Bank Leumi le-Israel B.M. and YouTube are Re-launching the Online Campaign to Promote the Bank’s Charitable Giving & Renaming it to "Two Million Good Reasons"

TEL AVIV, Israel, October 26, 2011 -

The campaign allows web surfers to vote on where Leumi will make charitable contributions

In 2011 Leumi will double the total contribution to this campaign to 2 million shekels, out of its total annual contributions estimated around 30 million shekels

The 2010 campaign’s success resulted in an increase in individuals’ applications to Israeli volunteer organizations

Leumi and YouTube are re-launching “One Million Good Reasons“, a unique online campaign for charitable contributions in Israel.  Due to the positive response from last year’s campaign, Leumi has decided to double the total amount of donations from one million shekels to two million shekels in 2011.  As a result, the name of the campaign has been updated to “Two Million Good Reasons”.  In 2011, Bank Leumi will make over 30 million shekels worth of charitable donations in Israel.  

The project combines community relations and social media in which the surfing public is invited to cast its vote and determine which charitable associations will be given donations. Volunteer organizations that want to be involved in the campaign will be asked to create short videos on a dedicated YouTube page. Web surfers will then be able to view the various videos and vote which volunteer organization should receive a donation.  

Sixty volunteer organizations will receive contributions in 2011, compared to fifty in 2010. The organization that wins the most votes will receive NIS 225,000 from Bank Leumi. Other organizations will be given amounts ranging between NIS 25,000 and NIS 125,000.

This year small organizations whose total budget is up to five million shekels will be included in the project.  They have been invited to join the campaign as they do not receive institutional support and generally have difficulty in mobilizing resources.

To ensure that all types of volunteer organizations have an ability to win there will be five different categories of areas of activity from which to select winners.  The categories are: health, science and medicine, education, welfare and society, culture and the arts, the environment, and animal welfare.

A number of elements have been added in 2011 to make selections easier and to deepen the surfers’ knowledge of the participating organizations:

• On the page where the videos are shown, a link will be added to the Facebook page of each organization.
• Surfers will be given the option of making their own on-line donation.
• Each organization can make a link from its YouTube video page to a page on its own site (or anywhere else of its choice) where it can post information for people who wish to volunteer with the organization.

This campaign, which will take place over two months, will be broadcast on Leumi’s dedicated YouTube channel and will be supported by the “Leumi” and “Leumi Blog” websites. Actual voting by the surfing public for their favorite organizations will take place between December 5 -20, 2011.

Last year there were more than 2 million hits during the campaign and close to 400,000 votes were cast - a record response exceeding the organizers’ expectations. First place was awarded to the “Simcha Layeled Association” which looks after children with chronic genetic illnesses; they received about 25,000 votes from web surfers. This was followed by four first place awards that went to “Eshel Ashkelon” - a soup kitchen and day center for the elderly, “Let the Animals Live”, “Prize4 Life” - an organization that helps patients with A.L.S., and the “Israel Animal Guard Association.

Contact information: Linda d’Angelo - Phone number : +972-3-514-8006

.