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It's no secret that Millennials enjoy participating in the creation of programs, fundraisers, campaigns and products and want the opportunity to personalize their experience whenever possible. Innovations made possible by emerging technology have fueled the demand for creative ways to get involved - we're designing our own shoes, water bottles and advocacy campaigns, rather than waiting for an institution to tell us what our options for participation are. Empowering Millennials to support a cause or product their way has been a proven way to engage our generation, and nonprofits and businesses alike continue to experiment with new ways to give us individual options. Here are just a few of the most recent examples:

"Make It Your Own" Burgers
This week marks the grand opening of 4food, a fast food restaurant that says "meals are necessarily social events," and means it. Customers can order online, on an iPad in the restaurant, and will soon be able to do so via their mobile phones. The menu board changes based on what's most popular at the time and what ingredients are most available at that location. But 4food is not just a tech-savvy restaurant with a social media presence. Not only do they have community groups, a blog and active profiles on Facebook, Twitter and foursquare, 4food encourages and enables its burger-loving customers to become salesmen as well.

You can create your own burger, name it, and it will be saved in the system for future visits. Not only is that convenient for people who are likely to forget which of the dozens of tasty combinations they had last time, but it also gives them the opportunity to market their personalized sandwiches to their friends. Each time someone orders the creation by name, you earn a royalty of 25 cents, which is credited to your online account.

"Make It Your Own" Music
Watching music videos might be so early 90s, but music video director Chris Milk, along with the folks at Google and the band Arcade Fire, are trying to make it interesting again with music that takes you home again. No really, it takes you to your home. The new video for "We Used to Wait," from the band's new album allows individuals to personalize the video by entering their address. Google satellite images take you on a jog through your neighborhood and to your house and even let you send a note to your childhood self. It's the perfect thing to indulge a homesick student...and to introduce them to both Google Chrome and Arcade Fire's new album.

"Make It Your Own" Fundraising
Endorse for a Cause, which launched last week, is an example of one socially conscious application of our love for personalization. While there have been many experiments around giving back at the cash register, whether it's online or offline, In addition to similar donate-while-you-shop models, Endorse for a Cause takes these experiments a step further by tapping individuals to market items for stores like Target and Starbucks and rewarding them by kicking money from affiliate fees to their cause when a friend purchases the product. For now, there are a limited number of nonprofits that can receive funds from Endorse for a Cause, but the individual-friendly platform allows users to nominate additional nonprofits for participation.

If someone is too shy to ask their social media friends for money directly, they can play the slacktivist card and post something already popular like a Starbucks card or a pair of Old Navy espadrilles to their Facebook and Twitter profiles through Endorse for a Cause. Hopefully their friends will be tempted to click through, buy the product and thereby earn a donation for their cause. While some might criticize this concept as another enabling platform that leads people to satisfy their desire (or duty) to help out by clicking a few buttons, which excuses them from doing things that are actually helpful to their cause - or doing as much as they might have if this platform didn't exist.

At the end of the day, success for burger joints, bands, fundraising tools and other products will be based on their quality - not just their inclusion of user-generated and user-personalized content. But these innovative ways to involve individuals in the creation and marketing of products can draw in new users and loyal supporters for products and organizations with staying power.

Tomorrow is July 24, and with the exception of a few notable events -- the return of Apollo 11 to Earth; the day the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to surrender the Watergate Tapes; or the day Lance Armstrong "retired" after winning his 7th Tour de France in 2005-- it's an otherwise unremarkable day in the history books. However, July 24, 2010 marks what could amount to be a fascinating and unprecedented day in the land of user generated video content.

A new experiment hosted by YouTube, “Life in a Day,” will attempt to document one day, as seen through the eyes of the 6.7 billion people spread out across our globe, each of whom have a unique story and perspective to share.  From the mundane to the extraordinary, over the course of the next 24 hours professional film makers and amateurs alike will attempt to capture a snapshot of their lives from sunrise to sunset.

Kevin Macdonald, the Oscar-winning director of The Last King of Scotland, will then edit the most compelling footage into a feature documentary film, to be executive-produced by Ridley Scott, the director behind films like Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, and Thelma & Louise.  The film will premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and if your footage makes it into the final cut, you’ll be credited as a co-director and may be one of 20 contributors selected to attend the premiere.

Want to take part and learn more? Here’s what you need to do.

1. Visit the “Life in a Day” channel and learn more about the project. Be sure to read through the steps you need to take to participate and the guidelines for creating your video(s). Also check out some of the sample videos for inspirational ideas.

2. On July 24, capture your day on camera.

3. Upload your footage to the “Life in a Day” channel any time before July 31.

Regardless of whether your footage makes it into the final film, your video(s) will live on in the “Life in a Day” channel as a time capsule that will tell future generations what it was like to be alive on July 24, 2010.

If you participate, we’d love to see what you capture – please share a link to your video in the comments below.

Last week as Google unveiled its list of the world’s top 1,000 most-visited sites on the web, it was no surprise that Facebook topped that list. Even amid the privacy backlash the company has seen in recent weeks,  and the subsequent yet seemingly unsuccessful declaration of May 31 as “Quit Facebook Day” there’s something that keeps all of us -- 540 million unique visitors a month that is, or roughly 32 percent of the current online population -- coming back for more.

When looking through Google’s list, perhaps what could be seen as more of a surprise, (especially for those of us who live our lives at the intersection of technology and social change) is the fact that it takes quite a while to get to a site on the list that’s devoted exclusively to charity or social good. In fact, as Peter Panapento over at the Chronicle on Philanthropy pointed out it’s not until 854, that Causes.com appears as the first true “social good” site.  A special thank you to Peter for spending his lunch hour culling through the list to determine that one!

While this may not be encouraging news for nonprofits who are spending significant staff time and dollars perfecting their social media strategies, it does strengthen the case for meeting your donors, volunteers, or constituents where they are.  A case we’ve been trying to make for quite some time. But, before your boss gets too carried away asking how you’re going to position your organization to show up on Google’s next list it’s important to take a closer look at the sites who did make the cut, and how you can best leverage them.

Many of the top sites are resources that people use to find information about their friends, what’s happening in the news, or products they want to buy or sell - but most of those sites don’t produce all of their own content. Even better, they allow opportunities for nonprofits to give them content. As much as we aspire to, we might have to accept that most us with social good sites will never find ourselves on Google’s top 1,000 list.   Even so, it's up to each of us to make sure we take advantage of the opportunity to include information about our causes on some of the most visited sites on the web – be it Facebook, Wikipedia, blogspot or wordpress, flickr and youtube.  All nonprofits should take the necessary steps like perfecting  search engine optimization to make sure they are showing up on Yahoo, Microsoft, bing and other popular search engines.

With approximately 1.5 million nonprofit organizations in the United States alone - we already know that everyone is competing for the same pool of donors and volunteers, but now nonprofits are also competing for our clicks. So, how are you positioning your organization to emerge and stand out among them?

Last week Google celebrated its 10th anniversary and marked the occasion with its latest venture into the philanthropic world. Project 10^100 (pronounced 10 to the 100th) began with a simple notion - may those who help the most win. Google began soliciting ideas for projects that have the potential to change the world and help as many people as possible.