Good deeds do get rewarded! If you know someone who’s been toiling in the open source vineyards, developing software that’s helping nonprofits succeed, check out the Tides Foundation Pizzigati Prize, a $10,000 annual award for outstanding contributions to software in the public interest. The competition, judged by a panel of national leaders in public interest computing, is now entering its third year. The application deadline for this year’s prize: September 1, 2008. You can find out more at www.pizzigatiprize.org.

The last winner was announced at the NTC in New Orleans.  

Katya Andresen and Stacie Mann, authors of the report "The Wired Fundraiser", mention a couple of times that contests are a great way to engage constituents.  In that spirit, Planned Legacy, a provider of technology to nonprofits, is running a contest to collect best practices and suggestions for interacting with donors. One randomly selected entrant will win an iPod Touch; everyone who enters (presumably with real suggestions) will receive a copy of the final document.  Hopefully, the document will be released to the nonprofit community at large, as it may well gather some interesting information.

Everyone's debating the effectiveness of social networking tools for fundraising campaigns. A new social networking site, Razoo, seems to want to cut to chase: they're going to give $10,000 to a nonprofit organization that signs up at least 100 new members by September 15th. And it's not just a numbers game, as the winning nonprofit organization will actually be selected from the community based on their social change projects. Here's more from their site:

"Any social change organization that creates a Razoo Group and recruits at least 100 members to join by September 15th will be entered into the Change Your World Contest. The Razoo community will then vote for its favorite organization to select the winner of the contest. The prize is a $10,000 donation to your organization, and a high-profile online campaign built around your issues and work."

You can find out more about the contest here.