MetroChange is a proposal for a kiosk that would allow New York MTA riders to donate leftover funds on their MetroCards to charity (video). MetroChange was created by NYU students Stepan Boltalin, Genevieve Hoffman, and Paul May. Currently the kiosk is only a prototype but the students are searching for partners to help make it a reality.

Every year, millions of dollars worth of value on MTA MetroCards is lost or discarded.

MetroChange takes this value and puts it to good use, before cards are discarded. Swipe your MetroCard at a MetroChange kiosk; the value on the card is transferred to a central fund. This fund is donated to a charity once per month. The physical card is taken for recycling.

via The Atlantic

photos by Paul May

UK-based designer Ron Arad created a bicycle with working sprung steel wheels as part of the WOW Bikes charity auction co-hosted by the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the W Hotel in London (see the smooth riding bike in action via Dezeen). The bike is one of six custom designed bikes that will be auctioned off on December 1.

via designboom, Doobybrain.com & co.design

photos via WOW bikes

The 5th annual Movember, a month-long worldwide mustache-growing event to raise funds and awareness for men’s health issues, begins tomorrow, November 1 (see the Movember trailer).

On Movember 1st, guys register at Movember.com with a clean-shaven face. For the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo-growing efforts.

Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November. Through their actions and words they raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

At the end of the month, Mo Bros and Mo Sistas celebrate their gallantry and valor by either throwing their own Movember party or attending one of the infamous Gala Partés held around the world by Movember, for Movember.

Charity Swearbox is a virtual swear jar that encourages Twitter users to donate to their favorite charity every time they drop a tweet bomb (video). The site was created by James Dow, Rameet Chawla, Jay Gelardi, and app developer Fueled.

It works pretty much the same as a real life swear box. Charity Swear Box is constantly on the look out for naughty swear words on twitter. When you enter your twitter name in the search box on our homepage we check all your past twitterings for any sign of a swear word. We add them all up and give you a suggested amount to donate to your favourite charity.

via Brand Flakes For Breakfast

In our recent post, Sending Get Well Wishes To Amit Gupta of Photojojo, we provided several ways the internet community could send get-well messages to our friend Amit Gupta who is undergoing treatment for Acute Leukemia in a Connecticut cancer hospital.

Today, Amit has posted on his blog a short message on what he needs specifically and how the community can help:

I have a couple more months of chemo to go, then the next step is a bone marrow transplant. As Jay and Tony describe below, minorities are severely underrepresented in the bone marrow pool, and I need help.

A few ways to help:

1. If you’re South Asian, get a free test by mail. You rub your cheeks with a cotton swab and mail it back. It’s easy.
2. If you’re in NYC, you can go to this event my friends are putting on.
3. If you know any South Asians (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Maldives, or Sri Lanka), please point ‘em to the links above. Thank you.

Please take the time to help by being tested as a potential bone marrow transplant donor, attending the New York City event Brown Bones Benefit Party and/or spreading his message far and wide.

The Brown Bones Benefit Party happens on October 14, 2011 from 9:30 PM on at New York City co-working venue, New Work City.

We are gathering all who can commit to becoming a donor for a party. Come in costume (it’s October!), fill out some paperwork, get a painless cheek swab, snap a pic in the photobooth, and party with us!

Because the mysteries of DNA matching encourage participants of subcontinental geographic ancestry, please bring as many of your South Asian friends as you can – though we hope all friends will join us and register! We will have spirits, music, and registration kits galore.

image via Amit Gupta and Friends of Amit

Designer Petrina Cooper of Etsy shop, Bliss in the Hornet’s Nest, has created the Eye Heart Brains t-shirt as a fundraiser for the Northwestern Brain Tumor Institute. She chose this research facility because they bought her “Dad another year and a half of life when he was diagnosed with his brain tumor.”

image via Bliss in the Hornet’s Nest

Farfalla by Kyle Webster

Do Good by Von Glitschka

Help Ink sells exclusive art in order to help charities. By hosting a collection of gallery grade art posters, Help Ink sends the proceeds to a charity selected by the poster’s artist. Every two weeks, a new artist’s poster is revealed.

