With piles of beautifully wrapped presents under the Christmas tree, we can’t help but feel grateful for everything we have. This desire to give back translates into an army of willing volunteers at food banks and homeless shelters, which usually dissipates by New Year’s Day.

How do we keep up the spirit of giving all year round? Here are three ideas from the tech community to turn you into a change-making habitual philanthropist.

Change.org

Why not start a grassroots campaign?

Company: Change.org
What is it? An online petitioning site.
Membership: 25 million users; the company is growing at a rate of 2 million new members a month.
Who’s it for? Ordinary people who want to start hyper-local movements against corporations or interest groups. “If you want to win battles, you do it locally,” Change.org CEO Ben Rattray (pictured, above) told VentureBeat.
How does it work? Petitions are nothing new, but marrying them with social media and focusing them in a hyper-local way — that’s where things start to get interesting. Simply launch a petition on Change.org, share it with your social networks, and watch it take off. The startup has a support team that will help you mobilize and put pressure on your target.
Greatest success story: Don’t believe you can take on the big banks? Twenty-two-year-old nanny Molly Katchpole launched an online petition on Change.org to put pressure on Bank of America to drop its new $5 monthly debit card fee. It was signed by 300,000 people. Victory was affirmed in November 2011.
What is the secret sauce? The company has a charismatic CEO in the form of Rattray (pictured, above), who believes that technology can arm ordinary people to start revolutions. In a recent interview at his San Francisco headquarters, Rattray said that people are apathetic because they learn over time that their opinion or vote doesn’t matter. Inspired by examples of successful campaigns launched on blogs, Facebook and Twitter or sites like Change.org, they are recognizing that they can make a difference. “As the platform gets bigger, people in power know who we are,” said Rattray. “They recognize the potential power of viral campaigns.”

Why not raise money for a charitable cause?

Company: Rally.org 
What is it? A platform that helps people to rally around and raise money for causes they believe in.
Who’s it for? A rebel with a cause.
How does it work? Create a fundraising page on Rally.org in a matter of minutes, and start accepting donations. Add your extended social network to your support list, and reach out to them on Facebook and Twitter. If your fundraising takes off, you can access a dashboard to analyze what’s working and view a list of your greatest supporters.
Membership: Approximately 1.5 million users.
Greatest success story?  A member recently raised $20,000 to help save a Minnesota church from foreclosure.
What is the secret sauce? Its all-star network of supporters. Rally.org has successfully rallied celebrities like Bon Jovi and Silicon Valley’s venture capital community. When Digg.com founder Kevin Rose joined Google Ventures, Rally.org was his first investment. It was further propelled into the spotlight when the Romney campaign chose it as its fundraising platform. “We’re increasingly seeing artists, brands and large corporations being very vocal and open about leveraging their celebrity and brand to benefit causes,” said Nick Warshaw, Rally.org’s business development lead in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

Why not offer an internship to a teen programmer?

Organization: CodeNow
What is it? A nonprofit that encourages high school students from inner city neighborhoods to pick up computer programming.
Who’s it for? Developers with a few hours to spare on an occasional evening who would be willing to teach; tech startups that can offer an internship to teen graduates of the program; kids from want to learn foundational skills in computer programming through free extra curricular off campus training.
How does it work? Teens reeceive netbook computers when they enter the program and sign up for 45 hours of programming training after school and during the summer or winter break. Once they complete the program, some of the graduates land internships at tech startups like LivingSocial.
Membership: The program has about 50 alumni. It started in Washington, D.C., but it recently expanded to San Francisco.
Greatest success story? Wilfred, a teen from a rough neighborhood in Washington D.C., who was ready to hand out handwritten business cards with the title “future engineer” in a few months. A natural at the programming language Ruby on Rails, he is now teaching the new recruits.
What is the secret sauce? Its close ties to the tech community. In attendance at the recent launch event in San Francisco were venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and other high-profile techies like Jonathan Abrams, founder of Friendster, and Roy Bahat, chairman of Ouya. The organization’s emphasis on diversity is both impressive and unique — about 40 percent of the program’s graduates are girls.

Red ribbon image via discpicture // Shutterstock

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made his largest charitable donation to date.

A week before Christmas, the young technology executive announced he will be giving almost $500 million in Facebook stock to a Bay Area nonprofit that focuses on improving access to education and health. The beneficiary is the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which rewards grant money to local projects and causes.

The gift of 18 million Facebook shares is valued at $498.8 million, based on the company’s closing stock price today, when Zuckerberg made the donation.

Tech entrepreneurs are increasingly popping up in lists of the top philanthropists in the nation. The Chronicle of Philanthropy publishes a definitive list each year; in 2010, Zuckerberg made the top 10 tied with Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff. Last year, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar featured in the top 30.

Zuck’s willingness to donate funds to local causes is a departure from the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who kept a low profile in this regard. While Jobs was reluctant to join, Zuckerberg is a keen supporter of Giving Pledge, the effort spearheaded by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett, to get the country’s richest people to donate most of their wealth.

At VentureBeat, we come across a lot of funding news every day. In order to bring you the most information possible, we’re rounding up the quick-and-dirty details about the funding deals of the day and serving them up here in our “Funding daily” column.

CloudPassage lands $14M

Cloud security startup CloudPassage has raised $14 million in second-round funding Wednesday. CloudPassage helps companies such as Foursquare store sensitive data in the cloud securely. The new round of funding was led by Tenaya Capital, with participation from previous investors Benchmark Capital and Musea Ventures.

KULA Causes grabs $1.1M

Charitable giving e-commerce service KULA Causes announced it has raised $1.1 million in funding from an undisclosed investor. KULA has created its own currency that people can convert loyalty points, rebates, and gift cards into KULA currency, which is then given to a charity.

Isolation Network files a $6.6 million form D

Isolation Network Inc., the parent company of INgrooves, raised $6.6 million in a second round of funding according to a Securities and Exchanges Commission filing. INgrooves is a digital music and video distribution, marketing, and promotion services company that counts Universal Music Group and MTV as clients. Isolation Networks raised a $5 million round in March 2012.

H. Bloom blossoms with $10 million

Subscription-based flower-delivery service H. Bloom has raised $10 million in funding, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filling. The company delivers “luxurious” bouquets for consumers and commercial customers. The round was led by Shasta Ventures with participation from existing investors.

ABB invests in water monitoring startup TaKaDu

Electricity infrastructure provider ABB just led $6 million investment in water infrastructure monitoring startup TaKaDu. TaKaDu offers water infrastructure monitoring as a service. The company’s software links to existing sensors in the water network like flow meters, quality sensors and pressure meters.

Khosla Ventures puts $7 million into password killer OneID

Security company OneID is helping to eliminate one of the weakest links on the internet: the password. It uses public key cryptography to eliminate the need for the password and hopes to change the way people think about their identities on the Internet. The company received $7 million in its first round of funding today, led by Khosla Ventures.

Beamit raises seed funding

Beamit, a mobile payment service, raised $2.4 million in seed funding, reports TechCrunch. The company specializes in processing international remittances, which is when a person working in another country sends money to his home country. Founder’s Co-op with the round, with Bezos Expeditions and TomorrowVentures participating.

Condé Nast buys Ziplist

Magazine publisher Condé Nast purchased mobile shopping-list and recipe organizing app Ziplist Wednesday, All Things D reported. The purchase price wasn’t confirmed, but is said to be $14 million. Ziplist originally raised $4.5 million from Softbank Capital and Martha Stewart.

Flowers image via Flickr user Sweet.Eventide