A new online tool leverages crowdsourcing on behalf of philanthropic causes, including donation-supported or crowdfunded community news and information. Impaq.me, created by the Investigative News Network, helps make this work visible, and turn social sharing about philanthropic work into contributions to support that work.

Impaq.me is widget code that can be embedded in a website covering or promoting any donation-supported project, such as a community reporting project. It invites visitors to share links to this coverage with their own social networks, to encourage donations to support the project or cause. A counter indicates how much money has been raised so far for the campaign. Causes are consistently tracked to gauge results.

This widget can be used to support nonprofit community news coverage and venues. It's currently being tested at its second round of testing at six of most successful U.S. independent nonprofit news startups: MinnPost, the Center for Investigative Reporting, Texas Tribune, Voice of San Diego, ProPublica, and the Center for Public Integrity .

On June 3, a free KDMC webinar [[[ LINK ]]] will explain how community news publishers and community foundations can use this tool.

Does this kind of tool drive donations? Impaq.me is garnering buzz, but it's only one of many initiatives seeking to encourage crowdfunding via social sharing. One key challenge is tracking the impact of donations -- and as yet there's no consensus the effectiveness of this strategy.

Still, Impaq.me and similar tools do empower news consumers with the instant ability to participate in a story by becoming a donor and encouraging others to support the projects they like.