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The Case Foundation is asking people who witness random acts of kindness this holiday season to capture those moments in photos and post them on their favorite social network. They may get a nice reward for that good deed: up to $500 for themselves and up to $5,000 for their favorite charity. The goal of the program, called #GoodSpotting, is to honor “little acts of good that go unsung” by recording them with pictures, says Allyson Burns, a spokeswoman for the Washington foundation started by the AOL founder Steve Case and his wife, Jean.

Soon, the holiday sounds of coins clinking into red kettles may disappear, replaced by the silence of a credit card swipe. The Salvation Army has begun shifting into digital donations, as fewer and fewer shoppers carry much change or bills.

This year, the charity is testing the use of Square, a mobile payments startup that allows anyone to accept credit card payments via mobile devices.

The Startup America Partnership, a nonprofit organization working with the government to fund innovation and create jobs, on Tuesday unveiled a new online platform and $330 million worth of product and service commitments designed to help early stage companies, CEO Scott Case told Reuters.

The platform was beta tested by several hundred companies for about a month, said Case, who aims to have more than 100,000 small businesses registered by the first quarter of 2012.

Many philanthropists are handing out human resources advice along with the money they give to nonprofit groups, a strategy that underscores concerns by donors and even some organizations’ leaders about the management of nonprofits. “Pretty early on, I realized that when I asked these organizations about management, the response I usually got was, ‘That’s business and we’re not a business,’ ” Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Insurance, said. “I told them baseball teams have managers, too, but that seemed to have little impact on their opinion.”

A new service, GiveBackMail, promises to give 25 percent of its profit to charity if users route their e-mail activities through its website.

Every action users take on the site generates a new ad display and revenue for the company. A dashboard keeps track of how many donations the user generates and, at the end of the month, how much money has been generated, as well as notifications from charities acknowledging donations made by the service.

In response to President Obama’s call to action to promote high-growth entrepreneurship across the country, the Startup America Partnership announced a new wave of commitments secured from more than 15 companies and organizations to deliver strategic and substantive resources that accelerate entrepreneurs starting and scaling companies. These new private-sector partnerships deliver more than $400 million in value to U.S. entrepreneurs, building upon 20+ commitments already secured by the Startup America Partnership from companies like Intel and IBM.

Internet company AOL Inc. said Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone will become a "social impact" strategic adviser for the company, as part of its broader integration with online news site the Huffington Post.

Mr. Stone will work on cause-based initiatives, such as creating a system to help people volunteer in their communities and a video series featuring companies committed to philanthropy.

CauseVox, a white label crowd funding platform for non-profits, announced today the launch of its fully customizable crowd-funding platform for nonprofits. The platform, in beta, offers easy to use and manage charity-branded fundraising pages.

FOR the first time in its more than 100-year history, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is actively seeking donations, through a nationwide campaign, to underwrite its work with children at risk.

Called “Start Something,” the campaign uses traditional as well as social media to illustrate the positive impact the adult volunteers of Big Brothers Big Sisters have on children’s lives, and to solicit both volunteers and financial support.

The Online Giving Study: A Call to Reinvent Donor Relationships, from Network for Good and TrueSense Marketing and sponsored by AOL, reveals important insights about digital philanthropy: People seem to give more when the online experience is intimate and emotionally coherent, and they also give online for reasons of convenience, especially at the end of the year and during large-scale disasters.