Pepsi Giving Millions To Fund Great Ideas

New York –  Pepsi’s Refresh Project is giving millions away every month to fund great ideas through December 15, 2010.  Turn your idea into a compelling submission; get the highest number of people in your virtual community to vote for your idea and you could be awarded a grant up to $250,000.  Grant submissions can be made by legal residents of the U.S. ages 13 years and older.

Pepsi is “looking for people, businesses and nonprofits with ideas that will have a positive impact,” in six categories: health, art and culture, food and shelter, the planet, neighborhoods and education.  Pepsi announced a new category June  8, for one month, devoted exclusively to ideas to help Refresh the Gulf.

Crowdsourcing

Pepsi’s Refresh Project used crowdsourcing to get more funding ideas. Oprah’s  My Own Show used it to get more show ideas for her soon to be unveiled OWN network.  Jeff Howe explains crowdsourcing, a term he coined,  in his YouTube video.  Crowdsourcing allows companies to get more people involved in helping to identify great ideas.  Individuals use crowdsourcing to get more people involved in voting for their submitted ideas.

Key Strategies

The keys to winning Pepsi’s Refresh grants are crowdsourcing and virtual communities.  If you do not have a virtual community to  crowdsource your requests for votes to;  you need to start one to increase your chance of winning.  Virtual communities are made up of Facebook, Twitter and Myspace friends, emails,  websites, blogs and any other online contacts you have, like LinkedIn.  Through virtual communities you  develop and build rapport with large numbers of people, with common interest, who will respond to your request to go to Pepsi’s Refresh site and vote for your idea.  An active virtual community, one that you participate in, can make your good idea a grant recipient or you the host of your OWN show.