With Change.org and Project Agape trying to make good use of the Facebook apps platform, you wouldn’t think there’s room for yet another social causes app. Razoo is hoping there is.

Razoo, a new site in beta, bills itself as “a place for people who want to create positive change in the world. A community that empowers you to make a difference… in your own way.” Sounds nice! Of course, that description could mean just about anything. Essentially, Razoo is a site where people can learn about different social causes, connect with other like-minded folks around these causes, and “make a difference.”

Sound familiar? Razoo isn’t the first to make the connection between social networking and social change. Change.org and Project Agape (with Causes, their Facebook app) have made good use of the desire to translate all of that hard-earned social network capital into nonprofit dollars and cents.

Change.org has been especially nimble at integrating with Facebook, importing “changes,” nonprofits, and politicians from its main site into Facebook. The Change.org app also tells you which of your Facebook friends are also members of Change.org, and makes it easy to invite others to use the site and to find, share, and donate to social causes.

But this social networking-meets-nonprofit fundraising thing is still in its early stages, and hasn’t been proven to actually make money for the causes we all care so much about (for example, Human Rights Watch has 203 supporters on Change.org, and has raised a whopping $10). That’s not to say that Change.org or Project Agape aren’t building great sites and apps, they’re just still figuring out how to monetize them.

Enter Razoo. It too has a companion Facebook app, but this one, called Razoo Speed Granting, is different.

To apply tired Web 2.0 arithmetic, it’s kind of like Digg plus Causes or Change.org. Rather than simply organize networks around causes, it asks users to vote for their favorite nonprofit proposals; the proposal with the most votes takes home a grant of $1000.

The current contest ends at 11:59pm on August 31st. At the moment Invisible Children, a nonprofit focused on peace in Northern Uganda, is in first place with 224 votes; no other group breaks 100.

The app is a much more fun alternative to Razoo’s main site, which in some ways is simply too similar to Change.org. It is, however, hosting the Change Your World contest, another feature that might get people exciting about the site. Organizations that create Razoo groups of over 100 members by September 15th will be eligible to win a $10,000 donation. Not bad, and (potentially) fun! Games like this get people interested in things, and if more people join this just may spark new kinds of participation around doing Good online.

Facebook | Fundraising | Razoo
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