We thought that we would share with you the excellent news that we received this week from Clement Chauvet, Head of Resource Mobilisation at UNICEF India.

This week, the Awaaz Do campaign, reached its goal of a quarter of a million sign-ups!

The consultancy was very pleased to have participated in the strategic planning of this campaign in 2010 with Anita Yuen (UNICEF in Geneva), David Girling and Yasumasa Kimura (UNICEF Asia), as well as the team from UNICEF India.

The Awaaz Do campaign is a great example of how implementing our vision of a social trysumers model, which focuses on providing potential supporters with a free experience of a social organisation before committing to a financial relationship, can be applied to any kind of initiative.

The aim of the campaign is to mobilise Indian society to speak up for the more than 8 million children currently out of school in the country. Those who sign up serve as champions for the cause and help build awareness through email, Facebook, SMS and even a photography contest.

According to Urmila Sarkar, UNICEF’s chief of Education, “The Awaaz Do campaign is a platform for the combined voices of the government, the corporate world, the media and individuals to become an undeniable force to ensure every child is in school.”

The consultancy is very proud for having participated in this vital step towards providing all Indian children with access to education.

Massive congratulations to the UNICEF India team!

We recently came across this great interactive installation by abolition.fr that encourages potential supporters to “take a stand” against the death penalty…quite literally.

Not is this installation hard-hitting and impactful but we also thought that the QR-code mobile element (which enables the organisation to collect both signatures for its petition, as well as vital data from potential supporters) was a great touch.

According to the video, the installation was a great success, collecting thousands of signatures for the organisation’s anti-death penalty petition.

It has been a busy year here at Marceloiniarra.com, especially with Brazil’s recent explosion into the global fundraising market.

We’re currently working on several projects in Brazil, including a supporter cultivation project for Amnesty International in Brazil and a campaign for Medecins Sans Frontieres, amongst others.

We’re so enthusiastic about the vast potential of the Brazilian market, that we came up with the novel idea to prepare a visual report for other organisations highlighting just why Brazil is becoming such an attractive and interesting market for Fundraising.

Did you know, for example, that the individual fundraising market in Brazil is currently valued at 5.2 billion reals? Or that Facebook is growing faster in Brazil than anywhere else in the world?

And with Brazil due to host the Olympic Games in 2016 and the World Cup in 2014, the country’s economy is expected to continue to grow and grow.

Hardly surprising then, that this prosperous period of growth was recently described by local journalist, Alexandre Teixeira as “the age of the Brazilian dream”.

We’re certainly excited to be part of this dream within the social sector in Brazil and hope that our report will offer some food for thought for other NGOs thinking about entering the Brazilian market.

We’re delighted to announce the successful launch of our first Innophoric Watch Livestream, on transcending space in the social sector, held last Tuesday the 28th of June.

While it wasn’t without technical hitches, typical when testing new technology for the first time, the presentation went pretty well overall.

As far as we are aware, it was also the first time that a program or presentation for the social sector had ever been streamed online via social media… certainly within Latin America.

If you’d like to watch a recording of the stream online click here.

To receive future copies of the Innophoric Watch simply pop your details into this form and send or to download the second edition of the Watch, “Welcome to the Wormhole”, click here and enter the password “time”.

If you recently read the 2nd edition of the Innophoric Watch – Welcome to the wormhole, and are interested in finding out more about transcending space within the social sector, check out our Innophoric Watch livestream at 14hrs GMT (9am New York, 10am Buenos Aires, 15hrs Paris and 22hrs Osaka!)  tomorrow (28th of June 2011) here.

To watch the livestream, all you have to do is become a fan of Lucy Innophoria on Facebook and check out her Facebook wall at that time!

We’ll will be giving a short, 20-minute presentation on the latest communications technology mentioned in this edition of Innophoric Watch and its potential to the social sector. We’ll also be offering some inspiration as to how this can be implemented in order to boost our programs and projects.

To watch the livestream, all you have to do is check out Lucy Innophoria’s Facebook profile tomorrow at 14hrs GMT. To download Innophoric Watch, click here and enter password “time”.

Enter your password:
If you don’t have the required password please contact ideas@innophoria.com to recieve one.

If Google has anything to do with it, yes!

Google wallet is the latest app to come from the internet giant that enables users to, quite literally, transform their mobile phones into a wallet.

The application will store users’ credit card information, including Citi Bank Mastercard, Google pre-paid cards and gift cards from several companies, inside the phone. Then, when the user wishes to make a purchase, all he has to do is put his mobile phone onto the payment reader and the payment is deducted from the card.

While critics claim that this is no easier than simply using a credit card itself, the benefits to utilising a mobile phone wallet as opposed to a traditional one include the regular use of coupons and discounts (now that these will be stored electronically within the mobile phone itself) and the fact that we are further reducing the amount of necessary “stuff” that we leave the house with. Another massive benefit is one of security. As complete credit card information is never displayed, users will no longer have to worry so much about credit card fraud, loss or theft of their wallets.

We’ve been thinking quite a lot recently in the office about novel ways to instigate positive change and, while this video was indeed made some time ago, we still think that it is a really great example of using social media (in this case Youtube) to raise awareness about an issue in a fun and positive way.

Developed by a local, Bay area environmental group, Green Sangha, this “positive parody” aims to highlight the growing environmental problem of plastic bag use.

According to Green Sangha, shoppers worldwide are using 500 billion to one trillion single-use plastic bags per year. As a result, more than 100,000 marine mammals and turtles, one million seabirds and countless fish worldwide are killed by plastic rubbish each year.

According to Linda Curries, Executive Committee member at Green Sangha, “Music is a powerful vehicle for change, “and this video has enabled us to make something effective but also light-hearted and fun.”

And they certainly achieved it! In just 10 days, the video received 65,000 views on Youtube. Since then, the video has been copied several times on Youtube, with views of the official version reaching over 400,000.

Send your kiss !!!

I recently came across a new website advertising daily deals, pretty much along the same lines as Groupon.  Every day, a new “deal” is uploaded onto the front page of the website and people are invited to purchase the offer.

Only this is a deal site with a difference…Users are invited to spend just US$1 and the “deals” on offer are, in fact, smaller social organisations looking to fundraise for their causes on a massive scale, by asking as large a group of people as possible to make a micro donation of just US$1.

By the looks of things, the website doesn’t appear to be terribly popular yet. The visuals aren’t great and the donations do not appear to be pouring in, it certainly is a great idea.

Perhaps one of the most attractive elements of this concept to potential donors is Philanthroper‘s guarantee that 99 cents of each dollar goes directly to the cause and that the charities involved receive the funds within just three business days, meaning that they are able to put the funds raised to use within a week!

Its certainly a great idea. I’ll be interested to see if it attracts the numbers needed to make impactful donations…