Facebook co-founder readies charity site

Fri Mar 19 2010, 15:29 PM

Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is preparing a new site for charities called Jumo, which means "together in concert" in West African language Yoruba. "We are trying to re-imagine how individuals connect to organisations that are working the change the world on the web," he says.

Jumo will officially launch in September or October and is designed to help people find out about new organisations and donate money and skills. Hughes says the free site will be useful to organisations that are too small to hire their own new media staff.

Facebook app Causes also aims to bring social causes to social networking. "Causes does a good job of enabling people to either give some money or to raise some money for a non-profit they already know about," says Hughes. "But to help make deeper connections and more of a difference will take a whole new freestanding site."

Jumo, which currently has three members of staff, is a registered non-profit and is seeking USD2m in funding from individuals and foundations. It has already raised a quarter of that from unnamed individuals, according to Hughes.