There are stock indexes galore: the Dow, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ Composite, the Wilshire 5000, the FTSE, and hundreds more. But how would an index of the stocks of companies that do a meaningful amount of cause marketing perform compared to those well-known indexes? Pretty well, as it turns out.

As we head down the home stretch of the 2013 hurricane season (remember last year's late-season surprise, Sandy?), and with California wildfires and Colorado flooding still impacting communities, there's no better time than now for companies to assess their disaster response strategies.

If fall is rolling in and we're starting to think of Halloween outfits, it means it's time to start planning your search campaigns for the coming Giving Season. Search is a valuable tool for reaching your potential donors throughout the year, but it's essential during year-end. To avoid a mad dash at the end, let's go ahead and plan now!

It's fall, and fundraising is in the air. Many organizations are prepping holiday giving and year-end appeals as we speak. I decided to poke around the "Interwebs" to see if any organizations are choosing unique ways to inspire donors to give. Here are some charity events that put the "fun" in fundraising:

Half of all donors have given money at a retail store's checkout counter, making it the most popular means of giving for all except those in the oldest generation. By harnessing the power of the consumer wallet, brands can extend their reach to benefit a charity, as well as their own bottom line.

The military, like your cause marketing campaign, has a sense of mission. Sometimes the mission is very narrowly defined and time-limited. When a squad goes out on patrol at night, its mission may be reconnoiter, or intercept before returning to base in time for breakfast. Sometimes the military's mission is very broad and open-ended, like ending another country's ability to wage asymmetrical warfare.

If your organization is using Facebook in any way, you need to learn how to create and utilize Facebook tabs. Unique Facebook tabs are extremely helpful, both for general Facebook engagement as well as Facebook Advertising. Facebook users don't want to leave Facebook. They're not on Facebook looking to donate to a cause or send an email to their congressperson; they're there to get updates on their friends and family or stalk old high school flames (let's be honest). So if they click on a link that takes them off of Facebook, they often immediately click the back button. One …

It has always bothered me that events like road races and walks often don't recycle. It's common to see runners grabbing plastic cups of water and tossing them to the ground. Then volunteers pick them up and put them into large trash bags. Eventually, this trash ends up in a landfill in Anytown, USA. And, the volume of trash that marathons produce is astounding.

With its 300 million active listings at any given second, odds are you've probably bought or sold something on eBay. But did you know that eBay Inc. is comprised of over 30 businesses (including PayPal which facilitated over $145 billion in payments last year) and employs over 30,000 people?

When translated into English, the Japanese word kaizen is typically rendered as "continuous improvement." Kaizen is the steps you take to improve your processes, frequently by implementing small and oftentimes cheap improvements so as to make them better and better. Few companies or nonprofits ... in Japan or anywhere else ... are likely to survive if they don't practice some version of continuous improvement. And kaizen is precisely the word to describe what Toyota's marketing department practiced with its cause-marketing effort called "Meals Per Hour," which is a video about what a Toyota team did to improve the processes at …