by Christopher Penman, Marketing Intern

It is an exciting time under the Market St. roof of GlobalMojo. First of all, GlobalMojo has acquired a new super-duper intern, Christopher Penman (currently speaking in third person). He is an aspiring copywriter ready to get elbow deep in the nitty-gritty world of marketing. Hailing from Southern California, this strapping young lad currently is getting a degree in Rhetoric from University of California, Berkeley. “I like it here”, reports Christopher Penman, “they let me have my own chair.” Welcome aboard me!

Barrington and Danielle enjoying some pizza before our company boccee ball game!

Next on the agenda, Adrian Peterson’s Football for Good Giving Assistant reached a noteworthy milestone this month. After only about six months, his Giving Assistant users have raised $25,000 for All Day Foundation to help inspire hope and build a better future for at-risk-children. You can read more about it on our new Giving Assistant blog or on Yahoo! Finance.

Continuing the good news, our beloved Barrington, coder-extraordinaire, has found the only thing that can replace the love he has for GlobalMojo, that is, a wife. He is headed to Florida for a couple weeks to get married to his finance Danielle and celebrate this momentous occasion with friends and family. But don’t fret, he will return soon enough!

But not all of our news can be boisterously happy. We have some bittersweet news as well. Mike ‘The Man’ Shallop, will be leaving the office to move to Mexico. But luckily, he will continue to work with us, just from a few more miles south.

Also, we have some exciting things lined up for our Giving Assistant users in the upcoming months so keep your eyes and your ears on the Internet.

And to celebrate all these good things, the GlobalMojo team made a trip down to our local Lucky Strike Bowling Alley for some camaraderie, snacks, and beer.

Happy marriage, B! And happy moving to Mexico, Mike!

by Christopher Penman, Marketing Intern

First, a brief history lesson. Father’s Day was founded by Sonora Dodd in 1910 to show appreciation for her Civil War-hero father, William Smart. He was a single father who raised six children alone. She showed her appreciation for his generosity by creating a national holiday for her hero. While you may be just a tad bit too busy raising six kids of your own to create a holiday to show your father the appreciation you think he deserves, you can still give back.

As an even youthier youth of America, presenting my dad with a gift on Father’s day was my way of showing him that I appreciated him happily driving me to school in the morning and even signing up for a fencing class with me when I showed interest in becoming a sword lunging lad. And although he was not a Civil War hero, I felt he deserved something in return for his help.

It is the small things that count.

If you are like me and received a liberal arts education by a liberal, liberal arts professor, you might feel a little jaded towards “holidays” like Father’s Day. Isn’t it just a bunch of Hallmark marketing scheme to get you to buy a hammer every year?! Well then, I am here to help you find the middle ground .

The Giving Assistant makes your sincere gift to dear ol’ dad even more genuine as a portion of your purchase made online goes to a charity of your choice. Here is a short list of one stop shop spots for the man that brought you into this world:

• Does your dad rival the macho Brawny man? Check out Cabela’s Father’s Day Gift Guide for gifts that can catch fish to gifts that can grill fish. Up to 3% of your purchase will go to your cause
• Does papa bear love sports? Get him a pair of tickets to his favorite sports team. With luck he will take you with him, that means he gets a gift, you get a gift, and a charity gets 12.5% your purchase–win/win/win situation.
• Or does your pops cringe at such “brutish displays of heathenry”? Then maybe the latest and greatest gadget is for him. Up to $45 dollars can go to the cause of your choice.

The best part of purchasing from these retailers, as well as hundreds more, is that once your Giving Assistant is installed, a portion of your purchase will go to a cause selected by you! You can learn more and download the GlobalMojo Giving Assistant here here.

by Michelle Thai

Dear Class of 2012,

As a fellow senior graduating in a few weeks, I’m tired, too, of all the articles, stories, and stats about the dire future for our class: Half of us will be unemployed. Many of us will be working as waiters and bartenders. We’ll spend years as slaves to our college loans.

Certainly there must be some glimmer of optimism in the horizon, and I think I know what it is: find a start-up to work for.

