For those of you who were hanging around here last year, you’d remember the infamous 6 resolutions I made for 2008. I’ll cover how I’ve done on the others ones soon, but time is of the essence to circle back to the last one, entitled Donate More. I pledged to walk my walk about companies big and small making a difference in the world by donating to those in need. And, I said I would donate 5% of my site’s profits to a charity that we all agreed on together. The time to decide on that place has arrived. Clean water? Disaster Relief Efforts? Create a scholarship fund at a design school? Perhaps we should micro-finance some projects as a group together through Kiva? You (and there are many of you), tell me where it should go. Comment below or email in, and after we receive a bunch of ideas, we’ll put it up for polling and go from there. Speak!

A week or so ago, I wrote about the (LESS) campaign– a ‘buy less crap’ response to the well-intentioned but mostly ineffective (RED) campaign to which the likes of Bono, Oprah, the Gap and Apple have subscribed. I want to thank you all for the comments you sent in in response to my post. I also wanted to share this clip from CNN that speaks to the tension between the (RED) campaign and responses from non-profits like (LESS). The gist of the story is that despite the widespread public perception that (RED) is effective — most likely due to the media blitz that accompanied (RED) — the campaign has been far more expensive to implement and market ($100M) than the donations that have resulted ($18M). As before, I encourage you all to leave comments with your opinions about this topic. What’s the most effective way to conduct important fundraising campaigns? Are these (RED) companies serious about making significant contributions, or are they more concerned with the PR exposure? I’m excited to hear your thoughts.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate how big corporations like Gap are turing sales into helpful donations to great causes through the (RED) campaign; I think (RED) has been successful from a wide-spread outreach standpoint. But I also really appreciate the response to the (RED) campaign by the (LESS) campaign. (LESS) is a collaboration between Romantic Static and Words Pictures Ideas that allows you to donate to great charities with out buying stuff from a major corporation. Launched only yesterday, (LESS) is already starting to get some great donations flowing through their system. If you don’t view shopping as a solution to human suffering, (LESS) may be more for your donation efforts.