CrowdFunding

A couple of Massachusetts teenagers collected a few old cell phone and used the money from recycling them to help soldiers in Iraq stay in touch with their families. Their idea caught the wave. Now their charity is receiving thousands of discarded phones every week and tens of thousands of troops have a love lifeline.

This isn't a new business model. NPR has relied on crowdfunding for decades. So have countless musicians, celebrities and politicians, who called it bundling. Gov. Dean adapted the process to the online world. Now every politicians has an online crowdfunding effort and almost every website hosts an appeal.

Save Africa! Save the Whales! Contribute to this politicians. Or that one.

The blog Crowdfunding provides a good overview of the trend. But there are countless examples. So tell us how you're making a difference. Tell us how you think America can help. Bush pere used to babble about "a thousand points of light;" Hillary insists it takes "a village."

But we've found there are billions of points of light and that the whole world is crowdfunding. Just look in your closet at the NPR tote bag, the "Save the Panda" paper weight. They're the detritus of crowdfunding. But there are countless worthy causes. We want to know what you're doing, how you are making a difference. Tell us about the charity that tugs your heart strings, the cause that drives you. How are you using crowdfunding.