Facebook released an It Gets Better video in support of LGBT youth today, featuring staffers who also share advice on how to thwart bullying and other intolerant behavior on Facebook. The movement has been gaining the support of major brands (such as Google), celebrities and politicians including President Obama.  

This Friday, October 22, Lancome is hosting a one-day fundraiser — which it's calling Genes Day — for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in New York.

The L'Oreal-owned brand will donate $7 from every $78 bottle of Genifique Youth Activating Concentrate sold on its website or in-store. It's also giving away free seven-day samples at retail partners' beauty counters to help first-timers try before they buy, and take the plunge for a good cause.

Lancome has pledged a minimum of $100,000 to St. Jude, the only pediatric cancer research center in America where children are never denied treatment because their family cannot pay or lacks insurance.Continue reading...

At Procter & Gamble's annual meeting of shareholders yesterday, the company showcased not only its achievements of the past year and plans for the next, but also highlighted its philanthropic and corporate social responsibility efforts.

Case in point: Brian Sasson, P&G's Global Social Investment Manager, who was shown (in the video above) talking about how his daughter's new eyeglasses made him realize that it's a rare sight in China to see kids wearing glasses.

The heartwarming upshot: he duly partnered with Luxottica, featured here back in July, and helped fund Luxottica's OneSight initiative to bring glasses to more than 800 Chinese students through mobile vision clinics at P&G's Hope Schools in rural China.

You may know them as wheel-embedded sk8r shoes. But Heelys is taking a page from TOMS, almost its low-tech opposite, with its latest philanthropic turn. Heelys is giving away $101,010 worth of shoes to charity, or over 2,000 pairs of shoes, through November 24.

It's also not the only pro-social brand using 10-10-10 as a marketing hook. The U.K.-based 10:10 climate campaign ran into trouble with its carbon-reduction PSA, as we recently noted; while the USO launched Giveback 10 yesterday to help American troops returning from service transition back into daily life.Continue reading...

Politics and charity make contentious bedfellows as Pepsi has just learned.

Arms Wide Open Childhood Cancer Foundation, a non-profit that raises money for alternative therapies and treatments for children with neuroblastoma just blasted PepsiCo's widely praised Pepsi Refresh Project with claims of political pandering. The target of their ire: that 16 contestant-groups are members of the Progressive Slate with ties to the Democratic Party, and in their view, violating contest rules.

Pepsi (which aims to be transparent about the voting process) disagrees, commenting to the New York Times that those groups were not advocating for candidates or issues.Continue reading...

Verizon and the National Network to End Domestic Violence have launched a text-to-donate program, featuring Dr. Phil, who has devoted his ninth season on-air to campaigning against domestic violence.

The partnership gives consumers an easy option to support those affected by domestic violence during October, which is national Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Text "HOPE" to 41010 to make a one-time, $10 donation to NNEDV, the largest network of coalitions against domestic violence in the U.S. Verizon's HopeLine will match donations up to a total of $50,000.

The star of the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative? Not the various celebs and CEOs at the event, but this video.

Designed by Nike's marketing team under the watch of Maria Eitel, president of the Nike Foundation, the first Girl Effect video in 2008 has been watched by an estimated 10 million people.

Just a few of the movement's supporters at CGI's annual meeting: World Bank managing director Ngozi Okjonjo-Iweala, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, CARE CEO Helene Gayle and Intel Foundation president Shelly Esque. 

Kristof, reporting on the event said, "My hunch is that the most effective way to market antipoverty work in coming years will be by rebranding it, in part, as a security issue."Continue reading...

Here's a snippet of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on the Oprah Winfrey Show today, announcing the $100 million donation he's making to help schools in Newark, NJ. Watch more of Zuckerberg's appearance on Oprah.com, along with a post-show segment, where he says he's using this pledge to kick off his Startup Education Foundation.

In short, he says it's all about children and investing in leaders such as Newark mayor Corey Booker and New Jersey governor Chris Christie, not a charm offensive tied to the opening of The Social Network movie. In fact, he says he's been researching education for more than a year as a precursor to today's announcement.

It also follows Facebook's recent partnership with the National PTA to promote cybersafety and awareness about social networking.