Philanthropist and businessman George Soros announced this week that he would be the next in a line of wealthy front-runners to fund initiatives in clean technology. Soros is the founder of hedge fund Soros Fund Management LLC, and has been known for making monetary contributions to other charitable efforts that effect the well-being of society, such as health care and eduction; now he’s shifting his focus to play a part in reducing the impact of climate change.

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Social media is about connecting people and providing the tools necessary to have a conversation. That global conversation is an extremely powerful platform for spreading information and awareness about social causes and issues. That’s one of the reasons charities can benefit so greatly from being active on social media channels. But you can also do a lot to help your favorite charity or causes you are passionate about through social media.

Below is a list of 10 ways you can use social media to show your support for issues that are important to you. If you can think of any other ways to help charities via social web tools, please add them in the comments. If you’d like to retweet this post or take the conversation to Twitter or FriendFeed, please use the hashtag #10Ways.

1. Write a Blog Post

Blogging is one of the easiest ways you can help a charity or cause you feel passionate about. Almost everyone has an outlet for blogging these days — whether that means a site running WordPress, an account at LiveJournal, or a blog on MySpace or Facebook. By writing about issues you’re passionate about, you’re helping to spread awareness among your social circle. Because your friends or readers already trust you, what you say is influential.

Recently, a group of green bloggers banded together to raise individual $1 donations from their readers. The beneficiaries included Sustainable Harvest, Kiva, Healthy Child, Healthy World, Environmental Working Group, and Water for People. The blog-driven campaign included voting to determine how the funds would be distributed between the charities. You can read about the results here.

You should also consider taking part in Blog Action Day, a once a year event in which thousands of blogs pledge to write at least one post about a specific social cause (last year it was fighting poverty). Blog Action Day will be on October 15 this year.

2. Share Stories with Friends

Another way to spread awareness among your social graph is to share links to blog posts and news articles via sites like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Digg, and even through email. Your network of friends is likely interested in what you have to say, so you have influence wherever you’ve gathered a social network.

You’ll be doing charities you support a great service when you share links to their campaigns, or to articles about causes you care about.

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Not something your run of the mill backpacker “eco adventure” travel agency would do. But then, Exquisite Safaris Philanthropic Travel’s main focus as  a business is to raise funds for high impact non profits around the world, through the vehicle of memorable, powerful travel experiences, spending substantial time with local people in the regions you visit. Real, meaningful interactions, rather then pre packaged tourist shows. And at the same time you get a superbly accommodated trip.

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TreePeople is a nonprofit organization that has been serving the Los Angeles area for over three decades. Simply put, our work is about helping nature heal our cities. We offer sustainable solutions to urban ecosystem problems, focusing on three areas:

1. Training and supporting communities to plant and care for trees
2. Educating school children and adults about the environment
3. Working with government agencies on critical water issues

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Print*Pattern*Paper offers many unique eco-friendly products from recycled stationary to totes. I especially like the Lunch Pack.  The Lunch Pack comes with a darling organic cotton sac, a matching organic cotton napkin, a bamboo plate, and bamboo utensils. The bamboo utensils are really cool, as I have never seen them before, but the spoon is rather shallow causing my four-year-old son to spill lots of yogurt with it.  The whole set makes a nice presentation, and for endurance sake, the bamboo plate and utensils may be better suited for dramatic food play.  The organic napkin and lunch sac are very hardy though.

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Some perks include not having to go near a crowded mall, finding something for everyone on your list, and no lines, returns or exchanges.  Best of all, you’ll be making a tangible difference in the world with the cause of your choice, and it’s something that will last long after the latest retail trends fizzle out.

Changing the Present features more than 1,500 meaningful charitable gifts that users can browse by cause or nonprofit to find the perfect gift for friends or their own charitable giving.

Building on a commitment to changing the social norm when it comes to gift giving, and seeking to spark positive change in the world, Robert Tolmach, CEO of WellGood LLC, spearheaded the team that implemented this important effort, and was kind enough to share more details about the program with me in a one-on-one chat about the future of giving.

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Homemade or hand-made items always outrank mass-produced. If we have to buy something that is mass-produced, we go to an independent business, not a chain, because spending our cash locally makes a difference in our communities. We try to think of others who aren’t as fortunate as us, so organizations that teach and help people to sustain themselves get our vote.

I’d like to share my list of 6 gifts that make a difference. Maybe you’ll see something that calls to you as a gift for that someone that has everything.

Heifer International

Heifer’s mission is to end hunger and poverty while caring for the earth. For more than 60 years, Heifer International has provided livestock and environmentally sound agricultural training to improve the lives of those who struggle daily for reliable sources of food and income. And since 1944, we have helped 48 million people through training in livestock development and livestock gifts that multiply.

You can give the gift of honeybees, a goat, a llama, or a flock of ducks to a family or community in need. These gifts aren’t charity, they’re an investment in people and villages all over the world.

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If you’re going to change the world, wouldn’t you like it to be epic?

Stacey Monk, Co-founder and CEO of Epic Change, does, which is why she and Sanjay Patel decided to launch their unique approach to sparking social change by converting people’s “epic” stories into financial resources they can use to improve their communities, their lives – and the world.

Rooted in the best practices of successful businesses and charities, their somewhat novel approach to funding uses donations to provide interest-free loans to finance community improvement efforts, which they repay by generating revenue-driving projects based on each epic story, and then recycle by duplicating those ideas in other communities, effectively spreading hopefulness and change to everyone their program touches.

