Here’s a winning idea: a fund-raising football tournament.  Sue Ryder Care (the UK based healthcare charity) seeks lovely companies to participate.

Anyone can play.  All you need is a five-a-side team with the fitness and skill desire to challenge ex-Premiership legends for the Sue Ryder Cup.

Entry to the tournament and exclusive after-party costs £1200 for eight players plus guests.  In many cases, lovely companies are sponsoring their staff to take part.

Teams from Coutts, Polar Capital and Microsoft have already signed up but players don’t have to be from huge corporations.

32 teams will be involved in the play-offs, with the winners playing a team of Premiership All Stars in the final.  Last year’s all-star team included Ray Parlour (Arsenal), Kerry Dixon (Chelsea) and Paul Parker (Manchester United).

There is a chance to mingle with the Premiership legends at the after- party at the Indigo Club in the O2 Centre.  The event will be hosted by 1966 World Cup winner Martin Peters MBE and other confirmed guests include Martina Czeh, wife of Chelsea footballer Petr Czeh.

Even if you can’t beat the all-stars, you can have fun trying. And because proceeds go towards Sue Ryder’s care work in Malawi and Eastern Europe, you can’t really lose!

The tournament will take place on December 2nd at the David Beckham Academy, Greenwich.  For more information, contact Louise on 0207 4920 746 or email InternationalCup@suerydercare.org

Rachel Pattisson is a freelance copy writer. She writes a blog called Really Rachel and you can hire her here: ThoughtTrains.co.uk.

In the video below, the founding partners explain more:

If you know of a charity or non-profit that needs help with fundraising, marketing or communications then point them towards Beautiful World. There’s nothing to lose as the first hour’s consultation is free!

Beautiful World are also a sponsor of the upcoming NFPtweetup event.

“What’s that?” I hear you cry.

I’m glad you asked. It’s a Lovebox: the digital equivalent of a charity wristband, spreading charitability (and a warm, fuzzy feeling) all over the internet.

Lovebox.org.uk is a new venture, developed to promote charities via online social networks. Lovebox allows people to show their support for different charities each month. There is also a donations facility, with all contributions going directly to charity.

The Lovebox is free to download. There are no demands for money. All you have to do is display your Lovebox. Imagine swapping your profile picture for a Lovebox on your favourite social network. Everyone will notice. Lovebox works on the principle that raising awareness will raise donations. And you get to enjoy the warm, fuzzy feeling for free.

The Lovebox team are also responsible for the trending topic #charitytuesday on Twitter, encouraging everyone to make Tuesdays a day for displaying their Lovebox and discussing charitable activities: warm, fuzzy feelings all round.

Spread the Lovebox!

Rachel Pattisson is a freelance copy writer. She writes a blog called Really Rachel and you can hire her here: ThoughtTrains.co.uk.

Tonight something extraordinary is happening right around the world. In 200 cities across the globe, people will be getting together to raise money for charity.

The event is called Twestival and has been organised almost entirely using Twitter. The event organisers reckon they could raise $1m for charity:water which will help bring clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.

The has been a crescendo of buzz about Twestival: check out the plug on Techfluff.tv and the amusing image conjured up by Telegraph blogger Milo Yiannopoulos.

Click here to find a Twestival near you. I urge you to go along if you can, although some have already sold out. If you’re coming along to the one in Newcastle (UK) then see you there!

Check out the video below to find out more:

charity: water for Twestival from charity: water on Vimeo.

Rumour has it that sometimes when you buy charity Christmas cards, the charity can sometimes receive as little as 4% of the sale price.

Earlier in the week we wrote about Touchnote who are running an offer that gives 100% of the proceeds from Christmas card sales to one of four charities.

Yesterday, the folks at Everyclick got in touch to tell us about the charity Christmas e-cards that they are doing this year. E-cards are a great way to reduce the environmental impact of sending Christmas cards as they don’t use any paper and you they are customisable with pictures, videos and messages. Plus 121% of the sale price goes to the charity of your choice and you can choose any of the 200,000 charities in the UK! They use Gift Aid to bump up your contribution. There’s even the option to allow the recipient to choose which charity gets the money!

