Cause An Effect

Posted by on March 05, 2012

Have you ever wanted to help your community with a problem but didn’t know where to start? Maybe it’s a run-down park or an opportunity to bring teen driver instruction to a local community.  Now, YOU have the power to fix it.  Cause An Effect in your community! State Farm wants to help identify and address key issues faced by consumers throughout the United States and parts of Canada.

Cause An Effect, a State Farm crowd-sourced philanthropic initiative, lets communities determine where grant funding is awarded, exclusively through Facebook.  The application is short and simple, and I encourage you to check out the tab.  You, or someone you know, could be the catalyst for positive change to your community Cause!

Anyone living in Canada or the United States with a Facebook account is eligible to submit a Cause.  In Canada, grants can only be awarded to Causes located in Alberta, Ontario, or New Brunswick, but the submission can come from anyone from any province.  All you have to do is submit the Cause; you don’t have to “run the program.” Any Facebook user can submit a Cause as long as it fits into the categories of safety, community development or education.   Go to http://www.facebook.com/statefarm, click on the Cause An Effect tab, and submit your Cause.

The submission phase is open three weeks, from February 29 – March 20 and each Facebook user can submit up to three Causes.  And it’s better to submit early – a maximum of 3,000 submissions will be accepted.   After the submission stage ends, the State Farm Youth Advisory Board (YAB) will narrow down all the submissions to the top 100 finalists. What the YAB is looking for:

How much does your Cause focus on an unmet need in your community?
Why do you feel the $25,000 would address the unmet need?  How would $25,000 address the unmet need?
How much of a lasting impact on the community would the proposal have? What sustaining impact would your Cause have on your community?

Once the top 100 Causes are identified, they will appear on the Facebook tab to be voted on by you and your community.  The voting stage will last three weeks and each Facebook user gets 10 votes every day.

Please share this amazing opportunity with your colleagues, friends and family and help spread the word on Facebook.  Together, you and State Farm can help create safer, better educated and more engaged communities!