Filed under: General Charity Musings, Microphilanthropy | Tags: charity goals, charity values, micro lending, Microphilanthropy, one arce fund
One great thing about running Charity CHAMPs is that everybody I talk to sends me a bit of info about the micro-philanthropy space. It’s great to know that so many people are interested, if not already involved! A friend of mine knows a bunch of the people who run the One Arcre Fund, so I thought I’d feature that organization for today.
The Fund is based in Chicago and manages micro-lending to improvished farmers in East-Africa. An investment of $240 (or $20 a month) supports one family of 5. What’s great about this charity is that they have values that I strongly believe in, and hope to support through Charity CHAMPS:
- We don’t give handouts
- We provide a solution that is realistic to the extreme poor
- We must dream big
- We must remain 100% accountable
If you go to their About Us page they have some great reports on not just past performance, but future goals as well, which I don’t see published too often by charities (unless they are fundraising goals). Check them out and let me know what you think!
Filed under: General Charity Musings, Microphilanthropy | Tags: Colours for a cause, for profit micro philanthropy, Nestlé Canada, smarties
Most of the micro-philanthropy sites that we’ve featured so far on this blog are run by non-profits or charities, or regular people with a kind heart. Today I thought we’d feature something different – a campaign run by for-profit that nonetheless captures the spirit of micro-philanthropy.
Colours for a Cause is a campaign being run by Nestlé Canada in association with the Smarties brand. If you download the Facebook application, you can make votes towards your favourite causes, and for each vote that you make, Nestlé will dontate 10 cents toward the cause of your choosing. Each Smartie colour stands for a different cause, so it’s easy to see the causes that users most care about just by scanning the colours of the pie. Quite novel!
It’s obvious that more and more companies are trying to be socially responsible as shareholders and the general public increasingly demand for green, fair trade, or equitable products and services. As the line between “doing good to make money” and “doing good to be good” blurs, I have a feeling we’re going to see a lot more micro-philanthropy being supported by corporations.
Filed under: General Charity Musings, Microphilanthropy | Tags: donorschoose.org, Microphilanthropy, student charity
So here’s another micro-philanthropy site that I think is a great idea – DonorsChoose.org. Started by teachers at a Bronx public high school in the spring of 2000, the organization addresses the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in public schools. The model is simple but effective – teachers envision classroom projects and post project needs on DonsorsChoose. Then, you and I can browse the projects and donate towards the ones that we like. Usually all it takes is a few hundred dollars to get a project going, so a few donations is all it takes. As a donor you even get photos and thank you cards from the students!
Sometimes the materials purchased through a project are re-usable in the future, so your gift keeps on giving! Check out the project descriptions to find out more.
Filed under: General Charity Musings | Tags: drop-in volunteering, pick-up volunteering, time rasier, volunteer for few hours
If anybody out there knows of a way for me to do volunteer work for a few hours on short notice in Toronto, please let me know! It’s not often that there’s free time in my schedule, but there have definitely been times where I had a few hours to spare in the evening or on the weekend that I would have loved to volunteer somewhere, only I don’t know of any charities that have programs like that.
I realize that setting up volunteer work requires careful planning on the part of the charities, and often requires a certain amount of paper-work, introductions, training, and possibly even background checks. But maybe a model can work where all the prep is done in a one-time session, and periodically thereafter I’d be able to volunteer when I have the free time, similar to pick-up sports. I realize this non-committal volunteer method might leave charities in a lurch without volunteers to get a job done at a specific time, but with enough volume of people participating, and with tasks that are not super deadline dependent, I’m sure it can work. And what better way to engage people who have busy schedules?
A few friends now have mentioned this event to me, http://www.timeraiser.ca/, and I would definitely like to check it out this year. Although it’s not the “drop-in” concept that I’m looking for, I hear it’s become very popular, and who knows, maybe we can recruit for CHAMPs volunteers there next year!
Filed under: General Charity Musings | Tags: best charities, charity evaluation, Charity navigator, charity rankings, charity status
Do you know of people who would love to donate to good causes, but hesitate to do so out of fear that their money might be squandered? With countless charities to donate to, it’s important to find ones that you can trust to deliver impact with every dollar you give. That’s why with Charity CHAMPs, we’ll do the research for you, so that you know your money is going to be put to good use.
But until Charity CHAMPs is live, there are still plenty of resources at your disposal. The CRA publishes a list of charities whose status has been revoked (see http://www.globalphilanthropy.ca/index.php/blog/canada_revenue_agency_deregistering_record_number_of_questionable_canadian_/). Then there’s the well known http://www.charitynavigator.com, which has a comprehensive review of many US based charities. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like CharityNavigator will expand to Canada anytime soon; Trent Stamp seems to question the need for Canadian charity information, which baffles me. Check out the discussion here: http://www.trentstampstake.org/2007/01/oh-canada.html. For a while I thought http://www.nporesearch.com would become the Canadian CharityNavigator but the site doesn’t seem to be up anymore.
Some other sites that offer non-profit information:
- http://www.charityrank.ca
- http://www.charitywatch.org
- http://www.charityguide.org
- http://www.give.org
- http://www.guidestar.org
Filed under: General Charity Musings | Tags: charity matching, CIDA, corporate matching, Donation matching, matching, University of Waterloo
Usually if you think of donation matching you think of corporate matching programs. But if you do a little bit of research there’s actually a lot charities that the government will match your donation to, in some cases matching 3:1! As a matter of fact I know the Canadian government matches donations to certain programs at the University of Waterloo. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) also matches to a bunch of organizations, including:
- http://www.chf-partners.ca
- http://www.e-i.org
- http://www.watercan.com
- http://www.matchinternational.org
Something definitely worth considering the next time you want to make a donation!
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