Once in a while, someone comes along with an absolutely outstanding idea.

Today, that someone was Danny Brown.

For those of you who don’t know him, Danny is the owner of Press Release PR, a PR consultancy specializing in social media. I’ve gotten to know Danny pretty well over the past several months (although we’ve never met in person!), and we were even co-conspirators on this blog post for David Henderson a couple of months back.

His idea is called “The 12 for 12,000 Challenge in 2009”. The basic idea of Danny’s genius concept is this; if he can find 1200 people to give just $10 a month to one charity a month for 12 months, then $144,000 can be raised. It’s so simple, but I think it could just work – and then some.

The plan is to use the power of social media to spread the word to as many people as possible, and get them all to jump on board and commit to giving their $10 a month for the year. And, as he says on his blog:

The beauty of this challenge is that the decision is entirely down to you and how you participate. If you feel that a particular charity doesn’t fit you, simple – don’t donate that month. (If you wish to donate double to a preferred featured charity, that’s entirely up to you again).

So really, it’s a win win situation. You get to give in the way that best suits you, and 12 terrific charities benefit.

It’s the strength in numbers concept at work here that is really the brilliant part. Imagine if each person in your Twitter network signed up. Then each person in THEIR Twitter network signed up, and so on. The results could be astronomical!

For the full rundown, go to Danny’s blog post “The 12 for 12,000 Challenge in 2009” and learn how you can get involved. I’ll keep you posted on the latest here too.