Nike is auctioning 1500 pairs of limited edition Nike MAGs, the 80s-futuristic sneakers worn by Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future II, to raise money for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson Research. Unfortunately, because the shoes are movie prop replicas, they do not have power laces.

The NIKE MAG is no longer the “greatest shoe never made.” The mythical shoe that originally captured the imagination of audiences in Back to the Future II is being released – and they’re here to help create a future without Parkinson’s disease.

The charity auction is currently underway on eBay, with the bids in the $4000 range. The auction ends September 18.

via Fast Company Co. Design

They Might Be Giants officially released their Mink Car album on the same day as the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Mink Car Cover is a collaborative effort of nineteen great musicians to mark the ten-year anniversary of the attacks and cover the entire original album, song-by-song, as a fundraiser for the FDNY Foundation, a nonprofit organization that promotes “Fire Safety in New York City and the professional development, training, and education of their members”.

The musicians recording tracks for the album are Hank Green, Driftless Pony Club, Shael Riley and the Double Ice Backfire, Devo Spice, MC Frontalot, Tom Milsom, Marian Call, Beefy and Mustin, Molly Lewis, brentalfloss, Mike Lombardo, Nuclear Bubble Wrap, Aivi Tran, The Doubleclicks, Jonathan Mann, R_Garcia, and Hello, the Future! with album art by Ryan North.

Both digital downloads and a limited-edition CD version of the album are available.

images via Mink Car Cover

Friendship and Support, a new limited edition print by Shepard Fairey that is a tribute to George Harrison and the 40th anniversary of The Concert for Bangladesh. Proceeds from the sale of the print will go to the George Harrison Fund for UNICEF, which helps aide children affected by famine in Africa.

photos via Getty Images

Australian Jacob French is walking across Australia while wearing Star Wars stormtrooper armor. He’s traversing the 2,400 or so miles between Perth and Sydney to raise money for the Starlight Children’s Foundation, a charity focused on improving the lives of sick children. French is making quite a few friends along the way, including the local authorities (see the staged photo below).

photo via Jacob French

via Geeks Are Sexy

Nathan Mass made a video update on Vietnam vet Tom Bruso aka Epic Beard Man, who says that he’s been homeless since January 11th and needs help finding housing in Oakland. You may recall Epic Beard Man from last year’s viral video featuring him getting into a fight on an Oakland AC Transit bus.

via BuzzFeed

photo by Tim Pryde

photo via Yanko Design

Charity robo-canvassers may soon be a reality. DON-8r by Tim Pryde and Dona by Min Su Kim are two examples of begging robots. As these public demonstrations of the plucky DON-8r and irresistibly cute Dona show, the public response is so far very positive.

via Jessica Bruder

Local Twestival events are taking place around the world on March 24th to help raise funds for community nonprofits.

A Twestival (or Twitter-Festival) is a single day, global movement which uses the power of social media to organize offline events that mobilize communities in support of a local cause. Twestival was born out of the idea that if communities were able to collaborate on an international scale, but working from a local level, it could have a spectacular impact.

Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, has embarked on a new endeavor: craigconnect, a site that harnesses the power of the Internet to aid nonprofits organizations.

*Craigconnects is about calling attention to and connecting good, effective nonprofits and other organizations that get the job done.
*Craigconnects is also about protecting organizations, and the public, from fake organizations that have a good story, but actually end up hurting the people they profess to serve.

It’s an ambitious mission (as outlined in his video welcome message and in further detail on the Purpose of craigconnect.) Luckily, Newmark knows a thing or two about building a website that connects people and organizations to one another.

