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From FourSquare ("checked in at Joe's Pizza!") to Facebook ("just backed my car into the bushes. LOL!") to Twitter ("look @fascnatngarticle Im sharing in case you didnt know I read #highbrowmagazines") and now Google+ ("get out of my 'friends' circle, Mom!"), we are more connected than ever. For companies across sectors, a hyper-networked world is one that allows increased connection with consumers, broader brand awareness, and more targeted advertising and marketing.

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Trite but true: the best things in life are free (or at least, heavily discounted). For cause-driven companies and nonprofits, purchasing corporate technology products -- and hiring an IT team to manage them -- is often out of reach, if not just unwieldy for an organization that's big on mission but not bureaucracy.

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War, poverty, death, and disease. If you turn on the TV, it's likely you will be bombarded by a laundry list of our world's problems. What you're unlikely to find is a story of the brave men and women fighting that war or a front page headline about the charity who rallied thousands of volunteers to help our nation's most impoverished communities, or a feature on the individual who, in the face of death, made a positive impact on the lives of others. Mainstream media offers us plenty of problems, but the CLASSY Awards are dedicated to telling the stories of those who fight for solutions.