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Facebook is launching a resource center to help non-profits use the social network.

The site will include educational materials, tutorials and a downloadable non-profit guide geared toward raising awareness and funds for causes specifically through the social network.

how to create a Facebook Page and explains how to set up events and use discussion boards to connect with an audience

aking the checkin and making it philanthropic

lets users post their actions via SMS, web, email, Foursquare or Google Talk.

ach act earns the user points that can be redeemed for actual rewards and discounts

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.

trategy #1: Try to Get Permission

Strategy #2: Use Advertising to Test

Use advertising as a testing tool rather than a long-term stream of customers.

For decades, the decision to be an environmentally and socially responsible company has been based on the bottom line: Would it be profitable?

In terms of traditional accounting and the legal requirements of corporations, costs always outweighed benefits.But it now seems that this equation is starting to lean the other way as brands recognize the potential financial and reputational advantages they can gain by engaging with consumers around the shared ambition of building a better world.

We can see this already happening among some leading brands such as Pepsi, Google, Nike, Patagonia and Starbucks, who have all earned consumer respect for their involvement

owing that non-profit supporters around the world have been adopting the use of social networking in their daily lives we set out to figure out if the use of social networks had any impact on personal or peer-to-peer fundraising. The results we’re pretty amazing

e found that participants who use social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube communicate with their networks more regularly and send more messages. This resulted in increased fundraising results by up to 40%.

Twitter as a Multiplier Twitter users set higher fundraising goals and raised more money. In fact, Twitter users increased their personal fundraising goals by at least three times more and raised nearly 10 times more online than their peers who did not use Twitter.

Why Top Brands Are Investing So Much Time In a Social Media Leaderboard

Massive brands like Intel, Audi, Microsoft, Ford Motor Company, Toyota and AT&T have also invested in EA and are quickly rising up EA’s business leaderboard. The real-life success of a company seems to directly correspond with EA’s scoring algorithm. The Fortune 500 ranks public companies by the most after-tax revenue for the year, but how does EA determine its scoring? “We really look at the following: Activity (how much and what you do), audience (who’s listening) and engagement/interaction (how are people engaging you),” Dups said. “So if you can break down any network in that way, you can figure out what we listen to.”

Getting In Early

An overwhelming number of marketers consider social media to be integral to their strategies this year, and 70% plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year

found that the primary social media goal is to increase Facebook “Likes.”

social networking would take 11.9% of their overall budget this year compared with 13% for TV

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.

Too often, it's the popular kid, and not the most deserving one, who wins. This type of giving poses definite ethical questions. That corporate marketing divisions are using social responsibility as a way to boost the bottom line is the least of these. The aforementioned $200,000 is actually but a part of the $5 million Chase claims to have donated

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.

How Are Analytics Shaping Social Games?

The freemium gaming business is expanding rapidly. We all know about the Facebook behemoth Zynga, which now claims over 250 million monthly players, and is valued at anywhere between -10bn.

“Our objective generally is to increase monetisation and improve player satisfaction,”