See Also:
- Craigslist Celebrates 15th Anniversary

The 2011 San Francisco Valentine’s Day Pillow Fight was $12,000 less costly for the city to clean up this year, thanks to lower turnout and the volunteers of Pillows for Puppies. NYC-based PFP organizer Jennifer Small recruited 30 volunteers who filled 150 trashbags with fluff and feathers, while collecting 200 pillows as donations for the Sisters of Mercy.

Past San Francisco pillow fights have provoked the ire of the City of San Francisco, the United Nations, and our own Burstein! due to their messy and costly nature. According to Small, city workers and police were pleased to see the volunteers helping out. Perhaps this combination of volunteerism by participants and tolerance by the city will allow the pillow fight to continue in future years.

photo by Jennifer Small

See Also:
- A PSA For The St. Valentines Day Massacre (a.k.a. the San Francisco Pillow Fight)
- The U.N. Commission on Costumes and Holidays Responds to Threatened Crackdown on “Flash Mob”-esque Events
- San Francisco Might Try to Shut Down Pillow Fight & Other Events
- San Francisco Pillow Fight 2009 Photos & Video

Fed up with aggressive charity canvassers in their neighborhood, creative workers at Portland ad firm Wieden + Kennedy (makers of the infamous Old Spice commercials) have come up with a clever card that reads:

I know you’re just doing your job,

but the methods you’ve been asked to use are manipulative and make me less trustful of friendliness in general

and that, not indifference towards your cause,
is why I’m not going to talk to you.

The issue of aggressive charity canvassers (known to the fundraising industry as “dialoguers”) is covered in depth in this 2008 Village Voice article, “You Can’t Escape the Canvasser’s Pitch.”

The Salvation Army in Canada has created a series of bus stop ads featuring homeless people reaching out for necessities as part of The Dignity Project, which is attmpting to restore hope and dignity for the less fortunate.

The Salvation Army believes that human dignity is a fundamental right for all. For most, living without dignity is a remote concept. However, for too many Canadians, the basic necessities of life required for human dignity are out of reach. Poverty is often the root cause, leaving 3 million Canadians without access to everyday resources such as food, clothing and shelter. We have developed The Dignity Project to inspire and educate the public about the challenges facing society’s most vulnerable people. We believe that together, we can address the dehumanizing scourge of poverty and injustice. We are asking all Canadians to join The Dignity Project – let’s restore hope and dignity.

via AdFreak

Wil Wheaton, John Scalzi and Subterranean Press present “Clash of the Geeks”, a electronic chapbook to benefit the Lupus Alliance of America.

Wil Wheaton, John Scalzi and Subterranean Press are proud to announce the publication of Clash of the Geeks, a special and fantastical electronic chapbook featuring stories by Wheaton, Scalzi, New York Times bestseller Patrick Rothfuss, Norton Award winner and Hugo Best Novel nominee Catherynne M. Valente, Hugo and Nebula Award nominee Rachel Swirsky and others, for the benefit of the Michigan/Indiana affiliate of the Lupus Alliance of America. The chapbook is free to download, but voluntary payment is strongly encouraged, via Paypal or by tax-deductible donation forms, both linked to later in this entry. All proceeds from this chapbook will go to the Michigan/Indiana affiliate of the Lupus Alliance of America.

via Wil Wheaton

Eyewitness Reports is a benefit art auction taking place August 23rd and August 30th for 826LA, a non-profit organization in Los Angeles dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18. An art show featuring artwork from the auction is taking place at Gallery Nucleus in Alhambra from August 14-17 with an opening reception on August 14th.

The gallery show will also celebrate the release of the new children’s book “Oh No!: Or How My Science Project Destroyed the World” by Mac Barnett and Dan Santat.

When an overambitious little girl builds a humongous robot for the science fair, she fully expects to win first place. What she doesn’t expect is the chaos that follows.

via Drawn!

300 Acres is a webroots campaign to save 300 acres of imminently endangered Northern Amazon rainforest by raising $73,000 in only 30 days. Once obtained, the land would be returned to its indigenous inhabitants, the Amazanga.

