New twist on fundraising concerts, as ticket buyers choose the beneficiary

From the Nonprofit Quarterly's website, December 2, 2010

Musicians raising money for charity is not news, but the idea Dave Matthews has cooked up to raise $1 million from two upcoming performances not only is news but could be a game changer if it catches on with other artists.  The Seattle Times reports that Matthews has teamed up with the website JustGive to allow fans who attend his shows to pass on the full price they paid for their tickets to any of 1.5 million eligible charities.  Matthews, who along with Tim Reynolds will perform on Dec. 6 and 7 in Seattle, has done benefits before for Hurricane Katrina and Haiti earthquake relief, family farmers and Tibet. This time, he wants to let people themselves decide where the money should go. "If I was to do a concert for one organization or another, there are a few people who might have reasons, political or social, why they don't want to support that," Matthews said. "That might discourage them from going to the concert."  If concert goers haven't decided right away who should get their donations, they'll have a few weeks to visit the JustGive website, read about the charities listed, and then pick which one to get their money. Any proceeds not allocated to particular organizations will be divided among those that are selected.  If the idea works in Seattle, Matthews and his manager, Coran Capshaw plan to take it on the road to other cities. Not only does Matthews hope his tunes are catchy, but that his fundraising idea is too.

In the UK and Ireland, the largest book give-away ever attempted

Press announcement from WorldBookNight.org

World Book Night represents the most ambitious and far-reaching celebration of adult books and reading ever attempted in the UK and Ireland.  On Saturday, 5 March 2011, with the full support of the Publishers Association, the Booksellers Association, the Independent Publishers Guild, the Reading Agency with libraries, World Book Day, the BBC and RTE, one million books will be given away by an army of passionate readers to members of the public across the UK and Ireland.  The book give-away will comprise 40,000 copies of each of the 25 carefully selected titles, to be given away by 20,000 'givers', who will each distribute 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they choose on World Book Night. The remaining books will be distributed by World Book Night itself in places that might otherwise be difficult to reach, such as prisons and hospitals.  The twenty-five titles were selected by a wide-ranging editorial committee, chaired by James Naughtie.  After looking through the list of titles, you can apply to become a giver on World Book Night itself.

A search engine made just for movie dialogue

From VeryShortList.com, December 2, 2010

Ignore the lo-fi and tatty design: Subzin.com is an incredibly useful, stripped-down search engine that will help you find almost any line from almost any movie you can think of.   Type in "Frankly, my dear" and 11 films come up. (You'll see lines from Miss Congeniality, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Poetic Justice, as well as Gone With The Wind's justifiably famous "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.")  The search engine's not quite exhaustive: we found our favorite quip from Starship Troopers ("MI does the dying-fleet just does the flying"), but had to look elsewhere for Clint Eastwood's classic '70s-era comeback, "Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy." (It's from The Outlaw Josey Wales.) Still, Subzin's got 95% of the lines we looked for, and set us off on all sorts of wonderful tangents. It's well worth the bookmark.

Video: The "You Should Be On Broadway" bears explain nonprofit arts fundraising

Posted on YouTube.com [hat tip to Krista Blackwood]

FROM TC: Based on the huge number of you who clicked through yesterday's link to watch the "You Should Be On Broadway" animated bears, I thought many of you would enjoy watching one more clip in this series - in this 4 �-minute video, one bear asks the other to support his nonprofit arts group.  The conversation would be even funnier if it weren't so painfully true.