Change the World in your Spare Time: Donate to Charity at No Cost with a Click of Your Mouse
What to Do When You Can't Give Any More
So many people are suffering at any time, all around the world, and most of us have generous hearts. We donate what money we can, we pray for others, and we volunteer our time teaching, working at a food bank, or at the library, or some other way, and then another disaster comes along, and we feel that we just have nothing left to give. Fortunately, there is a solution for this problem, and I promise you that you can change the world for the better in half an hour a day--and mostly in the time you're waiting for someone to get out of the bathroom, or during a television commercial, or waiting on hold on the telephone. Most of the sites here take less than ten seconds to load and click the button--then it's off to the next site. I personally tested this by clicking on every site. Including playing the trivia games, my time was 20 minutes.
Now, by sitting in the comfort of your own home, using the same computer you're using to read this page, or even from your smart phone, you can make a difference in the world, little by little, day by day. And I've made it easy for you to do this because all the links are right here, and all you have to do is click the links. And each time you click on a link, you will be making a donation to a charity, and it won't cost you anything at all. So if you can manage the effort to surf the web, you can, over the course of a year, save thousands of square feet of rainforest, feed people around the world, and do much more good than you can possibly imagine!
I have tested each link here and have verified for myself that it is free of malware or other things that can harm your computer. That having been said, the usual precautions apply.
Solar Ovens in Haiti
So Many Charities, So Little Time
The news is full of not just earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters, but each day we are bombarded with images of starvation, deforestation, people being exploited and abused, and people all over the world starving, even in our own neighbourhoods. But starting in the 1990s, a number of charitable organizations teamed up with advertisers and with the public-private partnership, the idea of the click-to-donate site was born. These click-to-donate sites exist all over the world wide web, and support all kinds of causes: improving the environment, lifting people out of poverty, disaster relief, feeding the starving, protecting animals, and many, many more causes. The list grows every day, and the effort involved--I've timed it--to support every one of these causes takes less than thirty minutes a day. So I encourage you to keep reading, and see just what kinds of causes you can support with a few clicks!
Please note: most of these sites allow you one click, per cause, per day. Please do not abuse these sites or they will not be able to continue to provide help to ease the sufferings of others.
Care2
- Care2 - largest online community for healthy and green living, human rights and animal welfare.
Largest online community empowering people to lead a healthy and green lifestyle while taking action on important causes such as human rights, animal welfare and global warming.
Care2 - One site, many causes
Care is one of the handiest sites to start your click-to-donate campaign. You can join it (they have email opt-outs) and it will track your donations, and give a boost to your desired charity. In addition, you can take actions on their site such as signing petitions, taking a daily action, making a comment on an article, or posting in the groups, and earn butterfly points, which can then be redeemed for giving to a charity of your choice.
As of this writing, Care2 has donations available to feed children, support efforts to save or reclaim rainforest, buy habitat to support big cats, provide free dental care, feed abandoned pets, stop seal slaughter, reclaim marine wetlands, feed orphaned primates, offset climate change, and protect wolves. You are not obligated to click on all these causes; you can choose only the ones that interest you. However, they are all free to click and it takes only seconds.
The Hunger Site
- The Hunger Site
The Hunger Site was founded to focus the power of the Internet on a specific humanitarian need: the eradication of world hunger. Since its launch in June 1999, the site has established itself as a leader in online activism, helping to feed the world.
The Hunger Site
The Hunger Site has been around for over ten years, and currently supports not only feeding people in need, but donates mammograms, child health services, books to promote literacy, provide meals to U.S. veterans, preserve rainforest land, and feeds shelter pets. You can donate even more if you shop their stores--although it's not the most effective means of donating, if you're in the market for something, it doesn't hurt to stop by their stores and see if they have something that will meet your needs.
The Ripple Effect
- Ripple
Ripple - Saving the world one click at a time. Ripple lets you raise money for charity by viewing an ad a day, or running a web search powered by Google.
