Recession-Friendly Ways to Help Others...for free...online

As a grant writer in the nonprofit industry, I am always hunting down new ways to help out organizations that are important to me, especially now in the current economy. Here are three handpicked ways to help nonprofits (and those that they serve) that are totally free.

1. Click
How many times do you click (or tap) your mouse every day? 100? 1,000? Why not add a couple of more clicks to your daily routine (great pointer finger exercise!) by visiting the six pages created by CharityUSA.com, which include The Animal Rescue Site (use this link to get to the others), The Hunger Site, The Breast Cancer Site, The Child Health Site, The Literacy Site, and The Rainforest Site. Stop by one or all of these sites and click once on the big button each day. When you click, a few ads are shown (no popups or spyware). The sponsors behind those ads made a contribution because you’ve seen those ads, which then goes directly to the site’s charity partners. You can even get a daily email to help you remember to click. Pretty cool, huh?

2. Buy
Hold it! I’m not trying to sneak in a plea for you to whip out your credit card and plunk down $100 to make a difference. If you’re planning to make a purchase on Amazon.com anyway, get there by using this link, which takes your to ClickJar. There you’ll be able to choose which nonprofit will get up to 4% of your purchase (current options are UNICEF, the American Red Cross, Amnesty International, Rainforest Action Network, and Habitat for Humanity).

3. Volunteer Online
This is a great opportunity to make a difference if you’re on the computer a lot already! I've been volunteering online with an organization called I Could Be since March 2008. It is an anonymous, online mentoring system where you help underserved students follow a curriculum that helps them explore their options for college and careers. You are selected by the students to be a mentor for a year based on their interests matching your career field or expertise (i.e. students who are interested in Education might be mentored by a teacher who would answer their questions about what their day is like, etc). The organization asks for about an hour of your time each week – for me, this is usually spent in 20 minute increments a couple of times each week going over my mentee’s homework or answering questions about what I do.

I continue to use all of these sites and have never had any issues, so please check them out!