The financial crisis in world markets over the past few weeks has been a real eye-opener, but even those of us who have seen our stock portfolios decline by 30 percent or more don’t have much to complain about. It could be worse. It could be a lot worse. A third of the world’s population lives in poverty, and 20 percent lives in extreme poverty, meaning they are always hungry.

What can you do? How about making a microloan of a $20, $50, or $100 to an entrepreneur in a poor country? Today is Blog Action Day, with blogs around the world making a concerted effort to raise awareness about global poverty and ways to fight it. What we’ve decided to do is to start a TechCrunch lending team at Kiva.org. Anyone can join.

Kiva matches entrepreneurs in poor countries with lenders in rich ones. You can choose whichever project/business you want to fund (much like DonorsChoose, another charity we encourage you to support, lets you fund specific school projects here in the U.S.). For instance, this grocery owner in Kabul needs only $50 to complete a $1,075 loan to buy inventory for a year or this furniture maker who needs $350 to complete his loan. Little actions can build up quickly through sites like Kiva.

You might also want to check out MicroPlace (another microloan site) and aGoodCause (which lets you raise money for charity while you shop). For those who want to spread the message about their own cause through their social networks, Change.org and Causecast are great places to start.

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Like Ning, non-profit pages are part of their overall network and can be redesigned with a variety of modules. Any member of Change.org can become a member of these networks. They have modules for all an organization’s main needs: events, fund raising, forums, blogs, members, and posting photos/video. I really like how Change.org is evolving overall. The site is about connecting people passionate about a particular cause and not engaging in a shouting match or symbolic gestures of online support.

Other useful services for non-profit work include Wild Apricot, Idealist.org, Tree Nation, and Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees.

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Tonight, Change.org is launching an ambitious version 2.0 that expands beyond nonprofits and into political fundraising and lobbying. Founder Ben Rattray says politicians are expected to raise over $3 billion in this election cycle, with about half of that spent on fund raising (running total here). He says nonprofits receive donations upwards of $250 billion a year, with $50 billion of that money spent on chasing down a donors. Change.org wants to lower those fund raising costs, counteract large donor’s “special interest” money, and help give a voice to the average Joe who can’t afford a $2,500 a plate dinner.

To accomplish this, Change.org has effectively turned each “Change” group into a political action committee (PAC) by adding a database of politician profiles and some extra features to the “Change” groups. Now each group has the power to pool together a pot of money to donate to relevant charities or political candidates, as well as the power to lobby your representatives.

Instead of only nominating one charity per group, members can now vote on who which charities or politicians can best enact the change they want. Any member of the group will be able to submit a candidate for the donation, but only people who donate to the group’s “piggy bank” ($10 min by credit) will be able to vote the candidates up or down the list. Donations can be raised through the main site or an embeddable widget.

At the end of the month, all the money in the piggy bank will be divided between the top “n” donation candidate(s) (3 by default), minus a 1% management fee to sustain Change.org. If the money is raised for a political candidate, that candidate will get a check for the amount and their opponent will get slapped with a novelty check for the negative amount, just to let the competition know you mean business. Donations can also be conditional, such as donations to whoever wins the Democratic or Republican primary. Change.org will distribute the money when a winner is determined.

If putting your money where you mouth is isn’t your deal, you can also try lobbying on behalf of the group. Lobbying campaigns are dead simple. It just requires you to check off which representatives you want to lobby (state/federal, house/senate, governor/president), enter your address, and then type out a short message about your cause. The system automatically sends the message off to the appropriate representatives based on your address. The announcement of the campaign is then posted to the group and the politicians profile along with a copy of you message. If the representative responds, members can post the response to the campaign page.

In exchange for your good will, Change.org will dish back some warm fuzzies in the form of a scoreboard listing the total money you raised for change and virtual award medals of your contributions. Awards and posting a scoreboard will help generate some social pressure for friends to take action. We have yet to see how it will stack up against Sean Parker’s viral monster for good will, Project Agape, however.

In a time where nearly every presidential candidate has a MySpace page, it’s evident that the web is has developed some formidable political muscle. Today’s activists are co-opting new media sites like YouTube to get their messages out (see “Vote Different“). Change.org places yet another arrow in their quiver.

Activists should also check out idealist.org, dotherightthing.com, six degrees, tree nation, and essembly.com.

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The site consists of social networking’s usual suspects, profiles, friends, messaging, groups, and a personal blog. Groups, in this context, are called “changes” and are meant to join together like-minded people around social changes they feel passionate about. In private beta, groups have been formed around topics such as “Stop Global Warming” and “Save Net Neutrality“. Each group gets a comment thread and blog to chat on along with a photo gallery to post pictures or videos.

The other half of the site is the nonprofits the users can organize around. They have already populated a database (powered by Guidestar) of over one million nonprofits, but I could only find 100 profiles through their search engine. Each of the profiled nonprofits has a bio, user reviews, photos, videos, and community blog. Users can befriend a nonprofit and let everyone else know by becoming a supporter of the organization.

Each nonprofit also gets a project page, where they can ask members to donate money to fund special projects or just the general fund. Donations are either taken by credit card ($10 min) on the organization’s page, or can be solicited by individual Change.org users who write up a pitch highlighting why it’s important to give. All donations are redistributed to the respective nonprofits through JustGive.org. Change.org takes 1% of every dollar donated. Change also hopes to support its operations through promotional campaigns nonprofits would launch on the site.

Members can also donate time instead of money by participating in the “Actions” page, which is a Google maps enabled classified listing of volunteer activities, resolutions, events in your zip code. Anyone, including the nonprofits can post to the list.

The site has been a project for Ben Rattray over the past two years, joined by Stanford friend Mark Dimas and a supporting team of Darren Haas, Rajiv Gupta, and Adam Cheyer. Change.org is currently funded by friends and family.

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