This is about money. But it’s not about getting rich. Well, it is – but not in the way we usually think about getting rich.

We all know about the astounding amount of money Filipinos send back home each year. In 2010, the figure was roughly $19 billion, making the Philippines the fourth largest recipient of remittance funds after India, China and Mexico, according to Philippine and World Bank data.

That’s money used to send Jun-Jun and Inday to college, to set up Aling Mina’s sari-sari store, to buy appliances for the OFW’s family. Or to provide for a family’s most basic needs.

It has kept the Philippine economy afloat for decades.

Now, what if there’s a way to tap that economic power to expand the reach of every dollar or yen or euro sent to address even bigger needs? What if a bank or a remittance company donates an amount – say, a dollar, or ten pesos – to a worthy cause for every transaction?

Multiplied by the millions, or tens of millions, it certainly means a lot. It could help take on not just the needs of the family of the nurse working at a US hospital, or the engineer at a Saudi Arabian construction site, but also those of their community, their province, their country.

That’s the idea behind Remit4Change.

The new program is spearheaded by two friends of mine in the San Francisco Bay Area. Richard Cavosora is a social entrepreneur. Francis Calpotura is a veteran community organizer and founder of TIGRA, or Transnational Institute for Grassroots Research and Action, which is leading the program.

“As far as we know, we are the pioneers of the model,” Richard says. “It really is new and innovative. Some used to conceive of our work as ‘fair trade’ for remittances, but it is not accurate though not dissimilar.”

Fair Trade is the social movement that takes a market-based approach to helping producers in poor countries.

In the case of Remit4Change, Richard says, the goal is not just to encourage philanthropy. “We’re also trying to change the marketplace in terms of bringing corporate responsibility as a factor in the way consumers choose their companies.”

The Remit4Change concept is fairly straightforward.

As part of the program, you get to choose from participating money transfer organizations which have agreed to donate a set amount per transaction. You also get to choose the community program or organization the money transfer organization’s contribution should support.

TIGRA first tested the program in Latin America where it has helped groups such as the Salvadoran Association of Financial Education, which works on development issues in underprivileged communities in El Salvador.

On the donor side, Remit4Change has partnerships with such financial institutions as the Community Financial Resources and Nexxo Financial.

Nine months after it began, Remit4Change has signed up 3,000 participating remitters, mostly from Mexico and El Salvador. It’s a small number, but the potential is clear.

“We’re really attracting a segment of the Latin American market,” Richard says. But he added, “Like anything new, it needs to really move and attract people toward the idea.”

Remit4Change is set to launch later this year in the Philippines where, based on the group’s estimates, overseas Filipinos made roughly 75 million money transfer transactions from more than 175 countries in 2010. Roughly half were from the United States.

The program has been supported by P-Noy’s government. One partner, the Development Bank of the Philippines, has committed to contribute 10 pesos for every remittance transaction, Cavosora said.

One target beneficiary is Unlad Kabayan, a non-governmental organization which helps migrant workers use their savings to set up their own businesses, in hopes of providing an alternative to migration.

In a statement, Sec. Imelda Nicholas of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas highlighted the power of “harnessing remittances for development” as the “next frontier for development banking and finance.”

Melanie Valenciano of Unlad Kabayan said the partnership “will spur more negosyos as small as sari-sari stores to larger enterprises like virgin coconut oil production.”

These businesses “provide jobs and economic upliftment for many communities,” she also said.

And for the millions of Filipino expats, they also make sending money back home a way of helping out not just their families, but also their baryo or barangay, their probinsya, their homeland.

On Twitter @KuwentoPimentel.