Black Friday, Cyber Monday….how about a day or even a week that celebrates the giving-back part of the holidays? Two years ago, we launched the idea of Cyber Giving Week, dedicated to generous giving and raising money for local and national charities throughout the last week of December (of course, the tax reduction doesn’t hurt). Since our inaugural year, we’ve helped to raise millions of dollars for hundreds of charitable organizations. A feat only possible because of your generous helpings of goodwill.

With that in mind, we’ved kicked off our Cyber Giving Week program a little early this year to put a spotlight on you. We want to hear your inspirational stories of giving and to share them with our global community. Today we launched our “Be a Better Inspiration” campaign on Bix, so you can tell us about individuals making extraordinary differences through their charity work in your local community.

The cool Bix platform lets you upload audio so that the story can really come to life (I promise it’s easy — even I could do it). Just make sure to submit your story and vote for your favorite by December 19. On December 25, we’ll announce the top five finalists on a microsite that will allow you (and our community) to really make a difference — by voting with your wallets. The finalist associated with the charity that receives the most number of unique donors will receive a matching grant from Yahoo! of up to $50,000.

For the third year in a row, we’ve teamed up with Network for Good to make it easy for you to donate and see in real-time which charity has the highest count. As you make plans to spend your holidays with friends and family, share with them how you’re giving back this season (think Facebook, MySpace, or your personal blog) or make this the year you offer gifts of donations on their behalf. It turns out that the number one reason why someone donates to a charity is because a trusted friend or family member has asked them. What are you waiting for?

Tell us your inspirational story, vote for your favorite local hero, and encourage your friends and family to join your good cause! Tis’ the season for some pulling of the heart strings!

Meg Garlinghouse
Yahoo! for Good

Back in April, I got a call from the elections director at the League of Women Voters, the nonpartisan group that encourages informed and active civic participation. (And it’s not just for women, btw.) She told me that with the growing number of young first-time voters basically living online, there was a real need for an all-you-can-eat voter information guide on the Internet. They planned to build it, but how could they reach critical mass to turn those newbie voters onto it?

Motivating and educating voters is one of my passions. Prior to the 2004 presidential election, the Yahoo! for Good team partnered with Norman Lear’s nonpartisan Declare Yourself to register more then 1 million new young voters. Supporting the League of Women Voters and their request was a no-brainer for the critical upcoming mid-term elections.

So Yahoo! for Good mobilized to pull together resources from across our network to support the launch of Vote411.org. The site is designed to arm voters with everything from candidate positions to ID requirements for voting in each state to rules for absentee and overseas voters. Possibly the coolest feature is a polling locator tool for all 50 states — the first national, centralized effort to address what league members report is the most confusing part about voting. You’ve been there, right? It’s the first Tuesday morning of November and you have no idea where to go to pull that lever (or poke that chad). Some states had web sites, others had nothing or outdated information. Voters will never wander aimlessly again.

Yahoo! is hosting the site to support traffic from millions of voters, linking to it from our front page and our Yahoo! News Full Coverage elections page, integrating Yahoo! Maps with polling information for some states, and providing the League with pro bono Yahoo! Search Marketing keyword matches.

We’ve done our part, now go do yours. Vote tomorrow!

Meg Garlinghouse
Director, Yahoo! for Good

Photos from hey-helen and snowdeal

A couple of weeks ago, I took my sister to her breast-cancer chemotherapy treatment at the Stanford Cancer Center. As we pulled up to the hospital, I was thankful to see that they offered patient valet parking as it’s not easy for post-chemo patients to get around. However, after helping my sister out of the car, I was disappointed to learn that budget limitations force the hospital to charge for this seeming necessity. I had one of those “life isn’t fair” moments. Certainly, if you have to go through chemo for four months and lose all your hair, you shouldn’t have to add rummaging through your coin purse to your list of worries.

When I got back to the office, we fired up our Yahoo! Purple Acts of Kindness engine. (A Purple Act is an unexpected act that delights the recipient and supports our local communities — more here). Yahoo! has a modest monthly budget for these types of occasions — when a small gesture puts a smile on someone’s face for at least a day. So, this past week, Yahoo! furtively picked up the parking tab for nearly 1,500 cancer patients at Stanford. After all, it’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month. We figured it was the least we could do.

BTW: Here’s a photo of my brother, Yahoo! SVP Brad Garlinghouse, who shaved his head in solidarity. (He asked his barber to spare a few hairs, but don’t worry — the “Y” only lasted a day.)

Meg Garlinghouse
Director, Yahoo! for Good