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We all know that there is nothing like a good contest to energize people. Thats why I think that from a publicity perspective the Chase Community Giving contest on Facebook is a smart move. Basically any Facebook user can lookup and vote for their 20 favorite nonprofits. The top100 votes will be awarded $25,000 each. The winners will also be moved to a second round of voting with a $1 million prize for the overall winner. As a United Way of Greater New Haven employee, that is enough money to make me pay attention and ponder how Greater New Haven can take advantage of this opportunity.

A challange for local organizations this is a contest for the number of people you can get to vote, this gives an advantage to large national nonprofits. However, I think we could turn the odds in our favor by working together as a community.  With 100 slots for winners it strikes me that Greater New Haven nonprofit advocates should be encouraging friends and supporters use all their votes to promote regional nonprofits. I certainly would love to see Greater New Haven nonprofit represented with several local organizations in the round one winning circle.

To help others get started, I'm providing my personal list of nonprofits I voted for with links to the pages where you can vote too. The nonprofits I picked were mostly United Way partner nonprofits with the addition of the New Haven Land Trust where I personally volunteer. You can seach the contest's database of nonprofits to find your favorite local nonprofits at http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/.  The contest designers do not make it easy to see who else is participating localy so let me know about other local nonprofits that are active in this content in the comments on this page.

• United Way of Greater New Haven 
• New Haven Land Trust
• AIDS Project New Haven
• All Our Kin, Inc.
• Columbus House
• Community Dining Room, Inc.
• Community Mediation, Inc.
• LEAP
• Casa Otonal, Inc.
• JUNTA for Progressive Action
• New Haven Boys & Girls Club
• Solar Youth
• Youth Rights Media
• The New Haven Reads Community Book Bank, Inc.
• STRIVE/New Haven, Inc.
• United Way of Coastal Fairfeild County

That’s my list so far. Let me know if you a local nonprofit making an effort to win one of the top 100 spots. At the time of writing this I still have five votes so I might be able to make some list additions. If we start to get some rising stars that can compete for the prize we should make sure that we all help to push them over the top.

Will you be participating in this contest? Do you think local nonprofits can compete with the large national organizations with the way this contest has setup voting? What do you think the effectiveness of these contests are for the sponsor and the participants? Can we as a region pull off multiple wins? Is it worth it for push voting as a way to help or is it a distraction? Is this a good way to grant money for Chase or just an interesting marketing gimmick? Are you from a nonprofit that is trying to win a prize too? Let me know in the comments.