I had the opportunity to talk with Stacey to dig a little deeper into their change model, and this impassioned former management consultant with a degree in Public Policy from the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University boasts an impressive resume, but her most compelling attribute by far is a genuine desire to promote positive change and a dewey-eyed hopefulness that makes me believe she can.

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When TOMS’ founder Blake Mycoskie went to visit Argentina on vacation, he discovered more than he expected. While touring, he was exposed to the Argentinean soft shoe called Alpargata. He was also challenged by the poverty he saw, including the villages with children who did not even have shoes. As a result, he decided to create an organization that would be able to fill the simple, but necessary, need of putting shoes onto the feet of children who needed them.

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When a talented friend and associate, Marcia Yerman, who happens to be an advocate for women’s issues insisted we consider featuring Jody Weiss, founder of PeaceKeepers Cause-Metics in Relevant Times last year, I paid attention. There are so many reasons to be amazed by Ms. Weiss and the wonderful ’cause-metics’ she has produced - great, natural AND benefiting women and the world in many ways . . .

Then, when we got some samples to play with, and I was really impressed! 

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The all-encompassing Nau design philosophy requires a balance of three criteria: beauty, performance, and sustainability. Many lines seek to meet one objective, but the most interesting consumer products out there are those that seek to improve lives through the balance of multiple objectives. The clothing line is declared "Prada meets high performance wear." With two top designers both coming from high performance corporate companies - Patagonia and Nike - the design is bound to be as effective as possible. “The clothes integrate performance to the point of invisibility, eschewing adornment and clutter for clean functionality.” Appropriate for all environments, urban to wild, the subtle yet stylish clothing is the model of simple and clutter-less design. With perfection in style, design, and performance, Nau has made it clear to us that sustainable fashion can be very sexy, functional, stylish, and effective.

Yet the most interesting point about the company’s practice lies in the materials itself. Nau has developed 24 of the their 32 fabrics in direct partnership with their suppliers ‘in order to design new, more sustainable solutions that blend performance and aesthetic appeal." All 24 fabrics incorporate a high percentage of recycled materials or vegetable-based byproduct. The interesting part is that instead of patenting the material technology and hoarding the secrets, they do much the contrary. Nau boasts this research from the mountaintops in hopes that other fashion lines, furniture designs, etc., will go ahead and incorporate these highly sustainable and aesthetically exquisite fabrics into their designs. This idea is a paradigm shift that encourages the sharing of ideas and resources throughout a community or the world. If we are all working towards the same goal of a healthier planet, why would we withhold resources that exist to help us get there?

The next pillar of responsibility involves customer participation. For every purchase made at a Nau store or online, 5% is donated to a social, environmental, or humanitarian charitable organization of your choice. Through the Partners for Change organization, you can choose to support communities on a local, national, or international scale. "Committed to radically altering the landscape of corporate philanthropy," Partners For Change and Nau have teamed to bring you this unique experience of direct involvement with the decision making process:

By seeking to create a new way of looking at business, we hope to transcend the traditional gap between the for-profit and nonprofit sector. We believe that all businesses have true responsibilities to the communities they affect. By operating in conjunction with our community partners we have the potential to innovate together in service of changing the world for the better.

I see this answer as two-fold. First, there are things that we can do as individuals related to our little piece of the world: the choices we make in our daily lives around everything from transportation to laundry detergent add up to a create a lot of impact. And second, there are things that we can do collectively, as groups, which likely have immediate implications broader than ourselves.

I read recently that according to a study by the Corporation for National and Community Service, Los Angeles ranks 44th out of the 50 largest cities in the US in rates of community volunteering. City of Angels? Hardly.

That stat seemed pretty amazing to me, until I learned the four key drivers of volunteering:

• Community attachment,
• Commuting times,
• High school graduation levels and poverty, and
• The prevalence of nonprofits and their capacity to retain volunteers from year to year.

Since we are talking about LA here, two of those factors really jump out as me as systemic problems for this city: long commute times, and the sad state of LAUSD. A third factor, community attachment, is apparently a measure of homeownership - also a struggle for most with LA’s outrageous housing prices. So what are we to do about it? My answer: look for opportunities that allow you to use your unique skills and talents, and that also satisfy your interests. To find something that works for you, try Volunteer Match, an online service that lets you search for organizations needing volunteers by interest and location.

Many organizations have the need for volunteers with specific skills, who don’t need to commute to their site to contribute. Sustainable Harvest, for example, needs bilingual folks to translate outreach and educational materials for use in Spanish-speaking countries facing rainforest devastation. If you’re bilingual and interested in rainforest preservation (and really, who isn’t?), you could do this from your home utilizing a skill that is unique to you. Other organizations might need marketing ideas, fundraising expertise, or help just getting organized. Think about what you do well and enjoy, and then ask around – you’ll surely find a group who needs just that.

One organization, Social Venture Partners International (SVP), takes this concept of collective expertise to a whole new level. With their new model of giving termed ‘venture philanthropy’ the network of professionals donate money, yes, but also their experience in the form of consulting teams. These teams work with nonprofits to build their capacity to provide services to the community. Current and upcoming investments by the Los Angeles SVP focus on education and the environment. Launched in Seattle in 1997, the network now boasts 21 city-based organizations in North America.

Of course, sometimes, you just want to get your hands in the dirt. It’s rewarding to look back at a beach that’s now free of debris (Heal the Bay) or a tree that you’ve just planted (North East Trees).

And don’t forget the eco-friendly laundry detergent!