22 Ways to Contribute to Charities Without Spending a Dime
When you care about a social cause, you spend your time or money to help achieve it. However, not everyone has enough resources to spend on an endowment. If you want to contribute to charities, but not having enough ways and means are holding you back, then I have a solution for you.
There are apps and services that are willing to contribute to your favorite charities on your behalf. You just need to complete a simple task or use the app/service, and your contribution will be given to the charity of your choice, for free. And in the write up below you’ll find a list of tools or apps that’ll do just that. Let’s give them a look.
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Mobile Apps
Below are some Android and iOS apps that use different ways to help you contribute without spending your own resources.
1. Donate a Photo
A campaign run by Johnson & Johnson, where they’ll donate $1 to your favorite charity for each photo you upload using their app. The photo can be of anything; you, your friends or your pets etc.
This helps Johnson & Johnson promote their brand and give something back to the community as well. However, only 1 photo can be uploaded each day (365 photos a year).
Download app Android
2. Charity Miles
Charity Miles is a great fitness app with a twist. Along with helping you track your workout, it will donate to your chosen charity $0.25 for each mile you walked or $0.10 for each mile you biked. You can see the sponsor ads in the app that will donate the money on your behalf.
3. WowApp
WowApp offers multiple services in its ad-supported app. However, instead of keeping all the ad revenue, it will let you withdraw 70-80% of it for yourself or give to a charity of your choice (over 2000 available).
Its services include a chat app, games, shopping deals and a low rate calling service. You can also earn credits by simply opening the lock screen and seeing an ad.
4. Give 2 Charity
If you don’t mind giving up your information to help people in need, then Give 2 Charity is perfect for you. The app will store your personal information, track your location and web activity for analytics purposes.
This information will be used by third-party companies for analytics and they will pay an amount in return which will be donated to 7 different charities of your choice. You just need to download the app and rest will be handled by Give 2 Charity.
5. ResQwalk
A workout tracking app that specifically donates to pet welfare organizations for the miles you log in. You just need to select a charity and start your workout, preferably with your pet. At the end of each month, the total amount collected from sponsors is divided between charities based on how many miles have been contributed to each.
6. WoofTrax
A workout tracking app specifically created for dog lovers. Just take your dog outside for a walk and WoofTrax will donate to an animal organization (there are over 6000 to choose from). Sponsors will donate both money and animal accessories to the organization.
7. Blood Donation Reminder
Donating money to a cause is great, but donating blood can also be a good way of saving lives. On top of that, donating blood also has many benefits. You can take advantage of the Blood Donation Reminder app to keep track of when you donated blood last and when you’ll be ready to donate again.
Download app Android
Contributing online
There are also some online websites through which you can indirectly contribute to charities.
8. GoodSearch
It’s an ad-supported search engine that donates 1 penny to your desired charity for each search you make in it. You can set GoodSearch as your default search engine to donate every time you need to search something online. It uses Google custom search for results and there are dozens of charities you can choose from.
9. FreeRice
FreeRice is an educational Q&A based game website that helps you feed the poor and gain knowledge at the same time. For every correct answer you give, it will donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. There are dozens of subjects to choose from, and questions get tougher with each correct answer.
10. The Hunger Site
This website offers multiple ways to support the cause you care about. It hosts different charity fundraisings, and all you need to do is to click on the link to raise money. Clicking the link shows sponsored ads, through which the money is donated. They also offer deals that you can buy and its referral fee will be donated to a charity you selected.
11. Care2
Care2 is a large community of volunteers who will help you find causes of your interest and tell you the ways you can help without spending money. You can also share stories, raise awareness of causes or share information to help the community. For all these tasks, you’ll earn credits that can be exchanged for gifts that you can donate.
Chrome extensions
Following are some of the Chrome extensions that can contribute to charities on your behalf if you use them.
12. Goodblock Ad Blocker
This is a great ad blocker extension for Chrome that blocks all the ads in exchange for showing you only a single high-quality ad each day (optional). The revenue of that single ad will go to a charity of your selection. I believe it would be a good replacement for your current ad blocker.
13. Tab for a Cause
This extension will replace new tab page of your Chrome or Firefox browser with a page that has a sponsored ad on it. The ad revenue will be donated to a charity of your choice.
So every time you will open a new tab, you will make money for your favorite cause. The new tab replacement isn’t bad as well, you still get to use your favorite search engine in an inspiring interface.
Contributing via online shopping
You can make a good use of your shopping sprees with following websites that’ll contribute a percentage of referral fee on your purchases to a charity. Don’t worry, there’ll be no extra charges on you, just the referral fee from merchants will go to charities instead of the referrer’s pocket.
14. EveryClick
It has over 4000 retailers who donate 1-3% percentage of your purchase amount to your favorite charity. They also have a huge list of 200,000 charities from which you can choose the cause that interests you. It also lets you search the web using its ad-supported search engine and donates the ad money to charities.
15. The Giving Machine
This is a non-profit organization that’ll donate 100% of the referral fee earned from your online purchases. The Giving Machine lets you shop from over 2000+ online shops and you can select from over 200,000 charities.
16. Amazon Smile
The biggest online shopping place Amazon also offers a way to shop and donate to your desired cause. You just need to sign up for Amazon Smile and 0.5% of all the purchases you’ll make on Amazon will be donated to a charity. You can also use the Amazon Smile redirect extension to ensure you always shop with Amazon Smile.
17. Froggybank
A website to shop and pay to charities, but with a rather different approach. Instead of automatically donating to charities, it gives you the option to either keep the referral amount to yourself or give to charity. It also gives 100% of the referral amount back, unlike others.
18. GoodShop
GoodShop comes from the developers of GoodSearch that helps you with shopping and donates a percentage of referral earning to the charity of your choosing.
19. Giving Assistant
It lets you shop at thousands of online stores and earn the referral money on your purchases. When you will make a purchase, it will give you back some of the money back; as the referral fee. You can either keep it for yourself or tell Giving Assistant to donate to a charity on your behalf.
20. Escrip
Escrip lets you shop online or locally in Escrip supported stores, and they will donate the referral money to non-profit organizations or schools. You can also dine out or book travel tickets from Escrip partners and they will donate the money.
21. Shop2Care
Shop2Care allows you to select two charities to which all of your shopping referral amount will go. There are thousands of stores to shop from and hundreds of supported charities. It doesn’t keep any referral fee to itself, and hundred percent of the fee is donated.
22. iGive
iGive lets you use its browser extension or smartphone app to find great deals and coupons from over 1700+ online stores. The referral money goes to a charity of your choice, usually up to 3% of the purchase. iGive has donated over $8 million so far to different charities.
Helping someone in need
So these are some easy ways to donate money to your favorite charities without spending a single penny from your own pocket. I believe ad-supported donation system is the easiest way to donate to charities. However, if you shop online often, then taking advantage of the referral system to help others is a good way to go about.
Furthermore, I also mentioned some tools that let you withdraw the amount for yourself (Like WowApp). I’ll recommend you to use that opportunity to personally donate the amount to your favorite cause if you don’t trust the service provider.
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