1. Opportunities at a start-up are endless. As a waiter, a bartender, or a retail sales associate, your opportunities are limited. When I used work at a movie theater as a concessioner and barista, the only real opportunity for advancement is to become a shift manager or a supervisor. And once you achieve that next step, what then? Become the CEO of this giant movie chain? Ha! At a start-up, your opportunities are boundless. I came to GlobalMojo with no experience in technology- that’s me on the right, on my first day! I did boring database stuff as a summer intern. Then I took care of our Facebook and Twitter and blog. Then I began to work with our celebrity partners. Now I’m in charge of all things related to our community and marketing!

The beginning felt like I wasn’t going anywhere, really. Manually inputting data into our databases was like inputting fresh popcorn into a customer’s tray. But the difference became clear quickly: there’s a glass ceiling when you’re scooping popcorn. You can only go so far. At a start-up, there is no ceiling.

2. You’re an important part of the team. At a start-up, your position and all that you do matters. I have a close friend that worked at a giant software company in the Silicon Valley (you would all recognize the company) over the summer doing research. She confided in me, “Michelle, I wish I worked at a start-up. I do all this research and hand it off to my supervisor – I don’t even know what they do with my research or what difference it makes.”

If I were to leave GlobalMojo right now (ha!), it would certainly matter. Who would take care of customer service and our social media outlets? Who would draft editorial calendars for our celebrity partners? Who would do press outreach?

3. You’re doing something good. You’re generating funds for nonprofits. You’re making a tool that helps us all be more productive. You’re bringing electricity to homes in Sri Lanka. I don’t think I can say this about all start-ups, but all the start-ups I’ve encountered in Boston and San Francisco are on a mission to make the world a better place: Grantoo, Give To Get Jobs, Roozt, Skillshare, Catchafire, and duh- us at GlobalMojo! With opportunities like this, why would you want to spend your skills and education – that took you four years to master – on products that harm people and/or the environment?

A few days ago Wall Street Journal released an essay about the 10 things your commencement speaker won’t tell you. #3 was don’t make the world worse. “Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. They are right, but remember that ‘changing the world’ also can include things like skirting financial regulations and selling unhealthy foods to increasingly obese children. I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it.”

4. There’s more and more start-ups. And the growth is not slowing down. There are more start-ups than ever. With new venture incubators like MassChallenge in Boston, Hub Ventures and NewME Accelerator in San Francisco, and the growing popularity of start-up events like Startup Weekend, SF Beta, and Boston Beta, major cities are pumping out new companies  constantly.

5. They’re hiring. Let me say that again – they’re HIRING! And fortunately for us that don’t understand funny looking acronyms like C++ and PHP OO/MVC, start-ups aren’t only looking for tech talent. You can be a Customer Happiness Agent at Indiegogo or do content production for Blissmo. Here at GlobalMojo, Anthony and Bobby just completed marketing and business internships with us and had positive experiences to share. As of April 18, 2012, there are 15,000 start-up jobs in California, and the overall number of start-up jobs nationwide is growing.

So, where do you begin? Believe it or not, I found my first position at GlobalMojo on Craigslist. However the best way I have found to cut through the clutter of resumes is to reach out to the hiring manager at a company directly.

Good luck, and congrats on graduating!

Last week, we bid our interns Bobby and Anthony farewell as they return to Miami. The two were here under Miami University’s first AIMS San Francisco Digital Innovation program, where participating students embarked on a semester-long journey into San Francisco start-up life. After interviewing at a few other start-ups, the GlobalMojo team welcomed Anthony and Bobby on board this semester.

Bobby and Anthony share their stories below.

Bobby:

My internship with GlobalMojo. Well, where should I begin? Compared to everyone else in the AIMS San Francisco Digital Innovation program, I feel like Anthony and I gained the most experience out of everyone. From the marketing, sales, advertising, and customer service projects, to the business development assignments, to the everyday company details, to learning how a company runs from all aspects, to working directly with the development team… the experience we achieved while interning at GlobalMojo is unlike anything I could’ve imagined and will stick with me for a long time.

Being the first group of Miami University students to take part in the program, I did not know what to expect when I came out here. I have never been to San Francisco before moving out here in January and the GlobalMojo team made sure I had a memorable experience.

