When the clock strikes midnight on the East Coast, more than $5 million in prize money will be divided among 200 charities in the Chase Community Giving program, a Facebook-based competition designed to spur interest in non-profit corporations doing good in their local communities. As with the competition’s first installment earlier this year, this second contest boasts a strong Chabad-Lubavitch presence, with 14 different branches of the Friendship Circle and several other organizations angling to be among the top vote-getters.

After the votes are tallied at midnight, JPMorgan Chase will give the winning charity $250,000. Each of four runners-up will receive $100,000, and the next 195 will each get $20,000. Another $500,000 will be distributed by an independent board judging charities on the merits of their programs.

Last year, the founding chapter of the Friendship Circle – which pairs teenage volunteers with children with special needs – came in fourth place and won $100,000 for its programs in West Bloomfield, Mich. Rabbi Bentzion Groner, director of International Office of Friendship Circle in Brooklyn, N.Y., says that chapter directors all over the country are harnessing the experience to put on another good showing this time around.

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At a Friendship Circle conference in Norwalk, Conn., in June, a social-media presentation offered tips on how to maximize such sites as Facebook and Twitter.

“We realize from their past experience that the best way to get votes is to get people to get their friends to vote,” says Groner. “When friends get other friends to vote, that’s when it works.”

Many of the messages shared between friends on Facebook and among Twitter followers, not to mention through e-mail, take recipients to a central webpage listing all of the Friendship Circles taking part in the competition. According to the rules, Facebook users can vote for an organization just once, but can vote up to 20 times.

Groner stresses that the Friendship Circle chapters, all of whom are currently in the top 200, don’t see themselves competing for the same dollars.

“From our point of view, they’re not really competing; we’re just telling people to vote for all of them,” he explains. “When people vote, they know they’re making a difference in 14 different communities.

“It’s not just the award,” he adds. “It’s about letting people know what Friendship Circle is, and the gifts that children with special needs give to us.”

The Friendship Circle in Albany, N.Y., entered the contest two weeks after it started. As of Monday morning, it’s ranked 53rd among all competing charities.

“We worked our brains off,” says executive director Liba Andrusier, who ran parties for laptop-bearing teen volunteers so that they could enjoy an evening of food, fun and online networking.

“There were so many people on Facebook who had never heard of us before,” says Andrusier, “but now they have.”

Rabbi Michy Rav-Noy, director of the Friendship Circle in Los Angeles, sent out an email asking people to vote for all of his sister-organizations.

“Every Friendship Circle is making an effort to help all the others,” he says. “That’s the spirit of Friendship Circle; that’s the way it should be.”

In California, participating Friendship Circle organizations include the Bay Area Friendship Circle, Friendship Circle of Conejo Valley, Friendship Circle of Los Angeles, Friendship Circle of San Diego, Friendship Circle of San Francisco, and Friendship Circle of South Bay, currently ranked 11th. Florida-based Friendship Circles competing serve Kendall/Pinecrest, and North Broward and South Palm Beach. Other chapters in the contest are the Stuart I. Raskas Friendship Circle of Illinois; Friendship Circle of Montgomery County, Md.; Capital Region Friendship Circle of Albany, N.Y.; Friendship Circle of Philadelphia Region North; Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh, Pa.; and Friendship Circle of Seattle, Wash.

In addition to the Friendship Circle contingent, other Chabad-Lubavitch organizations competing include iVolunteer, which provides companionship and assistance to Holocaust survivors in New York City; Maimonides Hebrew Day School in Albany; the Chai Preschool in Foster City, Calif.; the Jewish Academy of Suffolk County, the only Jewish day school in that part of New York’s Long Island; and the Jewish Relief Agency, a Philadelphia-based program affiliated with the Lubavitch House that distributes food to the city’s poor.

Rabbi Yosef Marcus, director of the North Peninsula Chabad in Foster City, says he entered the Chai Preschool in the contest after getting e-mails from other organizations asking for votes.

“It looked do-able,” he says, “and we managed to get into the top 200, where we hope to stay.”

Marcus wants to use the prize money to augment its scholarship fund.

“That’s always a big need, especially in these hard economic times,” he says. “By voting, you might make the biggest donation ever without spending a penny.”