Giving - Step 5: More Ways to Raise Free Money for Needy Charities

After hearing about Free Rice (http://www.freerice.com/), I started to wonder if there were other ways that I could raise free money or materials for needy charities that I hadn't heard about yet. So, I did some searching and found a group of charities that are looking for people to click on their site once a day in order to raise funds for needed supplies and services. These charities can all be reached from one web site: http://www.greatergood.com/. Through this site, you can help the following charities:

1. The Hunger Site - Every time you click the "Click Here to Give - It's Free" button for this charity, 1.1 cups of rice is donated to feed the world's hungry.
2. The Animal Rescue Site - Every time you click the "Click Here to Give - It's Free" button for this charity, 0.6 bowls of food is donated to feed an animal in a shelter.
3. The Rainforest Site - Every time you click the "Click Here to Give - It's Free" button for this charity, you help raise money to protect a portion of the rainforest.
4. The Literacy Site - Every time you click the "Click Here to Give - It's Free" button for this charity, you help raise money to give books to children who don't have any. These books are distributed through the First Book and Room to Read charities.
5. The Child Health Site - Every time you click the "Click Here to Give - It's Free" button for this charity, you help raise money to help prevent childhood diseases. These funds go to the following charities: Mercy Corps, the Prosthetics Outreach Foundation, Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation and Helen Keller International.
6. The Breast Cancer Site - Every time you click the "Click Here to Give - It's Free" button for this charity, you help raise money to pay for mammograms for low-income, inner city, and minority women. These funds go to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.
7. Ecology Fund - This site contains numerous places to click, all of which help protect our environment. Some buttons help raise funds to plant different tree varieties, some help protect different endangered territories. Make sure to click all of the buttons on their site!

Please note that only one click is counted per person per day. You can sign up for daily email reminders so that you never forget to click on these sites. Or make it part of your morning ritual: coffee, email check, charity clicks! Either way, make sure to help these charities raise much needed funds. Not only is it fast and easy, but it's FREE! So, there is no excuse to help out!

Take Care,
Kara

Giving - Step 4: GoodSearch/GoodShop

An easy and FREE way to give to a charity of your choice is through GoodSearch (www.goodsearch.com). For every internet search that you do using the GoodSearch search engine, your selected charity will get a minimum 1 cent donation to their cause. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but it is free money and it does add up as more and more people use the engine if support of your cause. For instance, if you perform, on average, 10 searches a day, you would raise $36.50 for your designated charity over the course of a year. If 100 people did that, it would raise $3,650! All for doing something you normally do anyway. You can make this as painless as possible by selecting GoodSearch as your default search engine in your IE, Firefox, or Mac Toolbar - visit http://www.goodsearch.com/Toolbars.aspx for instructions on how to set this up.

If you don't already know of a charity that you can support through GoodSearch, you can search their database of participating charities at http://www.goodsearch.com/CharityList.aspx. For example, both the Clinton Global Initiative and Oprah's Angel Network are registered charities; you also may find your local schools, churches, preschools, day care centers, etc. in the list. You can even find charities based on different categories, like environment, poverty, children, women, and politics. Find something that captures your heart and start raising some extra cash for them.

Once you pick a charity, you can raise additional funds for them through GoodShop, GoodSearch's web mall. All you need to do is click on the web store that you want to visit and a portion of your purchases is donated to your selected cause. If you do a major portion of your shopping online, this could raise some serious FREE cash for your charity.

So, check out the GoodSearch site for all of the details on using its fundraising services. Also, tell your friends and family about it - it's an easy way to help a charity in need while sitting at home doing your work on the computer!

Take Care,
Kara

Giving - Step 3: Join the ONE Campaign

You've probably already heard about the ONE campaign - I know that I had. But I never really understood exactly what it was about, so I wandered over to the web site to check them out.

The ONE campaign (www.one.org) was started a few years ago by Bono, the lead singer of U2, to band people together in the fight on the apedemics of AIDS and world poverty. On the site, there are 2 actions you can take right away to help their cause:

1. Sign the ONE declaration at http://one.org/declare/index.html, indicating your agreement with the goals of the ONE campaign. To date, almost 2.5 million people have already signed.

2. In just 7 days from today, the US Senate will be voting on the 2009 budget, which has an entry to remove billions of dollars earmarked for the fight on world poverty. Sign ONE's petition against eliminating this funding at http://www.one.org/2009budget. I did. Here is the note that I added to my electronic signature:
"Of all the things that we can do with our money - all the programs we could fund, all the issues we could help fight - this is one of the most important crises that we, as one of the most powerful countries in the world, can easily do something about. Otherwise, we will continue to confirm what the rest of the world thinks of us - that we are a greedy and selfish people."

Other ways that you can take action are listed at http://www.one.org/takeaction/.

You can even support ONE's efforts and get some eco-friendly water bottles all in one shot. The ONE site sells Nalgene 32 oz water bottles with the ONE logo for $12 each (they normally sell for $9-$10 on Amazon, so at least a couple of dollars is going to the ONE cause for each bottle purchased). The ONE site also sells white wristbands and a variety of apparel, the proceeds of which also support is operations and projects.

Visit the ONE site and find another outlet for helping the world's poor get the help that they need!

Take Care,
Kara

Giving - Step 2: Help End World Hunger 20 Grains of Rice at a Time!

For all of my good intentions for making the world a better place, I still have some bad habits. Like reading People magazine (yes, I even have a subscription). In my defense, People is the least raggy, trashy magazine of all the rags at the checkout line. One regular column that they have in each magazine is "Heroes Among Us". This week, the featured person is John Breen, the founder of the site Free Rice (http://www.freerice.com/). Breen is a father of son who is preparing for the SATs. Going above the call of duty, he created a program for his son to use to practice vocabulary words in preparation for the test. He then took it one step further, launching the Free Rice web site, which pairs his vocabulary testing program with corporate advertising. So, where does the free rice come in? For every vocabulary word that you correctly match to its synonym (out of 4 choices), 20 grains of rice is donated to the U.N. World Food Program; the rice is purchased from the proceeds of the corporate advertising. I just played for 20 minutes and was able to get 2,000 grains of rice donated - and I found out that I know the meaning of more words that I thought I did. And this program is designed for all ability levels - ESL speakers, middle & high school students, college students, job interviewees, etc. To date, 21.5 billion grains of rice have been donated, which equates to feeding about 1 million people for a day. Not too bad for a web site that launched only 5 months ago!

So, whenever you get a few extra minutes on your hands, go over to Free Rice and brush up on some vocabulary. Not only will you help a needy cause, but you'll even get a little smarter!

Take Care,
Kara