Help Make the World a Better Place Through a Single Click, Tweet, or Share

One of the worst feelings in the world is seeing a tragedy and feeling powerless to do anything about it. Whenever we watch TV, go online, listen to the radio, or read a newspaper, the sad stories are in no short supply. Being met with these accounts of human and animal suffering leaves us wanting to do something, but the opportunities aren't always there. Even when they are, in these tough economic times, many of us can't make the kinds of charitable donations we'd like to. 

Okay, that first paragraph was pretty depressing. The good news is that the rest of this article isn't going to stay on that tone. The even better news is that we have several resources to share with you when it comes to helping the needy. There are opportunities throughout the internet to help people and animals in need, and several of them require absolutely no expenditure on your part. In fact, many of them actually will save you money. Whether it be by way of clicking a link, giving a share on Facebook, sending out a Tweet, or using special coupons at your favorite stores, you can make a difference for the better. 

Today, we're going to tell you about some charity websites, browser extensions, online games, and other resources and organizations that are taking a proactive stance against many of the biggest problems our society faces. All of them offer multiple ways for anyone who is interested to help the cause of their choice and in many cases, have some fun while doing it.

Free Rice

Freerice (opens in a new window) is a website that provides a fun and educational way for users to fight hunger. If you like trivia, you'll love this site. When you arrive at the home page, you'll see a list of trivia categories. They include English (vocabulary & grammar), Chemistry (basic chemical symbols and advanced), Geography (national capitals, national flags, identifying countries on maps, identifying world landmark locations), SAT questions, Human Anatomy, Foreign Languages (Latin, Spanish, French, Italian and German), Math (multiplication tables and basic arithmetic), Art, Quotations, Literature, and World Hunger.

This organization started in 2007 and has been helping the hungry ever since. Freerice partners with the United Nations World Food Programme, which is the donation that actually supplies the rice. It's seen many changes and updates over the years, with a new and improved version set to come out in 2018. However, the present version is excellent in its own right and we highly encourage you to visit it and give it a try. 

Here's how it works. Once you select a category, you'll be presented with a question and 4 answer options. If you select the correct answer, 10 grains of rice are donated. There's no limit to the amount of questions you can answer, so you can participate for as long or as briefly as you feel. As can be seen above, instructions are included in the sidebar to the right of where the questions are asked. In many categories, the questions start out easy but become progressively more difficult as you go along. This is all part of the fun though; in addition to doing a good deed, you also get to learn something new every time you play.

Users have the option of playing anonymously or by way of creating an account. You can also set up teams to which multiple users can contribute. The top performing individuals and teams are listed on the site's homepage, allowing for some friendly competition. Even if you're not trying to rank in the top 5, creating an account allows you to track your performance so that you can see how much rice your donations have added up to over the course of time. If you use the site anonymously, you can still see how much you've managed to contribute throughout your session. The only difference is that your data won't be saved, so in order to know how much your donations have added up to over multiple visits, you'll need to remember to write your statistics down before exiting the site.

Freerice began as an English-only site, but now has versions in Spanish, French, Italian, and Korean as well. In every month since its inception, Freerice has managed to generate over a million grains of donated rice. As the overseeing organization is the United Nations, the donations you generate are dispersed globally to the areas in which they are needed most. It has been very successful in its efforts over the years. After one viral marketing campaign run to build user interest, enough rice was donated to provide a full day's worth of food to over 50,000 people.¹

While some technical glitches occur from time to time, they are very minor and do not significantly affect the overall user experience. Still, these bugs are being ironed out and by the time Version 3.0 is launched next year, they'll be eliminated completely. While the key goal of this site is to provide food to the hungry, it works with the UN World Food Programme to provide free education in areas where it otherwise would not be available. 

