Groupon Honors Earth Day with Launch of Groupon Grassroots

So many exciting things have been happening for me and my company.   Unfortunately the exciting things have caused me to go very very M.I.A. from blogging, spending time with friends, and doing things for me.

Now that the hard work is over, I am finally able to take the time to celebrate the hard work myself and my colleagues have been doing for the past two months.   Enter, Groupon Grassroots.

Groupon Grassroots is the latest step in the evolution of Groupon's social giving, inhabiting the charitable exoskeleton once worn by The Point and, more recently, G-Team—which saw more than 100,000 people raise more than $3 million for 500+ projects.  Groupon Grassroots is a new way to discover local causes, rally together, and lend a helping hand.

To commemorate Earth Day and the program’s rebranding, Groupon Grassroots will host 50 environmental campaigns and kick off each project with a $1,000 grant—a total of $50,000 of support.  (be sure to check out my video about LAND Studio and their really cool campaign about Park(ing) Day.  PARK(ing) Day is an annual, worldwide event designed to spark conversation about public spaces in urban environments and how they can best be used.  Organizers of the event pay for metered parking spaces, and then transform them into miniature parks, complete with grass, benches, plants, and trees for passersby to enjoy for a few hours.)

For Earth Day, we’re also partnering with Edward Norton’s Crowdrise (the Crowdrise site is a unique blend of online fundraising, crowdsourcing, social networking, contests, and other nice stuff) to empower individual activism through the Groupon Challenge. The campaign that raises the most money will receive an additional $25,000 from Groupon, with the second- and third-highest fundraising drives taking home $15,000 and $10,000, respectively.  So be sure to check out ALL the amazing campaigns being featured on both sites this week!  You can help make a difference in this amazing planet we live on and see what organizations are doing to help protect, restore, and improve our environment and planet.

My team has been AMAZING in building this new site and scheduling Earth Day themed campaigns to run in our opening week.   One thing that I have learned from working so hard and diligently on building a microsite with my team is the importance of focusing on one task at a time.   When we first got started on preparing for our relaunch, seeing our "to-do" list and all the steps we needed to do, it would have been so easy to get overwhelmed by it all if we keep focusing on the big picture instead of each aspect of the big picture.   It was a lot of late nights, galloons of espresso and diet cokes and the collective effort of employees from a variety of Groupon departments to make our relaunch possible.   It has been a great experience seeing something from "thought" to visualization.

So check out the campaigns, our new microsite and help spread the seed of your city's philanthropy!  Let me know what you think!