Check out their offer here:
http://www.everyclick.com/charity-christmas

We also love Everyclick’s Christmas tagline:
“Christmas? Considerate done.”
Magnificent!

Touchnote.com is a digital printing company founded to help people become better friends. They make it easy to send cards, made from FSC certified card and featuring your own photos, to your friends and family.

They got in touch with us recently to tell us about the charity offer they are promoting. If you buy cards using their special promotional codes then 100% of the sale price goes to the charity you choose. This is the perfect way to send Christmas cards to your friends and simultaneously raise money for charity!

Click here to check out the Touchnotes.com Charity Offer.

Don’t hang about – the offer expires on the 9th of January 2009.

“Hello, I’m Ewan McGregor, a UNICEF Ambassador, and I’m donating my Moto Guzzi motorcycle to UNICEF for auction on eBay. It’s the first of its kind in this colour and one of my favourite bikes. I collected this bike from the Moto Guzzi factory in Italy and rode it back to London. I’ve loved riding it ever since and I know that you will too.”

The money raised from this auction will go to the Children’s Emergency Fund, which enables Unicef to launch a response for children the moment a disaster strikes.

Click here to see the item listing on eBay.

It is with deep regret that we inform our friends and fans that MobuzzTV has closed officially today.

Click here to read the full text.

Hard luck to the team at Mobuzz – this must be a tough time for all involved.

Mobuzz has now collected €33k – a long way off the €120k they were hoping to raise – but they say that this has been enough to accelerate negotiations with advertisers and, together with non-financial contributions such as hosting which have helped reduce overheads, the company is now in a position to continue business as usual!

This is an amazing example of a community digging deep to save a service they love. Three cheers for the power of the community!

Here’s the recent video from the Save Mobuzz page:

Mobuzz Lives! from Anil de Mello on Vimeo.

Also, here is the text of the email sent out to all those who contributed:

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I wanted to write you and explain the current situation with Mobuzz.tv. Firstly, thank you for your support of Mobuzz.tv. The good news is that thanks to the money we received and to the amount of Buzz that was created we will be able to continue with Mobuzz programming. Thanks to you, we have a chance of survival.

We have been talking with advertisers and investors trying to get funding to continue with mobuzz, and until before last week our short term future looked very grim. However, as a result of the overwhelming support with banners, blog posts, tweets and more, our discussions with advertisers and investors has accelerated and become extremely positive. There are a number of deals underway that will secure our finances we can continue bringing you Mobuzz shows.

But you didn’t make the 120,000. So why are you continuing? With the money that we raised and the deals that are being made, it seems we do not need to raise the full 120,000. That was the money we needed to continue with production for at least 3 months until all the deals were made. Now, seeing as how the effect of the campaign has accelerated negotiations, we are confident that we will not need to bridge that long of a gap before the full financing is in.

What are you going to do with the money? We are still in a cash flow crunch but we promised that if we did not meet the 120,000 that we would return the money. So if you would like your money returned, please reply with a YES or No in the subject line. Those that paid with PayPal should have their refund within the week, those with a bank transfer it could take longer.

Again, thank you for your support of Mobuzz. Everyone’s name who donates will stay on the website forever. Please let us know if you would like a link to your site on your name to show our love.

Again thank you for saving Mobuzz! We could never have done it without you.

Sincerely,

Anil de Mello

Mobuzz, a company that produces a daily round up of tech news in three languages, are having a cash flow crisis and they’re turning to their community for help!

A video plea from the founders (embedded below) is on the homepage of the site asking for donations of €5. The company needs to raise €120k in a week (now only four days left) in order to stay afloat. It’s an ambitious goal but if they pull it off then it will be all credit to the power of the community!

I’ve donated my €5 – now it’s your turn!