GoodShop

GoodShop is a charitable organization that has a few different splinter services, but we'll get to those in just a moment. Its flagship service, as it has been for more than a decade, is providing an online database of coupons from over 30,000 different retailers. When these coupons are used, a percentage of the sale goes toward a member charity of the consumer's choosing. Over 113,000 charities are registered as members, so it's likely that the cause you most want to help will be an option. If the charity you want to donate to isn't listed, it can be added in. If you happen to be the owner of a non-profit organization, you can easily register your charity. If you aren't the owner, you can contact whoever is in charge and request that they join up. Signing up is 100% free and comes with no financial obligations. Many big and small retailers are members. Best Buy, Staples, Amazon, Walmart, Pizza Hut, Macy's, Kohl's, and Auto Zone are just a few of the companies who participate in this great program.

It's free to register as a user with GoodShop and when you do this, you'll have access to their coupons and can designate what charity you want your purchases to go toward. You're free to change charities at any time. If there's more than one that you'd like to support, encourage a friend or family member to sign up and select whatever other organization it is that you'd like to support. Several charities are registered with GoodShop, from ones as large as the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to ones as small as local animal shelters. 

Gumdrop

Formerly known as GoodShop Fetch, Gumdrop is one of the splinter services we referred to earlier. It's a GoodShop browser extension that can be used both on PCs and on mobile devices. When enabled, Gumdrop will automatically find the best discounts possible for your order if it's placed with a member business. When you get ready to make a purchase, you'll see a dialog box pop up that says, "Deals Found!" The dialog box will then tell you how many discounts are available and what the proceeds going to your chosen charity will amount to. We've included a video below to show you how Gumdrop works.

Since its inception, Gumdrop has donated over $11 million to charities and has saved consumers over $100 million. It has appeared on and been endorsed by Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, ABC News, and the Today Show.

GoodSearch

GoodSearch is another arm of GoodShop. GoodSearch is a search engine that donates 1 penny to the charity of your choosing for every search you perform. All you have to do is log in, create an account, and pick one of the available charities. If you don't see the one you want listed, you can contact them, inform them of GoodSearch, and have them sign up. GoodSearch tracks your donations and lets you know how much you've donated over time. It's important that you use this service carefully though. If excessive, automated, or abusive searches are performed, it can lead to a charity being taken out of the GoodSearch registry.

Freekibble Network

The Freekibble Network includes four main websites, which are Freekibble, FreekibbleKat, FreekibbleLitter, and FreekibbleCares. Its story began in 2008, when the entire project was started based on the visions of a particularly caring 11-year-old girl by the name of Mimi Ausland. She summed up her philosophy by saying, "Every dog and cat deserves a decent home."2

Today, (and pictured to the left) she's a 20-year-old woman who remains more dedicated than doing everything within her power to ensure that animal shelters are well supplied, to fight animal abuse, and to alleviate animal suffering in all its forms. To date, the Freekibble Network has donated over 18 million meals to animals in need, both directly to shelters and through food banks. There's a lot you can do to join the fight and as we said before, there are 4 websites in the network through which you can do this.

Freekibble and FreekibbleKat

Freekibble (opens in a new window) and FreekibbleKat (opens in a new window) are two click-to-give charity sites that provide meals to dog shelters and cat shelters, respectively. Each day, users can visit both sites to answer a multiple choice trivia question. What's great is that it doesn't matter if you choose the correct answer; any answer you pick will result in an additional cup of food being provided to a shelter in need. After a trivia question is answered, you'll be told whether or not you were correct. On most days, you'll also be linked to an interesting story, video, or informational source related to the question that you answered. You can do this once daily without spending so much as a single penny. However, if you do have the money to spare and are passionate about animals, you can join the Freekibble Plus program. For a very small fee, you can join up and the your daily donations will be doubled.

FreekibbleLitter

FreekibbleLitter (opens in a new window), as its name would imply, is based around providing cat litter to animal shelters. Rather than answering a question, you'll be greeted by Lulu the cat, who is FreekibbleLitter's official mascot. Click on the conversation bubble in which she says, "Click me to donate kat litter," and you'll succesfully donate Fresh Step (their official sponsor) cat littler to a shelter in need. Lulu will then jump into her box, scratch around, and meow in thanks. 

