Felicity was a good sport, helping me throw a last minute video together for our last minute gifts! Plan A was to do a Home Alone themed video with Harry, but when that diva bailed on me, Felicity was quick to volunteer in his place. But she wouldn't accept the fact that it could no longer be a Home Alone video. (Only Harry can rock a bathrobe like that.) "Nevertheless, she persisted..." Hence her choice of sweater and hair, which now she regrets. So be it. Can't argue with volunteer talent!

If you need any last minute gifts (in convenient multiple-of-$13 denominations), cute stocking stuffers, or just want to spread Charitocracy to the masses, be our guest! Email with gift codes and PDF foldable gift boxes are sent instantly. Then you choose whether to forward the email to that special someone, or better yet hand deliver it with a kiss! I am Charitocracy. You are Charitocracy. We are all Charitocracy. And the more of us the merrier!

Over the last few days we've been experimenting some more with Facebook ads. I have to be honest, it's not going well. We still have plenty of matching funds on hand, earmarked for growing our donor base. Incentivizing likes, donation increases, and sign-ups by throwing extra $ in the pot is win-win. We get more activity, and the money goes to the causes. Not so much with the ads: they're generating pitifully little activity and all the money goes to Facebook. We'll keep trying, but I'm more and more convinced that the organic approach (meaning: you and your friends and family) is going to be the most cost-effective. And that doesn't necessarily mean slower growth, either, based on our poor ad results to date.

I have more organic growth ideas. Don't take my growth rate disappointment to be any kind of resignation. It's a challenge, and I rise to those! I just need to crack the code of incentivizing the spread of Charitocracy like wildfire. Sorry, probably a bad choice of analogy these days. Better than spreading Charitocracy like a disease, right? There must be some positive way to spread something... Okay: I need to incentivize the spread of Charitocracy like peanut butter. Or frosting. Like peanut butter frosting. Done. But not if you're allergic to peanuts, in which case I recommend almond butter.

It's Tuesday. Normally that means tacos for lunch, but today it means giving to your favorite charities. And naturally that means Charitocracy. Happy Giving Tuesday!

Giving Tuesday means doubled donations

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is matching all donations coming in through Facebook's Donate button today. And Facebook is waiving fees. So today is the day. If you've been wanting to donate to Charitocracy but for whatever reason (fear of commitment? Triskaidekaphobia?) don't want to join Charitocracy, visit our Facebook page and click that Donate button! Any amount is welcome. Your dollars will go 100% straight to Charitocracy... But only after being mimeographed to take up double the space in Charitocracy's bank vaults. We'll make room.

Of course there's no better way to give to Charitocracy than to actually join us here. That enables you to vote for causes and nominate your personal favorites to win. Most importantly, it will sustain that warm feeling in your heart throughout the year, at convenient monthly intervals. Check out our past winners!

Already a donor?

If you've read this far, there's a strong chance you're already a Charitocracy groupy, so the above information isn't very helpful to you. How else can you help on Giving Tuesday? Let me count the ways:

• Increase your annual donation! Whether that means doubling from $1/month to $2, or $10 to $20, you know best what kind of impact on the world you can afford. I spend $10 on coffee in a single day sometimes, so that helps put things in perspective for me. Don't be afraid to open wallets wide! It's all about the Washingtons, baby.
• Give Charitocracy as a gift! Give the lucky people on your holiday shopping list a prepaid year of Charitocracy. Gifts come with a PDF you can print out or email with the low-down on Charitocracy and a foldable gift box! Stuff stockings, enclose them with greeting cards, hang them on a tree, or incorporate them into whatever tradition you celebrate. Put one in your Tuesday Tacos. It's all good.
• Invite your friends and family via email! Not all of us possess the resources to save the world with cold hard cash. This is why we've incorporated what we call your Giving Tree into Charitocracy. Visible right alongside your personal donations, this Giving Tree $ amount shows you all the donations you're responsible for bringing into Charitocracy, not just your own. This is the most important number to celebrate, as you can have a much larger impact by bringing your friends and family into the fold than you can hope  to have individually.
• Share our Facebook page to all your friends! Click the [...] button, then Invite Friends, enter a brief note about Charitocracy's greatness, and click the Invite button next to each friend. This costs you nothing but a few minutes time, but since we're throwing an extra $1 of matching funds into the monthly pot for each new Like, it can add up quickly! Even if just 5% of your 400 friends listen to you for once and click that Like button, that's $20 in the pot right there! Not to mention the strong likelihood that they'll like what they see and join us as donors themselves some day...

Our kids covered some of this in their video last month, so check it out!  And have a warm and generous Giving Tuesday, everyone! *Tacos not included.

... a blog post about the blog!

Maybe you’ve noticed that the blog is now embedded within the main Charitocracy site? Goodbye blog.ch-y.org, hello ch-y.org/blog! (If you haven’t noticed, that’s a good sign it’s been a smooth transition.)

The blog predates the rest of the site by nearly a year, and was hosted on a separate server. My SEO gurus (hey, Dave & Tommy!) tell me that’s frowned upon by some search engine algorithms. Not to mention, it’s just a historical artifact that they were separate.

Build it and then what?

My “Build It And They Will Come” mentality is starting to show its naïveté. That saying only holds true for the ghosts of baseball legends when you transform a corn field into a baseball diamond. Or maybe putting up a Starbucks next to the research station in Antarctica. Charitocracy, without the same captive audience, will need to start taking marketing much more seriously in order to carry out our mission.

Organic growth has been humbling, in multiple senses of that word. On one hand, 100% year-to-year growth in donors on nothing more than word-of-mouth and the generosity of our friends and family fills my heart. You guys amaze me. On the other hand, we have ~200 donors today, while the site in its current form could easily serve 2000 or even 20,000 donors.

Expect to hear more about our new marketing efforts in the coming weeks, as we enter 2017’s Giving Season!