Care-2-Do-Something

Here are a few links to some easy ways to donate:

Organizations Working in Nepal:

Room to Read

Donates books to Nepali schools, creates children’s books in Nepali to encourage more students to read

Kathmandu Animal Treatment (KAT) Centre

Spays, vaccinates, and treats Kathmandu street dogs; raises awareness of pet ownership issues; the organization we adopted our Nepali puppy from

Encourage Pet Adoption

The ASPCA included the following blurb in their newsletter for the first week of July:

“Bringing a cuddly babe into your life has never been easier, or more helpful! By adding our new Adopt an ASPCA Pet application, you can post photos of real dogs and cats in the ASPCA Adoption Center to your Facebook profile, helping oodles of furry faces get major visibility. And by sending the photos as gifts to friends and family members, you’ll help spread the word even further. Not only will you seriously cuten up your profile, but every photo you show off could help a kitty or pup find that special human they’ve been waiting for.”

*FREE* Click-to-Donate Sites

The English teacher/activist in me REALLY loves this one:  A vocabulary game where, with every correct response, you donate 20 grains of rice.  Test and improve your vocabulary, get addicted to a new online game (I’m already on level 44–think you can beat me?)… and donate to a good cause.

Free Rice

I’ve been clicking at both of the below for a while–usually while I’m sitting on hold or waiting for something to load, when I’m bored anyway.

www.thehungersite.com

www.care2.com/click2donate/

What are they? How do they work?
These are sites set up with a fair lot of advertising–but the general idea behind them is that the advertisers pay the site because many people click on the site every day. And then the site takes a fair chunk of the advertising money and puts it into supporting whatever cause the site represents.

There’s lots of causes linked to from both websites; everything from fighting world hunger to spreading literacy to preserving the rainforests. You don’t have to click on them all, and nothing requires you to go to them daily–your click can only count once each day, but if you forget for a month and then go back, your click still will help whatever cause you’ve clicked on.

Of course, the general idea from the advertisers’ point of view is that people will see their products and buy them. But you don’t HAVE to do that, either. Apparently they have enough revenue; I’ve been visiting the hungersite for years, and though the company has changed hands a few times, they still exist.

I’ve looked up these sites on critical sites, too, and while the other sites grumble that these don’t do enough, they can’t argue that they’re indeed doing something. Hungersite claims to have funded 9 tons of food last year; they gave away 1.7 million dollars in funds.

Anyway, thought I’d pass along an easy way to donate to lots of causes.

Reviews & info on the hungersite.com et al, which arrive at the overall verdict that they maybe aren’t pure happy goodness–but they undeniably do provide some hefty charitable donations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hunger_Site

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/charity/hungersite.asp

http://agentgenius.com/?p=371

http://www.secstate.wa.gov/charities/search_detail_cfr.aspx?cfr_id=20823

And the most useful review I’ve found of care2.com:
http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2007/09/17/smallb1.html?b=1190001600%5E1519591&surround=etf