This series is supported by Toyota Prius and presented by harmonytweets, a Twitter-based platform for filtering conversations around design, sustainability, eco technology and philanthropy. Leverage Twitter to communicate around ideals you care about at harmonytweets.com.  Twitter is good for a great many things, from sharing music to building your brand, from finding friends to playing games. But while we know all about what Twitter is good for, is it possible to actually do good on Twitter? How do you do it? As it turns out, there are many ways to help out others just by tweeting.  We’ve collected some of our favorites in the round up below. If you know of any other ways to do good on Twitter, please share them in the comments!  Probably the simplest way to start doing good on Twitter, is to follow the Twitter accounts of your favorite charities. Charities use Twitter to spread information about their causes and campaigns, and you can stay connected to those issues by following them. For non-profit organizations, Twitter is an amazing way to reach constituents and you can help them extend their reach by retweeting the things that they tweet out to your network.  Our Summer of Social Good campaign may have recently come to a close, but you can still support the charities involved by following them on Twitter – Oxfam America, The Humane Society, LIVESTRONG, and WWF. There are also many other charities on Twitter, so follow your favorites and retweet their information.  Twitter has proven to be an incredible way to raise money. Because information has the potential to spread so quickly, news of a fundraising drive can reach millions of people through retweets in a relatively short amount of time. As a result, Twitter becomes a great vehicle for encouraging people to donate to a cause, and a number of highly successful fundraising events have been held over Twitter.  The most well-know is probably Twestival, a collection of Twitter-organized festivals held all over the world last February that raised over $250,000 for charity: water. Twestival is holding its next event, Twestival Local, September 10-13 (Mashable is a global media partner).  But Twestival isn’t the only Twitter fundraising success story. Last November, Tweetsgiving raised over $11,000 to build a new classroom for a school in Tanzania, and 12for12k, an organization trying to raise $12,000 each for 12 charities over 12 months, has held a number of Twitter-based fundraisers. Perhaps the most successful Twitter fundraising campaign, was the one earlier this year that raised nearly a million dollars to help pay for a heart transplant for Eric De La Cruz, the brother of a CNN Internet correspondent. (Unfortunately, Eric died on July 4th of his rare heart condition, severe dilated cardiomyopathy.)  Twitter fundraising events are happening all the time, so keep your eyes open and be on the lookout for trending hashtags corresponding to a fundraising event. One currently running Twitter fundraising campaign is 140 Smiles by Operation Smile, an organization that raises money to provide children with cleft lips or palates with life-altering facial surgery, and is attempting to raise money for 140 such operations.  Twitter is a great way to find a job, but in the current tough global economy, those without work need all the help they can get finding work. And that’s the idea behind @JobAngels. It works like this: those in need of work, throw out a tweet using the hashtag #JobAngels, then others help those people find jobs.  To get started, just do a search for #jobangels or follow the Job Angels account to find those looking for work. If you know of a job that fits their need, tweet it out to them.  When social media guru Drew Olanoff was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, he didn’t roll over and complain, “Why me?” Instead, he did something radical. He launched Blame Drew’s Cancer, a Twitter campaign helping people blow off steam, beat up on cancer, and raise money for charity in the process.  The idea is simple. Whenever something goes wrong in your life, you simply blame Drew’s cancer by tweeting using the hashtag #BlameDrewsCancer. His sponsor, 23andme is donating $1 to LIVESTRONG for everything that’s blamed on his cancer (over 24,000 things so far!).  Drew is also holding a 24-hour Blame-a-thon on 09/09/09.  Twollars is a really interesting way to pledge money to charity using Twitter. Essentially, Twollars are a Twitter-based currency with no hard money value. Users start with 50 Twollars and can give them to each other or to charities via Twitter. Twollars are worth nothing until someone buys them (at a rate of 10 Twollars per US$1). I know what you’re thinking: why would anyone buy something that’s worth nothing?  The reason is all about awareness. Twollars can only be redeemed for cash by charities, so businesses that buy Twollars are actually making donations to charities (for which they receive awareness) and users donating Twollars are really spreading awareness of that charity’s good work. By donating Twollars to the American Red Cross, for example, you’re actually saying, “I like what the Red Cross does, and I vote for some business to donate money to them.”  One of the best ways to organize and raise awareness about an issue, is to start and sign a petition. Twitter has made it absolutely dead simple to create and spread petitions by combining both the means of signing and the means of spreading the word into the same action: the retweet.  There are many Twitter petition platforms out there, and each works a bit differently. One of the best is Act.ly, which is now also a platform for organizing tweetups.  Which brings us to our final point. A tweetup is an offline meeting organized via Twitter, and they’re an incredible way to gather like-minded people and raise awareness for a cause, issue, or charitable organization. By bringing people together offline, you can make the issue at hand more real and get people more actively involved. Be sure to check out Mashable’s guide to running a tweetup before you begin organizing one.  In what other ways can you use Twitter for good? Let us know in the comments.  This series is supported by Toyota Prius and presented by harmonytweets, a Twitter-based platform for filtering conversations around key inspirational themes core to the Prius brand including design, sustainability, eco technology and philanthropy. Leverage Twitter to communicate around ideals you care about, including inspiration, hybrid technology and volunteerism at harmonytweets.com.  Image courtesy of iStockphoto, IvanWuPl
There are a great many good uses for Twitter, but how do you actually do good using Twitter?  Here are some of our favorite ways.