What is Make the Difference Network?

Make The Difference Network (MTDN) is a cause-oriented, social network that helps nonprofits extend their message and increase their capacity to generate donations. We provide our member nonprofit organizations with leading edge Web technology and connect them with a vast community of caring individuals and businesses. MTDN is also a powerful Cause Marketing tool that allows businesses to connect with and support their favorite nonprofits.

Originally founded by Jessica Biel, her father Jon Biel and Kent McBride (a Cause Marketing evangelist), MTDN is a giving destination that makes it fun and easy for donors to search, select, and donate directly to specific Wishes that touch their heart. After donations are made to fund Wishes, the nonprofits can show donors the impact of their donations. At MTDN, like-minded individuals can utilize our social networking capabilities to connect and build powerful friends groups and share information in their blogs, providing even more support for nonprofits and causes they care about. By leveraging the power of individuals, businesses, celebrities and nonprofits, our intention is to create a powerful force for good that will make a bigger difference in our world.

The Make The Difference Network “Idea” began germinating four years ago. We launched our first public version in December of 2004 in a very low-key marketing test with just a few nonprofit organizations. We were pleasantly surprised when within a couple of days some caring people found our Web site, read some Wishes and made a few donations. The idea appeared to be valid.

Over the next couple of years, we added and tested more features. As we got a bit of publicity and several of our test nonprofits got more donations, we realized MTDN was going to be a “Big Idea” which required a more robust technology to allow us to scale up to meet the potential demand.

In our search for more robust technology, we encountered a couple of technology “false starts” with Web development companies who were not able to deliver the sophisticated database-driven Web site that we required. (Hey, building a massive, database-driven, searchable National Wish List is complicated stuff).

While we were having these technology “false starts”, we noticed the rise of social networks. We realized that while “socializing” was cool, it mostly revolved around “social” activities and was not “cause-oriented.” We decided to add full-featured social networking capabilities to MTDN in order to give people who wanted a social network with more “purpose” or impact in the world to have a place to meet other like-minded people.

After five months of development, in September 2007, we made the announcement that we were entering our “Private Invitation-Only Beta” phase. We did this in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting. Our two-year CGI Commitment is to “Democratize Giving” through the use of social networking. In Year One (2008), we committed to helping 5,000 nonprofits raise an average $500 per month in donations that go directly to the nonprofit. (We never take a percentage of the donations made through MTDN; all donations go directly to the nonprofit.)

Our Year Two CGI Commitment is to help 10,000 nonprofits raise an average of $500 per month in donations.

So you can see that we’ve really gone out on a limb with some serious public Commitments. We feel strongly that if we develop the Web technology to create a significant-sized community of caring individuals, businesses and celebrities who leverage our powerful social networking technology to really support thousands of nonprofits, we’ll be able to meet these CGI Commitments.

If you’re reading this, it means we’ve taken the next step in our development and have moved to our “Public Beta” phase. This means we’ve quietly opened the site to individuals so we can continue to test all the systems and add a couple of more features before we start attracting large numbers of visitors.

In this “Public Beta” phase, we hope everything on the site works the way it’s supposed to and we hope that you’ll find those things that don’t work, you’ll tell us so we can make them work. We’ll be really appreciative of your feedback.

Our plan is to be in the “Public Beta” for around 30 days and then we’ll begin to aggressively tell the world that we’re ready to really be of service to the world.

We’re passionate about building a powerful online community that provides the social networking capabilities to make it effortless and fun for people to get involved. Our business is guided by the fundamental belief that the more good your business does, the better your business does. We’re proud to be a for-profit business serving nonprofits. We believe when nonprofit and for-profit businesses collaborate, they can create significant positive social impact in their communities. We intend create new ways of nonprofit/ for-profit collaboration and help these organizations leverage technology and learning to make a bigger difference in the world.

We are committed to continually creating better tools to give nonprofits ways to expand their donor base and to insure every person who wants to make a difference has the opportunity to do so. We are committed to creating an engaging and exciting community where connecting, collaborating and donating are the norm.

It’s really very simple.
We started MTDN because each of us felt like we wanted to make a bigger difference in the world by giving something back. But our real hope was to do something further by motivating larger groups of people to become more socially aware and band together to create an even stronger life-changing community. We believe that by using the power of the Web, we can create a “place” where nonprofits will be able to make direct connections with caring individuals and businesses to build more trusting relationships and ultimately increase their ability to raise funds and fulfill their missions.

Over the last 3 years we talked with thousands of individuals and nonprofits to see how MTDN could best serve them. We listened deeply to what everyone said. We learned nonprofits needed better ways to share their “Wish stories” with donors and then really show donors the positive impact their donations make. We heard what donors said about wanting easy ways to sort through all of the different nonprofits for “Wishes” that specifically touched them, and their need to SEE how their contributions were actually used to make those “Wishes” happen.

Using the advantages that Web technology affords us with easy ways to connect with friends, blogs to quickly share information and video capability to show the great things people are doing, we felt we could create a true “network” for social change; one that would connect donors with nonprofits and Wishes, stimulate nonprofits’ online fundraising activities and provide nonprofits a powerful way to share their moments of fulfillment with the people who care enough to get involved.

The ultimate reason we do what we do is because we know that by connecting people who share their same passions about making a difference, we can educate, motivate and inspire connection and collaboration, and little by little change the culture of giving so it isn’t just the few who give, but the many. And frankly, we LOVE what we do and we’re honored to be of service helping others find and fund their passions. We’re delighted to have you join us, so that together we can all Make The Difference.

You can learn more of what we believe about business and our responsibility as business owners, by reading the MTDN Manifesto.