Between pointing us in the right direction for outdoor adventures, places to eat, bars to check out, sights to see and places to visit, the team at GlobalMojo made it one of their priorities that Anthony and I had an awesome experience in San Francisco (both in and out of the office)!

I will be forever grateful to this awesome team (as well as the company) and I look forward to watching them explode with success in the future!

Favorite Memory: The day the internet went out in the office so we spent the day rearranging the office.

Future Plans: I’ll hopefully end up at a large company after I graduate, then start my own company around 30!

Anthony:

Interning at Globalmojo this spring has been an extremely rewarding experience in many different ways. I learned job related skills such as email marketing, CRM systems, marketing techniques, the sales cycle, and customer service best practices.

But aside from this, I was able to interact on a daily basis with a team of people who truly are the best in their respective fields. The things I learned just from watching how the other employees handled day to day operations and responded to challenges is invaluable.

As I reflect, I think one of the most awesome things was the fact that not only was I able to find an amazing place to work and learn with a great team, but also a company that is truly going to change the world. How often do you find a combo like that?

I am thrilled to see how Globalmojo will continue to grow and evolve over the next year while I finish up at school. I have no doubt that their mission of truly making a difference in the world will continue to guide the everyday business practices and ultimate success of the company.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of a company like Globalmojo?

Thanks Anthony and Bobby. We’ll miss you both!

Today we’re announcing our new customer service initiative! In response to all the questions Adrian Peterson and Jamie Oliver have been getting about their Giving Assistant apps, we decided to launch the Giving Assistant Guru on Facebook and Twitter.

Click the links below to head to check out the Giving Assistant Guru:

@GivingAssistant on Twitter or Giving Assistant Guru on Facebook

While we try to make the Giving Assistant as intuitive and user-friendly as possible, sometimes unexpected issues arise, often depending on whether you use Safari, Firefox, Chrome, or Explorer.

If you have any questions, run into any technical issues, or simply have feedback, please tweet them to @GivingAssistant on Twitter or post it on Giving Assistant Guru’s wall on Facebook. The GlobalMojo team over here will try to respond as soon as possible.

The Giving Assistant Guru on Facebook and Twitter will respond to questions and  concerns for all Giving Assistant apps, including Adrian Peterson’s Football For Good Giving Assistant, Jamie Oliver’s Food Foundation Giving Assistant, future Giving Assistant apps, and of course, the GlobalMojo Giving Assistant.

By Michelle Thai

Last month, our Business Development Manager, Mike Duchen, shared his incredible journey with cancer. Today we’re honored to share another inspiring story from a member of our team.

Micheal Shallop, the latest rockstar to join our dev team, hasn’t cut his hair since April 15, 2002. That’s when his mother passed away from breast cancer.

There is no doubt that the number of obstacles for someone with cancer is endless. Acceptance, rounds of chemo, and living a normal life is just a fraction of them. One obstacle often overlooked is the impact of no longer having hair.

That’s one major issue Micheal’s mother faced during her illness. “One of the issues we faced with her illness was her need and subsequent search for an affordable wig that, of course, didn’t look like a wig,” said Micheal. “This, in itself, was an experience.”

Coming from a more frugal generation, Micheal’s mom was quickly put-off by the high cost of a quality wig. Fortunately his family helped her to get what she needed and wanted, so she could concentrate on her treatments.

She never allowed the issue to detract her from her treatments, but “I remember the hair-loss and wig-procurement being a huge priority and concern to Mom,” said Micheal.

And it wasn’t a priority simply out of cosmetics. “I think the wig helped her to help others deal with her disease,” said Micheal. “Her priority in obtaining the wig wasn’t so much vanity as much as it was making others feel more comfortable around her, especially her grandchildren,  most-notably while in the later-stages of her chemo treatments.”

Over the past decade, Micheal has been supporting several charities for breast cancer. However, the ones he pays most attention to are charities that help cancer patients directly, like providing them wigs.

Now that he has grown his hair down to his belt, Micheal has chosen the group Wigs for Kids to donate his hair to. Since 2002, he has made sure to never chemically alter his hair so it can be successfully donated.

