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Facebook addicts, your chance to make a difference is here.

And get this; you don’t even have to pull your eyes away from the screen.

The United Way of Metropolitan Chicago is tapping into online social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to reach volunteers and potential donors.

The organization kicked off its online donation campaign Give5Here, aimed at raising money for families in crisis during tough economic times, earlier this month.

It works like this: A donor pledges $5 online to United Way Metro Chicago through the organization’s Web site. The donor then posts a link to the campaign on her Facebook wall and sends a link to the Give5Here video to five of her Facebook friends.

“It’s always a good idea to talk to people in a medium that they are comfortable in,” said April Redzik, United Way of Metro Chicago spokeswoman.

United Way, like many nonprofits, has a Web site to reach people. Now as nonprofits’ budgets are undergoing cuts, they are looking for more innovative ways to reach donors.

Logging onto social networking sites is one of the most affordable, said Alan Abramson who works on philanthropy and social innovation issues with the Aspen Institute, which has a Facebook page of its own.

“As the economy has declined, nonprofits turning to these new technologies makes a lot of sense,” Abramson said. “I think more and more of them have been exploring these options as the funding crisis hits them.”

Give5Here also encourages involvement by individuals who normally think they can’t make a difference, Redzik added.

And the campaign does so by stressing that a small donation can make a big difference.

“I think this is a great chance for younger donors to get involved with United Way,” Redzik said. “It’s a great way to get out to new people. Yeah, it’s hard to make a big gift, especially in this economy, but everyone can give $5 for a cause and tell five friends to do the same.”

The concept of donating small amounts to make a big difference through social networking sites received mass attention last year when President Barack Obama logged on, said Larry Brauner, who runs the blog Online Social Networking.

But it can’t be just about the number of people you spam with information on your favorite cause, Brauner added.

“From the sociological point of view, as far as a campaign of any kind, whether it’s the United Way or the Obama campaign, there has to be a genuine interest in the underlying message,” he said. “In the case of Obama, a lot of people out there were ready to embrace his message and social networking was just a way to get out his message to people who would not be reached through television, newspaper or magazine advertising.”

The Give5Here video social networking users are sending along to their friends highlights the underlying message.

“In a lot of these cases it is the volunteers who are sending the message along to their friends, so they’re not completely losing the first person contact,” Redzik said. “For new folks, the video is just a quick, easy way to understand what is going on, because sometimes seeing it visually is easier than just reading it, especially when you are talking about such dramatic numbers.”

Requests from service agencies for assistance from United Way are twice as high as they were last year, Redzik said. This year, the group is receiving $6 in requests for every $1 it has to disburse.

Redzik said her organization is hearing that close to a third of the service agencies on the South Side and the southwest suburbs are on the brink of collapse because of the economy.

“We want to raise as much as we can. The need isn’t going away,” Redzik said. “People are coming into food pantries in numbers that we have never seen before and we are seeing enormous increases in need.”

The money will go to crisis assistance programs run by the United Way’s 400 partner agencies in the Chicago area. Keeping people housed and fed, and making sure employment and medical resources are available, are just a few issues the money will go toward, she added.

Give5Here has raised $700 online since kicking off Feb. 2, according to preliminary numbers. The campaign has also received a $500,000 matching grant from an area organization that wanted to remain anonymous.

The campaign was originally planned to run through the end of March, but will continue into September because of the matching funds.