Ripple
Ripple has four causes available: one click will provide six days' access to clean water, another click will provide food, another click will give access to education for two days, and another will finance a $100.00 loan for one day. In case you haven't heard of microfinance, this is lending small amounts of money (sometimes as little as ten dollars) to help people start businesses. The payback rate on microfinance loans is over 90%, and even one business can help lift an entire village out of poverty. Ripple supports, among its other causes, Oxfam and Grameen, both well-established and reputable organizations.
Providing Access to Food and Clean Water
Supply Food and Water
- Asociacion Civil Por Los Chicos - Donaciones Gratuitas
This site donates food to children in Argentina. Click on "Dona Comida Gratis." - Chintai
A real-estate company in Japan, Chintai will donate four cups of food for every fifty clicks. Unfortunately I don't speak Japanese, so if anyone wants to provide me with a translation I'll be grateful. - FreePoverty - Knowing Helps
Donate cups of clean drinking water by playing a geography game. You can play the game multiple times in the same day, and so you can donate hundreds of cups of water. The game keeps track of all the water you have donated. - Hunger Fighters
One click-to-donate banner. - Hungry Children, Hungry Child, Help a Child, Feed a Child
Helps selected children with specific needs. - Okruszek - Oglnopolska akcja charytatywna
Provides food and other basic necessities to the elderly in Poland. (Click the loaf of bread.) - Pajacyk
Clicking the green button on the puppet's stomach will help feed hungry school children in Poland.
Food and Clean Water
It should be no surprise to anyone that people throughout the world are going hungry. What is even worse than worldwide hunger is that many people are going without access to clean water. With a few clicks, you can easily donate substantial amounts of food and water to various places around the world, from the USA to Africa to Europe to Asia. On some sites, a single click can equal as much as a cup of food. With food prices steadily going up around the world, and crop shortages predicted, clicking to provide food and water, basic necessities to us all, is a kind of giving that makes real sense, even when we are financially strapped.
The shortage of clean drinking water is another acute problem in many places around the world. Some places just do not have the infrastructure to support clean drinking water; other places have had their formerly clean sources of drinking water poisoned by toxic runoff, pollution, or other environmental problems or disasters; and still other areas are experiencing unusual droughts which are drying up their formerly reliable sources of clean water. In any case, your donation of clean water with your clicks will not only help keep people from dehydration and the diseases that come with it, but the clean water can also be used for medical purposes.
What about Freerice?
Freerice is a very popular game, and has a lot of devoted adherents, but the Freerice site is highly inefficient if your online spare time is limited. If you play freerice as your major source of free online donations, you should know that it takes almost 500 correct answers to donate a single cup of rice. When compared with the other sites listed here, where one click donates a cup or more of food, in my opinion freerice is great to play if you have a lot of spare time on your hands, but you will do a lot more good with clicks on the other sites. So use freerice if you want, but consider these other sites first, and play freerice in whatever time you have left over.
Help the World's Health
A Healthier World
- Charities in Japan
Cosmo Oil company supports about a dozen projects each year. - Children's Health In Japan
Supports immunizations or food. - Craig Research Labs
Your click supports cancer research. - Help provide Free Mammograms to Women in Brazil
Click the button on the left side of the page, under the graphic, where it says "Campanha da Mamografia DIGITAL Gratuita." - Polskie Serce
Help fund cardiac surgery in Poland. - Tarahumara Children's Hospital Fund
Tarahumara Children's Hospital Fund is a non profit organization that raises money to support vital services to the Tarahumara Indians in Creel, Chihuahua, Mexico. A click gives one minute of medical care. - Terminally Ill Children in Poland
This is the Polish equivalent of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, providing support to terminally ill children in Poland. - YouthNoise Play City : Just 1 Click
One of the few sites you can click more than once per day. The supported charity changes each month, and users can vote on next month's charity.
Health Care Around the World
It's not just in poor countries that people from all walks of life need help with their health care. Around the world each day people are suffering from easily treatable health problems, but with both government budgets and non-profit budgets, not to mention the family budgets, stretched so thin these days, it becomes difficult to help ensure that each person gets the health care they need. With your clicks to these charities, you can provide funds for research, for immunizations, help pay for operations, provide medicines, provide preventive care, and generally ensure that people around the world, both near and far, will have the medical care they need, in order to have the opportunity to provide for their families and contribute to society.
Preserve the Environment!