The project was founded by our friend Natalie Villalobos, Community Manager for Google Sidewiki, and Shalaco Sching after meeting the Amazangan leader during the recent Google Earth Outreach/Indigenous Mapping Summit.

I met many amazing indigenous people from all over the world – but one story stuck with me. It was that of Flavio Santi, the Shuar/Quichua healer and leader of the Amazanga people in attendance from the far-reaches of Puyo, Ecuador. He gave a captivating talk with poignant analogies that gently inspired the hearts of everyone that listened to him. I was so taken by his story that it led me to the question – What can I do?

His goal – purchase 300 acres of ancestral land that was taken from the Amazanga people…and do it in 30 days or less. It’s not that he threw out this gauntlet to see if we could achieve it. He and his people only have 30 days to make this happen.

Currently, with 14 days remaining, 300 Acres remains $50,000 short of their goal. Please consider helping them by making a (tax deductible) donation today.

UPDATE: An anonymous donor just came through today and is willing to match ALL funds made to 300 Acres over the next 13 days.

photo via 300 Acres

We’re excited to see The Quotidian met the Mission Street Food Project; while both are local to San Francisco, each do something on a cultural level that we’d love to see replicated in other major cities — and both are getting national attention. The Quotidian is a San Francisco phenomenon; they are a ongoing online video documentary project “that highlights how everyday people and actions can have a larger effect on the world”. They recently examined another SF phenom, Mission Street Food Project, which scores killer local chefs to bring high-end San Francisco food to the people and creating happening events (and hot date destinations) in the process, all while giving proceeds to charitable organizations. Their next event is this Thursday, April 1st, and all dining events are cash only. Quotidian did a fabulous documentary on MSF (above) explaining,

The success of these nights has also transformed Mission Street Food into a serious charitable business, as more than $17,000 was donated to local charities during the part-time restaurant’s first 10 months of operation. Mission Burger, a lunchtime burger stand that Myint started inside the Duc Loi Supermarket a couple doors down from Mission Street Food, has also generated more than $2,500 in donations during its first three months of operation.

While the idea of donating sales proceeds to charitable causes isn’t necessarily new, what’s impressive about Mission Street Food is that it’s taken place in the dining world, where profit margins are notoriously hard to come by even with the most established restaurants and competition is cutthroat. Mission Street Food has succeeded as a foodie destination and business in spite of (or perhaps because of) its charitable roots, proving that it’s possible to be a successful small local business with a great product while giving back directly to the community in a real, meaningful way.

via Kai Hsing

Twestival Global 2010 is taking place around the world on Thursday, March 25th to raise awareness and funds for Concern Worldwide, an organization that helps brings education to the world’s poorest children.

On Thursday 25 March 2010, people in hundreds of cities around the world will come together offline to rally around the important cause of Education by hosting local events to have fun and create awareness. Twestival (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good. All of the local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects.

Vanessa Smith, one of the original members of Extra Action Marching Band, was recently diagnosed with Advanced Colorectal Cancer. A Bitchass Benefit is being organized for her this Friday, February 5th at the Oakland Metro Operahouse.

Vanessa Smith of San Francisco, Oakland, New Orleans, Austin, Dallas, and Black Rock City. Rock & roll musician, artist, dancer, healer, student, single mother of a 5-year old superhero.

During a recent Holiday visit to her family in Dallas Texas was rushed to the hospital where she underwent emergency surgery and diagnosed with Advanced Colorectal Cancer. The doctors are saying that her cancer is aggressive, however, it is currently localized and they are hopeful for a full recovery.

Right now Vanessa Needs Your Help with her surmounting medical bills and covering basic living needs for her and her 5 year old son Logan.

If you can’t make the benefit, you can donate at any time via PayPal through the Vanessa Fighting Cancer blog.

Stamen Design created a really great Twitter visualization map that tracks real-time conversations around the world for the Haiti relief website Hope For Haiti Now.

via Caroline