Like it for Good — New Project of Planetsave Founder Jan van Voorst

Got a guest post here from the founder of Planetsave — Jan van Voorst — on his awesome new project, LikeItForGood. Check it out!

Social media, sharing while helping causes, etc. How can all of this be done? These have been my thoughts over the last few years whenever I come across social media. I spent months with a business associate trying to come up with the perfect plan using Facebook. We lined up a programmer, had meetings, spent time, drew on boards, and nothing happened with a wonderful but seriously complicated idea.

Then I spoke with an old friend of mine and ex business partner and had a 15 minute brain storming session on the phone. The result – my new project Likeitforgood.com.

In 1999 I started an environmental news site called Planetsave.com. Perhaps you are familiar with it. later I added a free web based email service that conserved 5 sq ft of rainforest with every message you sent and received. We had 35,000 members at one point. 5 sq ft is small but with 35,000 members sending email all day it adds up to be quite sizeable. The concept was so simple. Why not take the same concept and apply it to social media? I did just that.

Introducing Likeitforgood.com – This is the site that allows you and your Social media friends to help the planet by making free donations to charities around the world with a simple click. Social Justice with Social Media!

Every week I choose a new charity, a new sponsor, and write a new post. Users “like” my Facebook page and “Like” the post. Tweeters “tweet”, Googlers “+1”, and Stumblers “stumble”. Each user click records a donation for the charity and adds the post to their social media feed so their friends can also take part, creating more donations.

You can see how this can create many donations and become an excellent fundraising opportunity.

After doing an alpha test to my friends and my friend’s friends I saw that the potential was real. How real? Real enough to gain quite a bit of exposure in only a few weeks. I was able to plant over 1,000 trees  via Trees for the Future, due to my post “Like this Link to Plant a Tree”.  This demonstration is reason enough for me to put my time and effort in to building a powerful planet saving machine that is so easy and simple to use and make part of your social media life that people will click and make an positive environmental impact.

Interested in checking it out? Go to www.likeitforgood.com.