Tech Companies Continue Raising Relief Funds for Japan
The earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan left over 18,000 confirmed dead or missing, and tech companies from the far reaches of Silicon Valley signed up to aid in relief efforts. LivingSocial is the latest company to do so – the daily deals site and Groupon competitor raised exactly $2,301,130 for the American Red Cross’s Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund.
Living Social harnessed its coupon system to offer over 24 million subscribers a different kind of deal: you can make a $10 donation for only $5 – and LivingSocial matched the $1,150,565 it collected from users.
“The offer started Thursday afternoon and ran throughout the weekend in all of the company’s U.S. markets… Although the company originally said it would only match up to $1 million, a spokesperson says it will match the user donations dollar for dollar.”
LivingSocial has a history of donating to charitable causes, and during its last (second) annual 12 Days of Giving promo the company raised $130,000 for U.S. and international charities.
It’s not just LivingSocial who contributed to the Japan relief efforts – the whole tech industry affected, and some of the biggest players decided to donate. Among those is Microsoft, who tweeted it will donate $1 for every retweet of their original message up to $100,000, and later announced it will be donating an additional $250,000 as well as $1.5 million worth of software.
From software manufacturer to social gaming, global-scale social game WeeWorld is using its sheer scale and virtual goods customer base to facilitate some massive donations. Weeworld.com and its WeeMee Avatar Creator app will donate 100% of their March proceeds to the Japan Earthquake relief effort. This follows a similar move by Zynga, and comes in addition to efforts from SxSW and by a Finnish music crowdsourcing start-up called AudiDraft. AudioDraft is crowdosurcing the making of 5 tunes it will upload to iTunes, Amazon etc – and will donate 100% of revenues to the cause.
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