3 Ways you can give to charity – Even if you're broke
The Internet is a magical place. You can find great places to eat, listen to music, and even find the cleanest “facilities” in your neighborhood. It’s also a place where you can help others, with little effort. Now I’m not saying that you shouldn’t put effort into helping those in need, but sometimes you may feel that you don’t have the money or the time. But if you’re reading this blog post right now, it means that you do have an Internet connection and I bet you use it to search for stuff and sometimes waste time playing games. Why not give a little while doing such things? The sites in this screencast – FreeRice, Ripple, and GoodSearch – give everything (or at least half) of what they make to charities.
FreeRice allows you to improve your vocabulary while donating rice “through the United Nations to help fight world hunger”. It’s pretty simple: You see a word on the screen with 4 possible definitions. Choose the correct definition and you’ve just donated 20 grains of rice to someone who needs it. Play as long as you want. The more you play, the better your vocabulary gets and the more you’re helping others.
Ripple and GoodSearch is where your day to day searches come into play. With Ripple, every time you search from the homepage, it receives a small amount of money from sponsors. Ripple donates 100% of that to charity. You get Google search results, but you do have to return to the Ripple homepage every time you do a search otherwise they won’t get anything. You can also click on a cause on the homepage, water, food, education, or money, and after watching a very brief advertisement, you’re done. No search involved. The advertiser just paid Ripple a small amount that Ripple will in turn donate. GoodSearch is similar but gives you Yahoo! search results. You can also choose your own charity that you wish to donate to. GoodSearch donates 50% of ad revenue to your charity. You can also see how much money charities have made through GoodSearch. If you shop online then you may want to also check out GoodShop which gives a percentage of your purchases, through select stores, to the charity of your choice.
Any way you slice it, it’s better to do a little something than to do nothing at all. Here’s my screencast tour of 3 sites that want to make a difference:
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