How to support charities without donating

Image by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

Continuing upon the previous post where I argue that instead of donating money to content creators – bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters and the like, you can make a bigger positive impact by donating to a charity which will use that money on programs that independent evaluators have found to be effective and make an impact.

To repeat again, check out the charity evaluators GiveWell, The Life You Can Save or CharityWatch to see what the most effective charities are today and what could you accomplish by donating even a tiny amount.

But not everyone can afford to donate money all the time – most of us have been in a bad financial situation, so donating is not always an option.

Let's look at a few other things you can do to help.

Use AmazonSmile

If you have a habit of buying stuff on Amazon, I would strongly encourage you to use AmazonSmile instead. AmazonSmile is the exact same Amazon except when you buy things at AmazonSmile, Amazon will donate 0.5% of the purchase price to the charity you select at no additional cost to you. Amazon takes care of this donation from their profit, so the prices and delivery terms and the like are identical on AmazonSmile and 'regular' Amazon.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

You simply have to visit smile.amazon.com instead of www.amazon.com. And once you start using AmazonSmile and accidentally go to 'regular' Amazon, Amazon will remind you to go to AmazonSmile.

It's extremely easy to start doing this. No new account is needed. No need to register your payment method again. Everything is the same. Simply visit AmazonSmile, pick your charity – there are over one million charities available there - and start shopping. When you buy an eligible product, Amazon will donate a percentage to charity. Simple.

Create a fundraiser on Facebook

You can go to facebook.com/fundraisers to create a fundraiser. Fundraiser lets your friends know which causes you to care about and enables them to donate to your charity of choice. Facebook will process the donation without any fees. What is cool is that Facebook

The non-Profits will receive payments every two weeks.

If you are an admin of a popular Facebook page, you can fundraise from the page as well, which might be a better idea since you'll be able to reach more people than from your personal profile. When making a post, you have the option „Support Nonprofit“. Simply click on it, select the non-profit of your choice and make a post. Your audience will see the „Donate“ option.

Create a fundraiser on JustGiving

Similar to a fundraiser on Facebook, you can create one on JustGiving. For example, your birthday is coming up. You go to JustGiving and create a fundraiser. Then you simply share your fundraiser with your friends and tell them that instead of gifts you would like them to donate money to your charity of choice thought JustGiving. Simple. An interesting thing about JustGiving is that you and your friends can donate with American Express Membership Rewards points.

Use Give as you live

Give as you live is an interesting concept. Similar to AmazonSmile, you can raise money for charity simply by shopping online.

They get commission money from an online shop by sending you to them. Then from that money, they give 50% to your charity of choice and keep the rest for their operating costs. So, you raise money at no additional cost to you.

In order to help you remember to use their service and to ensure your charity of choice gets the money, they have a browser extension – the Donation Reminder. Pictured above, this extension integrates nicely with the search results and enhances them with info which shops support the Give as you live efforts. Here is the extension for Edge, Chrome and Firefox.

Ask your audience to donate money

If you're a content creator yourself – blogger, YouTuber, podcaster or Instagrammer – chances are you have quite a few followers, especially if you count all platforms you might be active on.

What I'm asking you is to consider no longer taking donations to support your work as a YouTuber, podcaster or travel blogger and directing your audience to search for an effective charity and donate to it the money they were going to donate to you.

Alternatively, you could donate the money you get from your YouTube channel, Patreon or what have you. But this post is about helping without donating directly Not only that, but I don't think that is very effective in spreading awareness about effective charities so I would urge you to think about encouraging your audience to give directly to the charity instead.

I support the Against Malaria Foundation. They protect people from malaria by providing long-lasting insecticide-treated nets. There is strong evidence about cost-effectiveness. Check out their rating on GiveWell.

That is the philosophy of this page. I will never accept donations for my own work. Instead, I urge anyone visiting this page to donate that extra money to various charities. Charities I recommend at the moment are Oxfam and Against Malaria Foundation and I would recommend donating to them.

Share the efforts on social media

This one is super easy to do. Like or follow charities and charity evaluators on social media and share their content, preferably after making sure that the post makes sense and is relevant to your friends and followers – after all you do not wish to alienate people from giving.

Also, if you donated money to charity – SHARE that information with your friends and followers. It is imperative for people to see that donating to charity is a normal human activity and not something left to the world's richest but it can and should be done by ordinary people. Just please don't make 'preachy' or self-serving posts. Simply tell that you donated and that even small amounts help.

Conclusion

In this post, we have taken a look at how can you help to make the world a better place by supporting charities without donating any money directly. As we have seen, you can generate money for charities by buying things through online shops or using services which donate a percentage of their profits or by using your voice to inspire your friends and family to donate.

Don't forget. Check out the charity evaluators GiveWell, The Life You Can Save or CharityWatch to see what the most effective charities are today.