CharityGiftMarket: e-commerce marketplace for nonprofits supports mothers through Mother’s Day sales

Andrew and Lindsey Markelz think that if you are going to buy a gift for your mom this Mother’s Day, then it should do more than just support a company’s bottom line.

(And remember Mother’s Day is this weekend.)

The two Camden residents are founders of a new e-commerce marketplace for nonprofits called CharityGiftMarket, that offers a central platform for nonprofits to sell products that benefit their constituents. They’re holding a “Mother’s Day Challenge” in partnership with women’s justice nonprofit Eternal Threads to raise awareness about their products, as well as other products being sold by or in support of mothers throughout the site.

Check out the site here.

“Because a lot of our partnering charities work with mothers, we thought it would be neat to highlight those organizations and their products for Mother’s Day,” said Andrew. “We wanted to create a relevant link between buying something for your mother that also supports a mother.”

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PredictiveEdge launches Proactive Parenting Network, new tool for child-safe browsing

"Who you going to call?" is what PredictiveEdge CEO asked when discussing how the Proactive Parenting Network compares to safety features on Facebook and other social media websites.

The following is a report done in partnership with Temple University’s Philadelphia Neighborhoods Program, the capstone class for the Temple Journalism Department.

Hanging from one of the cabinets of PredictiveEdge CEO Bill Thompson’s desk is a piece of paper that reads, “Parenting Problems? Who You Going To Call?”

Under the text are two pictures: the first of Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the second is the logo for PredictiveEdge’s behavioral social media program, called ‘the Proactive Parenting Network.’

With more than 500 million active users, children of all ages are increasingly influenced by Facebook and other social networking websites, many of which don’t go beyond basic safety features for users.

“The Internet’s not going away. Facebook’s not going away. It’s going to continue to become more and more dominant in our kids’ lives. We’re the generation that has to adapt to that,” Thompson said.

The newly launched Proactive Parenting Network serves as a resource for parents to better understand and protect their kids in the digital realm. It’s a package of resources to help combat the internet-age old problem of safe browsing for kids, including more adaptive and advanced tools like a keyword-driven firewall and more powerful browsing history and data collection.

But is it sapping away privacy?

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Shop Talk: Devon Segel CEO of Dining Info and GoBYO.com

This is something of a family business.

In 2005, serial entrepreneur Joseph Segel, a 1951 Wharton graduate who made a name for himself launching the Franklin Mint and the multibillion dollar home-shopping behemoth QVC, decided Philadelphia needed a database for its restaurants.

He started with his own personal Excel spreadsheets, detailing restaurant information, offerings and accomodations, but he wanted to expand it online.

So he turned to his 29-year-old, more tech-savvy granddaughter, Devon Segel, for help. She was busy building people-search databases for the American Red Cross with Comcast and Google during the melee of Hurricane Katrina, so occasional help and direction was all she could give.

He launched in spring 2006 an early incarnation of his idea, not just reviews or food writing but a comprehensive collection of information backed by deep data sets about the Philadelphia dining scene, which, of course, has a lot to do with BYO-style neighborhood restaurants.

But Joseph, now 78, wanted Devon to bring her design and development background to what he aimed to be another in a more-than-two-dozen-long list of business ventures.

“He and I have always had a great relationship. He’s a very serious and focused businessman. I am a young woman whom he tries to groom into a serious and focused businesswoman,” says Devon, now CEO of Voorhees, N.J.-based Dining Info LLC, which operates GoBYO.com and DiningInfo.com with plans of launching more. “He calls himself my ‘part-time adviser.’”

It wasn’t until 2007 that she took the job with pop pop, who splits his time between Bryn Mawr on the Main Line and Florida. Now, three years after first launching, their sites use a database that has some 100 data fields on 52,000 restaurants, including 17,000 BYOs, from 10 metro areas and growing.

Devon is sitting on a four-tiered revenue model, the funding to get there and, with a blurb mention due for the August issue of O Magazine, buzz surrounding a new look and focus.

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