Between now and April 15, Micheal would like to use this time to challenge everyone to pledge some donation that he can include when he sends his hair donation off to Wigs for Kids. To support Micheal and donate, click here for his Crowdrise page.

To learn more about Wigs for Kids, head over to its website, http://www.wigsforkids.org/.

By Michelle Thai

In just two months since the launch of the Football For Good Giving Assistant, Adrian Peterson’s nationwide campaign Football For Good – which is dedicated to providing opportunities to at-risk youth – has found success in engaging supporters and raising funds.

As of Monday, Feb. 9, over 5,000 fans, friends, family, and supporters of Adrian Peterson have installed the Giving Assistant into their browsers, generating a total of $7,390 for Football For Good so far.

Using GlobalMojo’s unique technology, that $7,390 was generated by users doing absolutely nothing out of the ordinary; just making ordinary, once-in-a-while purchases online (Yeah- that easy). Learn more about the details of the technology here.

Overall, the Football For Good campaign has raised approximately $250,000 to benefit at-risk youth! As users continue to shop online with the Giving Assistant and invite their friends, the app will potentially raise $150,000 to $450,000 a year for Adrian’s cause.

Rallying support for the campaign hasn’t been difficult at all for popular Adrian, thanks to the power of social media. Throughout the last two months, he’s been engaging his 216,901 Twitter followers and 752,202 Facebook fans with shout-out videos, amazing prizes, and giveaways. (Thanks for your support Adrian!)

The first major prize was an all-expense paid trip for two to the Super Bowl. Every new user automatically received 100 entries to win the Super Bowl trip. Additional entries are earned when users invite their friends to download and use the app.

Lucky Giving Assistant users Andrew and Joseph from Southport, NC won the trip to the Super Bowl!  Below is a photo of the two with our awesome CEO, Dan Todd, at the 2012 Super Bowl! We’re only slightly jealous over here…

Keyonne Campbell won an all-expense paid trip to the Pro Bowl in Honolulu, HI by getting the most friends to download the app.

Random prize winners include Alison Lewis, below, who won a trip to a Vikings game to meet Adrian.

Nathan Pease, Josiah Joseph, Lara Vukelich, and Kristen Porter all won signed jerseys and a case of Texas Tea, Adrian’s favorite drink; and Alexandra Polier won a pair of game worn shoes, signed by Adrian.

While the opportunity to win prizes has been successfully engaging and exciting his fans and followers, Adrian reminds them, “It was always in my heart to be able to give back if I was put in that position. With the Giving Assistant, everyone can give back… just by doing what they already do online every day.”

To install the Football For Good Giving Assistant – and be entered to win an all-expense paid, VIP trip to Los Angeles to visit the set of CSI: Miami and meet the cast – visit footballforgood.org.

CONGRATULATIONS to Andrew and Joseph from Southport, NC for winning the Football For Good Super Bowl trip! We’ll let our winners tell it all:

Check out the other amazing prizes you can still enter to win at http://www.footballforgood.org/. The next prize? An all-expense paid trip to the VIP trip to Los Angeles to meet the cast of CSI: Miami.

Recently our team at GlobalMojo received some exciting news: another celebrity will be joining Adrian Peterson and Jamie Oliver by launching a Giving Assistant of her own! We are PUMPED about the news – which you’ll hear more about later on – but our fast growth also means our team needs some additional help. Last week, we welcomed three new members to our growing team!

Micheal aka Mike is a Chicagoan who’s been living the warm sunny life in California since 1994. Usually he can be found doing one of two things: coding or sleeping (we challenge him to do both… at the same time).

He’s been coding since 1980, which was when he picked up his very first computer and taught himself basic programming. He brings to GlobalMojo an honors degree in Computer Science from Oklahoma State (c/o 1991), a passion for building awesome apps for others to enjoy, and a commitment to advance GlobalMojo’s mission: combining corporate and social responsibility into a tool that can make the world a better place.

