The 2008 Squidoo Holiday Twitterdrive for Charity

1. Go make your own Squidoo lens (it's free) about whatever you want... from holiday decorating tricks to your thoughts on global warming. When you get to the "payment settings" part, select to give your royalties to the charity you like most. Then your page will make little donations to that charity every month, for free.

2. Do you know a small, smart nonprofit you'd like to see join our ranks? Send them this lens and ask them to apply!

There was a long tail effect, where everyone got SOME tweets and only a few got a lot.

But these were the top 5 most-tweeted orgs in the Holiday Twitterdrive.

Food for Everyone
CenterforChurchComm
Diabetes Research Inst.
EnviroCorps
Room to Read

First: Here's how we decided which 21 Squidoo partner charities to feature here, and a little more about them. Even if your favorite isn't here, I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding one worth supporting!

And even though the contest is over, I hope you'll continue to spread the word about the fine work these orgs are doing every day.

1. EnviroCorps


2. Operation Gratitude


3. Cpl. Stokes Legacy Project


4. Hope for Henry


5. Cheetah Conservation Fund


6. Steve's Club


7. Polar Bear International


8. Diabetes Research Institute


9. Big Cat Rescue


10. First Coast No More Homeless Pets


11. Center for Church Communication


12. Dog Tags for Kids


13. Planet Gumbo


14. Food for Everyone


15. Room to Read


16. Long Hopes


17. Donors Choose


18. Operation Helmet


19. National Wildlife Federation's Alaska Natural Resource


20. A Day of Hope


21. Ferrets Unlimited

--Yes, we gave away $30,000 to charity no matter what. But we want to let you decide where it goes.
--Yes, you have to be on Twitter in order to tweet your vote.
--Yes, it's one vote per person, per day!
--Yes, that means you can vote once a day. Your votes will add up.
--Yes, you can set up a new account on Twitter in order to tweet your vote (but if we suspect you're setting up fake twitter accounts just to tweet more, we could disqualify your votes).
--Yes, tweets need to be in the "official vote format" as below in order to count.
--Yes, we're tracking votes. After 30,000 votes ($1 donated per vote) we'll stop the giveaway and any additional votes will only count to spread the word, not for donating money.
--Yes, we reserve the right to disqualify suspect tweetvotes and give the money to one of the other charities.
--Yes, if you don't help us give it all away, any leftover funds will be donated to charities we pick.
--Yes, we have more than 21 nonprofit partners here at Squidoo, but we picked some standouts based on their popularity with our users and their enthusiasm for working with us (and not just grabbing the collection basket and going away).

How we picked them: Not all our supported charities are on this list; we support about 80 total (and accepting more!) that our lensmasters can donate their lens royalties to at any time. The charities on this twitterdrive list, though, do more. They're popular with our lensmasters and also show a good understanding of how to use Squidoo as an ongoing free tool for their volunteers to raise awareness and money. Not just during a giveaway, but every day, all year round.

To help spread the love, the biggest winners from our last $80,000 Giveaway are not on this list. They already got thousands, so we're giving some other orgs a shot.

If you'd like your favorite charity to be on the list, please visit this page for details. Better yet, send it to them.

Read up on each charity! They each have a lens all about the good work they do. Check them out, below.

EnviroCorps
Operation Gratitude
Cpl. Sean Stokes Legacy
Hope for Henry
Cheetah Conservation Fund
Steve's Club
Polar Bear International
Diabetes Research Institute
Big Cat Rescue
First Coast No More Homeless Pets
Center for Church Communication
Dog Tags for Kids
Planet Gumbo
Food for Everyone Foundation
Long Hopes
Donors Choose
Operation Helmet
National Wildlife Federation's Alaska Natural Resource
A Day of Hope
Ferrets Unlimited
Room to Read

First, understand Twitter: Inside Twitter, you can send short notes to other people. These notes may contain a hashtag, which is a keyword that starts with a # (sometimes called a hash or pound sign). We use the hashtag to track what you've written about.

Second, understand the way we picked the 21 charities for this list. If you'd like your favorite charity to be on the list, please visit this page for details. Better yet, send it to them.

Third, understand the rules: The contest starts and ends at the dates we publish. Maximum distributed is $30,000. Squidoo gives 100% of this amount to the charities voted for (to the best of our ability to judge) and will give any remainder to charities chosen by our charity board. All the money will be given away! Promise.

Last, hey, have fun. The economy is erratic and scary right now, which makes it an exceptional joy to be able to give tens of thousands of dollars away this season.

You spread the word.

You got your twitterfriends in on the voting.

You helped us give away $30,000!

Thanks.

Since our inception, Squidoo has been focused on helping people spread the word about and raise money for causes they believe in. To date, our community has earned enough money to support several animal shelters, to build a school in Cambodia, to invest in an entrepreneur in Tanzania and to pay for cutting edge research into the causes and cure of Juvenile Diabetes. Among many, many other wonderful stories and successful donations. Thank you.

We're big fans of Twitter 'round here. And so are tons and tons of our top lensmasters. It's a great tool for swapping nutshell ideas and spreading the word about something you care about.

The idea of this Twitterdrive is to make it easy for our Twittering lensmasters to vote. As well as to spread the word to new people on Twitter, so they can join you in voting and learn about how Squidoo raises money for charity.