Tech for Luddites

I don’t know when Giving Tuesday was first introduced into our collective consciousness. I’m just glad it did. Obviously, pretty much every charitable organization has its own website where you can donate directly to them. But here are a few other alternatives you might not be aware of.

Indiegogo

Indiegogo is a crowdfunding site that has campaigns for all sorts of things, including making a difference. With this approach, you can direct your money to more specific ways to help than making a general donation to an organization. You can create your own campaigns or help fund other people’s.

Indiegogo’s Giving Tuesday Page >>

This 2013 HubSpot article lists additional groups that help nonprofits through crowdfunding.

Omaze

Omaze is one of those ideas that is so smart you can’t believe nobody every thought of it before. What they do is offer the chance to enter drawings for a variety of great experiences with your favorite celebrities and the money you pay for your entries goes to the charity of that celeb’s choice. Here are some offers on the site at the time of writing this:

• Go Backstage at The Late Late Show with James Corden, and Carpool Karaoke! Supporting: (RED)
• Join Kristen Bell for Lunch and Move-In Day, Supporting: PATH
• Meet Russell Wilson and Sit VIP at a Seahawks Game, Supporting: Why Not You Foundation
• Have a Champagne Toast with Henry Cavill in London, Supporting: The Royal Marines Charity
• Meet Miley Cyrus and Alicia Keys at a Live Taping of The Voice, Supporting: Happy Hippie Foundation & We Are Here Movement

And, yeah… The odds of winning are probably about the same as winning the lottery. But you’re helping a good cause and hey—someone has to win! 🙂

eScrip

The eScrip program is used most often to help with fundraising efforts for schools and churches. But there are some other charitable organizations you can help as well—mainly smaller, local ones. And while in most cases each individual donation is small, they can add up over time.

Basically you sign up with the site and then you register your credit, debit, or loyalty cards so that when you use them at participating merchants, a percentage of the sales is donated to your causes. They have their own large online mall with hundreds of merchants that you can shop at, including Amazon, Lands’ End, Harry & David, Expedia and more. You can start at the eScrip Online Mall to get to the merchant for the donation process to work or install a browser extension that will tell you when you’re on a site that participates.

The program also works for in-person shopping for some merchants, depending on location, but there are a lot fewer than there are in the online shop.

Amazon Smile

Similar to eScrip, Amazon Smile lets you select a charitable organization and every time you buy something from the company they’ll make a donation to that org. It’s a very tiny percentage admittedly (.5%) and you don’t get a tax receipt for it. But the way I look at it, I’m going to shop at Amazon anyway, so I might as well do it through the Smile program. And over time, with enough people participating, it can only help.

VolunteerMatch

Of course, money isn’t the only thing you can give. If you’d rather volunteer your time, but don’t know who could use your help, volunteermatch.org is a great resource. You can search for opportunities by keyword, location, area of interest, and age suitability. The results will include both one-off projects and ongoing activities.

Learn More

Find more information about ways you can give back on the Giving Tuesday website.

You may also be interested in:

(Amazon) Smile… It’s Giving Tuesday!

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