Mike has an adorable best friend: an all-white Siberian Husky named Einstein. Prepare your heartstrings for the dog below:

Bobby is also a native from Chicago. He’s a die-hard Bulls/Bears/Cubs/Blackhawks fan – always has been and always will, he says. As a intern from Miami University, Bobby is spending his spring semester in San Francisco with all of us at GlobalMojo, where he will help drive marketing and affiliate initiatives so users can enjoy our app just a little more.

As an aspiring entrepreneur, Bobby is excited to dive into GlobalMojo’s work and “gain great hands-on experience with a cool, hip start-up,” (aww, shucks!). He loves working with others to solve problems in a creative, sustainable approach, and establishing awesome relationships along the way.

[ Left: Bobby, Right: Anthony]

Anthony hails from Cleveland, Ohio. Like Bobby, he’s studying marketing and entrepreneurship at Miami University of Ohio and comes excited to intern at GlobalMojo because it’s “a startup that is not just looking to make an impact on the world, but an impact in a positive way.”

Anthony hopes “to gain some real world experience in a startup environment, meet new people and get a better feel for what I want to do when I graduate college,” he says. “I also hope to gain some knowledge and skills that I can carry with me to whatever career field I choose.” Fun fact: Anthony worked on a strawberry farm for six years!

Welcome to the team! Mike, Anthony, and Bobby, our team is so excited to have you three aboard! Now, if only we can add an office puppy to our team… *fingers crossed*

By Michelle Thai, Marketing Intern

A month ago, we blogged about our newest white label app for Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. This week, we’d like to share why his campaign means a lot to us at GlobalMojo.

Kids today are growing up overweight and malnourished from a diet of processed foods, and today’s children will be the first generation ever to live shorter lives than their parents.

At age 21, I myself am embarrassed that I really do not know how to cook. You can find me at Trader Joe’s aisle of already-made frozen meals. And it’s not that I chose to live this way, it’s more that cooking skills were not particularly important in my household. My dad has always worked 8 AM to 8 PM at his mechanic shop. My mom works swing shift at her job. They never really had the time or energy to cook from scratch, let alone teach me.

But Jamie’s Food Revolution has made me realize and inspired me to take control of what I’m consuming. Jamie’s website says it the best: the problem stems from the loss of cooking skills at home and the availability of processed foods at every turn, from the school cafeteria to church function halls, factories and offices.

The Food Revolution is on a mission to save lives by inspiring families to cook good food from scratch, like how it should be.

By cooking from scratch, families will be fighting obesity with better food. Did you know approximately 17% – or 12.5 million – children and adolescents aged 2 – 19 years are obese? Imagine how many of those kids continue to grow up obese.

A recent study published in British Journal Of Cancer revealed that each year, nearly half of the cancers in the UK alone are caused by avoidable life choices including diet, overweight and obesity. In the U.S., obesity is the #2 cause of preventable death.

“Food is one of life’s greatest joys,” writes Jamie Oliver, “yet we’ve reached this really sad point where we’re turning food into the enemy, and something to be afraid of.”

He continues to explain, “Knowing how to cook means you’ll be able to turn all sorts of fresh ingredients into meals when they’re in season, at their best, and cheapest! Cooking this way will always be cheaper than buying processed food, not to mention better for you.”

A 2011 survey conducted by Good Food channel discovered that out of 2,000 men and women, a typical female can cook just seven different meals from scratch – half as many as their moms were able to serve up. One in 20 women said they can’t even boil an egg.

Jamie has acknowledged these horrors in his Food Revolution, that’s why his campaign is working to create a nationwide network of community kitchens where anyone can go to learn basic home cooking. In your local communities, the Food Revolution is working to make cooking courses available in church halls, community, and healthcare centers.

However, the nightmare continues when our children are at school. We’ll let these photos tell it all:

VERSUS

[Images from Jamie Oliver Food Revolution's School Food tool kit]

The Food Revolution is working to bring freshly cooked meals in schools and colleges, as well as cooking lessons for kids at school.

If you believe in what Jamie and his Food Revolution is doing to save lives and end the obesity epidemic, support the campaign by signing his global petition here, downloading his Giving Assistant app here, and/or spreading the word on Twitter.