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Giving is big business. Every year non-profit organizations solicit companies in the hope of obtaining

Giving USA reports corporate giving increased 5.5% to $14.1 billion in 2009.

Businesses are willing to give, but are often confused as to which causes might be best for them.

GamesThatGive is one company helping brands take advantage of the social gaming boom via Facebook

GTG makes custom-branded Facebook games with charitable twist. For example, its You Play, We Give campaign for MasterCard donates as much as 10 cents to Junior Achievement Hudson Valley for every minute a person plays the game, which has more than 30,000 Likes and gets more than 80% of visits from returning visitors. On average, gamers spend 45 minutes on the game page each visit.The concept and execution are the same for GTG’s other big-name clients — Pepsi, Propel, Starbucks and Quaker. A user can play those companies’ custom-branded games on Facebook for a short amount a time until a pop-up box appears requesting that the user “like” the company in order to “double your donation.”“Not only are thousands of dollars going to charity as a result of people playing games, but large companies are successfully using branded social games to turn Facebook fans into customers,” Archer says.

She's been to Sri Lanka and South Africa as a participant in Accenture Development Partnerships, a program that sends employees to work on nonprofit projects in developing countries.

As more employees see volunteer work as a way to learn new skills or move their careers forward, volunteering has become a sort of corporate benefit.

For an annual fee between $5,000 and $50,000, companies can give their employees access to a VolunteerMatch list of 55,300 nonprofits seeking help. Nonprofits join for free.

s transitioning from living primarily as a Facebook canvas application to running off of its standalone website Causes.com

led to a two-fold increase in the amount of money the site raises in donations from its ‘Birthday Wish’ feature on a daily basis — $20,000 a day, up from $10,000 two months ago.

Causes gift cards in every Safeway and Vons location in California.

Corporations have, not surprisingly, turned their marketing lens to the social networks, and they're running their corporate giving programs like a race for prom king.

the neediest and most in need of charity -- are not always those with the loudest voice.

There's another advantage for Chase to hand out money this way: they're splashed all over your Facebook news feed as good-hearted bankers with whom you might just want to do business. But are these dollars solely devoted to helping charitable organizations, or are they just another way of advertising? A multi-billion dollar corporation shouldn't be allowed to write-off advertising as a charitable contribution.