A Georgia Blogosphere Holiday Call to Action!

I just got back home from North Point Mall where I was doing a bit of preliminary Christmas Shopping with my family. On the way back, my father pointed out how strange it was that the usual Salvation Army volunteers were nowhere to be found.  They're usually out by this time of the year.

For whatever reason, the Salvation Army has never been one of my nonprofits. Usually when I give money for a social cause, it's either for a cause involving the environment, research to find a cure for one disease or another, or other similarly global causes. I usually don't gravitate towards causes that make me feel warm and fuzzy intentionally because I prefer to donate to causes that treat the roots of problems rather than symptoms.

But there's something to be said for giving back to causes that are closer to home.  Because for the people entrenched in whatever problem they're trying to solve or bring relief to, it's not a "symptom," at all! Far from it. These are in fact the problems that demand our attention and humanity the most! For these kinds of causes, I much prefer to give my time. It feels much more personally meaningful to me that way.

But I digress from the reason I'm writing this blog post. I was following this train of thought earlier, and came to the realization that I want to do something special this holiday season. And I'd like to enlist members of the Georgia Blogosphere to join me!

This past year, I've seen tremendous growth in the local blogosphere. The Georgia Blog Carnival (a wonderfully moving target) is proof that our community has grown by leaps, bounds, and in connectivity! We're developing our own culture here and creating some new traditions.  I have a new one I'd like for us to add to the books blogs.

This holiday season, I'd like focus on a Georgia based cause and try to collectively raise money for them through Georgia's Social Media Community.

We can pick one, a few, or everyone could pick one for themselves! Although, I personally like the idea of us getting behind one specific cause so we can take advantage of the amplification effect many voices can have.

Involvement can take a number of different forms. At the most basic level, we'll have a widget we can put on our blogs so our readers can make donations. Beyond that, blogging some piece of the story behind this cause! Such storytelling can be especially powerful during the holiday season, and telling the story of someone or some group who can't tell the story themselves is a great way to give back.

So in essence, I'm looking for a cause to give back to this holiday season. And I'd like to enlist whomever in the Georgia Blogosphere is interested in joining me because I believe we've come to a point where we can make a much bigger difference than we could even dream of as individuals.

So, what do we need for this? We need a pick a cause to mobilize behind, first of all. After that, we need to settle on a widget platform, and maybe get a google page up. And after that? We do what bloggers do best! Whatever that is. ;)

Today is November 25th; exactly one month until Christmas day, and six days until December 1st. I'd like to have this running a week from now, if possible. I realize that this proposal is rather haphazard and not completely thought out, which is why I'd like to throw it out to the rest of you at this point. If you're a Georgia blogger, and you'd like to help me put this together, blog about it this next week! If there's something I haven't thought through you'd like to contribute your thoughts and additional planning to, do so! And most of all, if any of you have any thoughts on what cause we should mobilize behind, definitely blog about that too. The only condition is that the cause needs to be Georgia based in some way.

At the end of the week (let's say.. Friday evening) I'll followup with a post summarizing the blogosphere conversation and we'll see where we're at in terms of planning and execution bringing this to life! (Be sure to shoot me an email with a link to your post to make sure I see it.) If for whatever reason there's a heated conversation by the end of the week and difficulty in making a decision, we'll find some way to democratize the process.

And if anyone would like to talk about this with me in person, I'm running an Atlanta NetSquared Meetup this Tuesday night focused on Blogging for social causes. If enough people show up interested in talking about this we can have a mini-planning session then as well!

The thought of creating new holiday traditions in the social media realm makes me a bit giddy and I can't wait to see what this actually turns into!