The Daily Tell

As the "viral sharing" trend continues to boom, many businesses are beginning to use online videos for marketing and promotional purposes.

Now nonprofit organizations have started to join the game, using viral video sharing to promote their cause, as seen recently in the widely popular "JK Wedding Dance" video which was linked to a domestic abuse charity.

Yet one nonprofit, World Flix, took the viral video trend to a new level – the organization based its entire premise on that one strategy.

World Flix, whose mission is to "change the world one video clip at a time," uses online videos to empower visitors to donate to a variety of humanitarian causes.

The nonprofit is based on microdonations, so visitors only have to give small amounts to make a difference. This widens the scope of possible donors, enabling more people to be able to afford donations.

The mission, which the organization defines as "e-philanthropy for the next generation," relies on the founding principles of bringing humanitarian issues to the public through the use of online video clips, enabling more people to "know the joy of giving" by allowing microdonations, and providing 100 percent transparency to donors about where their money is going.

The organization’s CEO, Laika Grant Mann, stumbled upon the idea behind World Flix while studying at Georgetown University’s Nonprofit Management Executive Program. She knew she wanted to find a way to make philanthropy more accessible, and was inspired when she saw her sons film a short video for YouTube.

"This is the chapter in my life to change the world," Mann told the Santa Cruz Mercury News.

Donors can visit worldflix.org to watch videos of the causes, which include preventing blindness in Tibet, providing clean water to Haitian children, and donating mosquito nets to a hospital in Uganda. They can then donate to any of the causes, or upload videos of their own.

With the number of online users expected to reach 2.2 billion around the world over the next five years, according to Forrester Research, online philanthropy initiatives such as World Flix have the potential to reach a significant amount of people.