ideas designs, manufactures, and distributes affordable solar-LED lamp systems for people around the world for the 1.6 billion people in the developing world do not have access to electricity.  

Mind Body Solutions

Fifty-four million people in America live with a disability, making it the nation’s largest minority group. Mind Body Solutions delivers a mind-body approach to those living with trauma, loss, and disability, as well as to their caregivers, with the goal of transforming the disability and rehabilitation experience.

Springboard for the Arts

Springboard for the Arts provides programs that help artists access high quality, affordable health care. Springboard’s Artists’ Access to Healthcare program applies the creative process to a complicated system to help uninsured and underinsured artists get the care they need.

You may have seen the introduction of the Facebook “like” buttons on GiveMN.org. Perhaps you just discovered that GiveMN’s nonprofit search engine now provides suggestions based on your friends’ recommendations. So, you’re probably asking yourself, “What does this all mean?”

It all started on April 21, when Facebook made an announcement regarding a new wave of “social plugins” including the “Like” button, which “offers users a lightweight and consistent way to share the things and topics that interest them.”  Our Product Development team at Razoo thought this would be an excellent way to encourage donors and nonprofits to leverage the Facebook social networking platform to spread the word about giving opportunities they care about.  While GiveMN users can already login using Facebook Connect, the addition of “Like” buttons further integrates the Razoo and Facebook platforms to promote charitable giving by encouraging friends and family to check out your “likes.”

Here’s what you need to know about the new Facebook “Like” social plugins on GiveMN:

• Each organization, project, and fundraising page on GiveMN has a “Like” button at the top and bottom of the page that also displays how many other people and which of your friends “like” that page

• Assuming you have a Facebook account and are logged into it, when you click on the Like button, a message will appear on your Facebook profile and in your friends’ News Feeds.

What will appear in your Facebook profile:

What will appear in your friends’ News Feeds:

• On your GiveMN profile page and on the search engine, a box entitled “Your Facebook Recommendations” will display popular pages that have been shared by your friends and other GiveMN users.

• For more information on the Like button, including FAQs about managing your Facebook privacy settings, please see Facebook’s Help Center section on social plugins.

Now that you know what it’s all about, go ahead and “like” away!  And please feel free to let us know what you think of this new feature by commenting below.

Adding value and giving back to the community is what One Man Minneapolis is all about. We think we do that in a fun way that not only puts the spotlight on great guys in the community, but also non-profit organizations, big and small, that are doing great work.

One Man Minneapolis is an event that identifies the one man, aged 24-44, in the Minneapolis St. Paul area who represents the best of the Twin Cities from the perspectives of community involvement, personality, intelligence and fitness.

Twenty finalists have been selected and each guy has selected a charity to affiliate with.  You can meet these guys and learn about them and their charity at two remaining happy hours between 5 - 7 p.m. at Martin Patrick3 May 13 or at Om restaurant May 20.

You can vote for your favorite guy at www.onemanminneapolis.com, where you see photos and video clips of the guys, along with information about their charity.

The main event will be held at the Pantages Theatre in downtown Minneapolis on Saturday, May 22 at 8 p.m. Fine finalists will be announced and the final five will participate in a live competition involving fashion, pop culture trivia, informal interviews and fun...

I am sitting in the Zeitgeist Arts Café in Duluth listening to some awesome jazz reading an ebook by one of my favorite people, Katya Andresen.  I just had a great discussion with about 20 nonprofit leaders in the Duluth area about how to use the tools of GiveMN to increase their online giving.   (Special thanks to the MN Council on Nonprofits for organizing this event.)

The drive to Duluth from the Twin Cities was beautiful - a sea of green budding trees, picturesque farms and the breath taking vista when you come over the hill into Duluth. 

Sitting by the Lake Superior reminds me of one of my favorite people, my grandpa Tom Nelson.  My grandpa loved his lake - Clear Lake, Iowa - where he lived almost all of his 83 years.  Grandpa Nelson died last month and will be so very missed by those of us he left behind.  His visitation was a major town event with hundreds of people coming through to pay their respects to a man who had done so much for his community.   As a business owner in a small town, people looked to him as the leader that he was.

It was amazing to hear story after story as people came through... your grandpa encouraged me to go to college and then paid for my books, your grandpa was my boy scout leader and took us camping every summer, after my husband died your grandpa mowed my grass and shoveled the walk for years, I worked for your grandpa and he made sure we had a chicken dinner if we worked the Sunday shift... and on and on.

And there were the awards.  As we gathered photos and newspaper articles to make a memory board, I found awards from the Lion’s Club, the Lake Preservation, his church and more - all of whom he and my grandma had supported financially for decades.

My grandpa would never call himself a philanthropist.  He never really liked to talk about himself.  He loved people and his town.  It has helped me better understand why people support so many different causes and organizations - we are moved and motivated for deeply personal reasons.  He loved that lake and those who lived by it.  I miss you Grandpa - I hope I can teach my sons that caring about where you live is always the right thing to do. 

I’d love to hear from GiveMN readers - who inspires you to give?

Local election officials are currently recruiting 30,000 Minnesota voters to be election judges who will staff thousands of our polling places later this year. These workers are essential to our democracy because they help voters register and cast their ballots on Election Day. Election judges are allowed time off from work to serve and are paid for their services. Students age 16 and 17 can sign up to serve as election judge trainees, which is great opportunity for young people to gain knowledge about the election process and learn valuable leadership skills.

Nonprofits often work directly with communities that have lower rates of participation in our elections. This daily engagement provides nonprofits a unique opportunity to get new people involved as election judges.

Here is a creative way to build support for your nonprofit’s mission and contribute to our democracy at once: encourage your supporters to apply as election judges and commit to donating what they earn back to your organization once they are paid.  If you recruit just five volunteers who commit to donate, your organization can raise approximately $1,000.

Serving as an election judge is a great way to learn more about our election process and an opportunity to be a part of Minnesota’s proud tradition of providing free and fair elections. Those who support your nonprofit’s mission will enjoy this rewarding experience while knowing that their wages for those two days of service support the important work you do.

The Office of the Secretary of State, along with GiveMN and the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, encourage you to try this creative approach to fundraising and motivation for civic engagement. 

For more details about being an election judge, visit http://www.sos.state.mn.us/index.aspx?page=585

For sample text to help recruit judges who will donate, visit the Voter Mobilization section at http://www.mnparticipationproject.org/