JusTagMe Launches Charity Challenge App

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JusTagMe hopes to ride the feel-good wave set by this past summer’s ALS ice bucket challenge.

The social media hit had people call out friends to either donate $100 to the ALS Association or post a video of themselves dumping a bucket of ice water over their heads. Oprah Winfrey, Justin Timberlake, Bill Gates and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie all joined the cause. The ALS Association said it received $94 million in donations in less than a month, the majority of which it attributed to the challenge’s viral videos.

JusTagMe hopes to use the same process to advance other charitable organizations. The Facebook-compatible platform helps users organize similar charity challenges by tracking donations, the number of participants and who has completed the challenge.

JusTagMe is launching with three active campaigns. The app is a second product for West Hollywood startup Darelicious, which also hosts a “Kickstarter for dares” website. There, the company has hosted more than 100 charitable campaigns.

Chief Executive Jorge Hernandez said his company will take a 7 percent commission off each donation made through JusTagMe, not counting credit card fees.

Though the ice bucket challenge had its critics – namely that it was less about helping a good cause and more about racking video clicks – Hernandez said he wasn’t worried about pushback against using social media for good causes.

“When you have something that massively successful, it’s impossible for somebody to not find fault in that,” he said. “I just file that under a nice problem to have.”

Darelicious is backed with $500,000 in funding to date.

Staff reporter Melissah Yang can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @MelissahYang for the latest in L.A. tech news.

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