It's that time of year again-when Top 10 Trend lists suddenly appear like lights on a tree (so far I've counted dozens, including Tech Trends, Green Marketing Social Media Trends, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Trends, Supermarket Trends, even the heart-stopping 2014 Top-Ten Call Center Trends).

Hope you all are having a wonderful giving season. This being the busiest time of year for nonprofits, I'm guessing that your 2014 marketing plan has been put on the back burner for now. But I'm here to help! If you need ideas for new places to start on Jan. 1 (or Jan. 2, let's be honest), then look no further.

"It's complicated" is not only the name of one of my favorite romantic comedies, but it's the conundrum facing everyone trying to integrate messaging about their efforts to do good into their marketing.

In their fun book, Mission in a Bottle, which is about the startup of their business, Honest Tea, Seth Goldman and Barry Nalebuff talk about a conversation Goldman had with Tom Szaky, the founder of up-cycling firm TerraCycle. Honest Tea, which bottles its Honest Kids fruit drinks in plastic and foil pouches, pioneered a promotion that asked people to send their empty pouches to TerraCycle for up-cycling into other products, while benefiting local schools. Szaky asked, how would Honest Tea feel about TerraCycle taking the pouch up-cycling promotion to a competing producer of kids' pouch drinks?

A few months ago, Google launched a new Android app, One Today, which shows users different nonprofit projects each day and asks for $1 donations. As nonprofits look for new alternative giving options and the importance of micro-donations grows, One Today is a great, free, and easy option!

In 1983, American Express kicked off the cause-marketing revolution by linking support for the renovation of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to card usage and sign-ups.

Does a cause face ethical challenges to accepting money funds raised via cause marketing? That is, does associating with a company's service or product taint the donation? Can causes accept money generated via cause marketing in good conscience?

If you're relatively new to Facebook Advertising, you may not have explored Facebook's Power Editor yet. Power Editor is a wonderful tool that allows you to make changes to your campaigns offline, so you can easily revert changes, or upload changes in bulk to the main interface. You do have to use Chrome to access Power Editor and install it like a Chrome app or extension, but once it's downloaded it looks just like another website. Simple and easy! So what makes it so special?

It's that time of the year when all the marketing world is awash in its usual sea of pink, it seems like a good time to ask why so much cause-related branding has so little emotional clout. No matter how well planned, breast-cancer pink (not to mention save-the-environment green or prostate-protecting blue) has often become invisible to cause-bombarded consumers.

In the past, charitable giving meant researching a cause, finding a worthy charity, and then writing and mailing a check. Door to door, galas and even 1-800 numbers enjoyed (and still do) their day in the sun as a way to provide donations.