Click thumbnail to view full-sizeThe Environment
- Big Cat Rescue
Big Cat Rescue's Lions, Tigers and Exotic Cats. Each click provides approximately 5 oz. of food. - Click for the Forest
Preserve old-growth forests in Sweden by helping this organization buy them and keep them free from development or commercial use. - Convert your Click into Solar Energy
Each click generates the value of 1 kW of solar energy donated to poor countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. - Free Charity Word Game | Word Puzzle to Donate to Charity
Play word game puzzles to donate to your favorite charity. Donate water, food, education, or to save the rainforests. - Provide Cleanup of Waste
Donations go to a number of agencies around the world involved with cleaning toxic waste, or recycling. - Restore Niagran Forest
Restore the Niagran ecosystem. - die Waldseite: click to help!
Helps preserve forests around the world. Each click is worth up to 6.6 cents.
Planet Earth
There is so much going on with the environment it is difficult to know where to begin. Not only are the world's rainforests disappearing, but with increasing pollution, the food supply and water supply are threatened all up and down the food chain. Add to those problems that increasing space taken up by people is encroaching on formerly wild areas and disrupting wildlife habitats, and it is clear to see that the balance of nature is being upset, our oceans are becoming less hospitable to their previously established environments, and there is just a whole lot to do!
Fortunately, you can, just through your clicks, begin to help preserve wildlife habitat around the world, clean the oceans, replant or preserve forests, clean up pollution or support recycling efforts, support solar energy in poor countries which don't have the infrastructure to build or maintain an electrical grid, save endangered species, and much more. Choose one or more causes to support, and start clicking to change the world.
The Ecology Fund
One Site, Four Causes
The Ecology fund has several ways you can donate. First, you can click on the buttons. After you click each button, you will see ads--if you click on the ads, you will double that sponsor's donation to that cause. Note: This is not "click fraud" because these sites are not advertising through Google. The advertisers have agreed to this arrangement. You can also sign up for a free email account, which will make an additional contribution--even if you use it only for signing up for sites where you are likely to get spammed! And if you register, you get an additional donation.
Feed Pets in Need
- Free Kibble for Cats
Answer one trivia question to help feed cats in shelters. Donate 10 pieces of food a day, regardless of correctness. - Free Kibble
Attempt one trivia question to help feed shelter dogs. Each answer donates 10 pieces of food a day, and it doesn't even matter if you're right or not.
Pets
With so many families in such desperate financial trouble, it is no shock that some families have had to give up their beloved family pets because they can no longer afford to feed or care for them. You can help shelters to support these pets until they find new homes and families to love them, by clicking to donate food for them. The two trivia games listed here are fun and easy. Best of all, you donate whether your answers are right or wrong, and you will learn something fun!
Helping Entrepreneurship
- SolvePoverty - Clicking to Give
Solve Poverty helps young people in South and East Asia start their own businesses.
Helping Young People out of Poverty
Solve poverty gives start-up seed money and other entrepreneurial and business assistance to young people in South and East Asia who want to start their own businesses. As their businesses grow, they can employ more local people and help raise entire neighbourhoods out of poverty.
One Website to Rule Them All
The Nonprofits maintains a list of many click-to-donate sites. Although it's been recently updated, the links contain many duplications and sometimes the sites do go down. I have weeded out their links to remove duplicates and added a few.
Bing Rewards
Bing rewards gives you credit just for signing up and using their search engine. Sure, you can use it for yourself, but there are donations to charities on the site, or you can collect Amazon gift cards and give them to your favorite charity for supplies. A half-point per search, up to 30 searches a day, as well as up to 10 more points on your mobile device, plus one or more extra points a day for clicking on a link. You can give several dollars a month to the Boys and Girls Club or other charities, without paying money out of your pocket.
Everyone Should Live Decently
How this Hub is Helping
Profiting off the misfortune of others is wrong. All earnings from this hub - large or small - will be donated to the earthquake victims in Haiti. If this hub continues to earn after donations are no longer accepted for earthquake relief, continued earnings will be donated to other legitimate charities supporting sustainable opportunity in Haiti in perpetuity.
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This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
© 2010 classicalgeek