FreekibbleCares

FreekibbleCares (opens in a new window) is a site that features specific animal-related causes that normally change on a monthly basis. You can click on any one of them to learn the story of the animal, event, or institution involved. Once you do this, you'll have the opportunity to make a donation, 100% of which goes toward helping the cause you've just read about. You can also share these stories on Facebook or through email with your fellow animal-loving friends and family members. These donations are made through The Animal Rescue Site, which is part of the Greater Good network of charities. 

Another joint venture they've engaged in with The Animal Rescue site is the Free Kibble Flights to Freedom. These are truly amazing undertakings which consist of rescuing hundreds of animals from overpopulated shelters and flying them to special shelters in the Seattle area. When they arrive, they're bathed, cleaned, and socialized by volunteers and nearly all of them are adopted within 2-3 days! Here's a video that describes these admirable deeds in more detail.

Greater Good

As we've already mentioned, Greater Good is a charity network that bands several other charities together to build access and awareness. Each of these charities is dedicated to a specific and very worthy cause. One way in which they provide a way for the public to help is through providing a click-to-give donation website on which 10 of their charities are featured. Greater Good (opens in a new window), The Hunger Site (opens in a new window), The Breast Cancer Site (opens in a new window), The Animal Rescue Site (opens in a new window), The Veterans Site (opens in a new window), The Autism Site (opens in a new window), The Alzheimer's Site (opens in a new window), The Diabetes Site (opens in a new window), The Literacy Site (opens in a new window), and The Rainforest Site (opens in a new window) are all featured and you can easliy navigate among them, as can be seen below.

In addition to their click to give feature, all of the charities on this page have additional components as well. Many of them feature stories about individuals struggling with relevant issues, news about successful events and aid efforts, general blog posts, and informative articles. They all feature an additional "Shop to Give More" function, through which you can purchase a wide variety of items. A percentage of the proceeds from these purchases go toward helping the very people, animals, and events that these charity websites feature. Another feature which all of these sites share are links to multiple petitions that are circulated in the interest of helping people and animals as well as protecting the environment.

Many of the sites within the Greater Good network have unique features of their own. The Hunger Site provides a vehicle for users to donate to Operatoin Sandwich (opens in a new window), a charity that aids food banks in making and preparing sandwiches which are given to needy families and to working individuals who are struggling to make ends meet. The Animal Rescue Site features a monthly shelter challenge. This is an event where users can vote for the shelter of their choice. Whichever shelter receives the most votes also receives a significant bundle of donations at the end of the month. An additional free donation method offered by The Animal Rescue Site comes in the form of its Pet 2 Give App. Users can download this app to their phones and each day, they'll have the opportunity to view a different picture of a shelter animal. By petting the animal in the picture, users make free a donation to the shelter the specific animal is housed in. 

Below is a video explaining how Pet 2 Give works:

Directory Sites

The Non-Profits

The Non-Profits (opens in a new window) website may look outdated, bearing  a strong resemblance to a typical late 1990s web ring/directory. However, the links it provides remain current and it connects users to a wide variety of great charities and activism groups.

CNW Central

CNW Central (opens in a new window) is a bit of an interesting site, as it features an amalgamation of broadly varying topics. It originally started out as a online strategy guide for a computer game called "Conquest of the New World", but has since branched out into many different areas. One of these areas is dedicated to helping users to find and support a long list of different online charities. Many of these charities provide free click-to-give donation options. Every charity they link to is worth giving some time and consideration.

Nice Things to Do

Nice Things to Do (opens in a new window) is a modest looking website that is run by people who truly care. Click-to-give sites are just one of the many charity types that they link to. There are also links to sites where you can make monetary donations, sign up to dedicate your time and talents for in-person projects, clothing donation organizations, and much more. 

We hope you've enjoyed this article and we also hope that you'll visit the sites we've talked about. Are there any charity websites or opportunities to help, give, or support that we haven't covered? If there's an online charity (or any other kind of charity) that's important to you, let us know! We'd be more than happy to write another article like this one and would be very willing to include your charity of choice!