ephemera

thewordunheard:

Do you like Groupon? LivingSocial? DailyCandy? Gilt? You like getting more bang for your buck, and getting creative new ideas for how to spend your money?

Philanthroper’s like that, except instead of giving you coupons for restaurants and jewelry stores, it highlights a different nonprofit or charitable cause.

If you like the cause, you give a dollar. Why a dollar? Because it doesn’t hit your wallet any more than your 2PM visit to the vending machines, and because if enough people give a dollar and spread the word to their friends, the causes are still reaping in donations.

Here’s the other cool thing: 99% of your money actually goes to the cause you’re donating to. That probably doesn’t sound all that exciting to most people? But in reality, for most online donations anywhere, 3-30% of your contribution is gobbled up in transaction fees, middleman fees, and banking fees before it ever reaches its destination. Philanthroper commits to taking ONLY a penny on the dollar to help it cover banking fees; the rest goes directly where you want it to.

Today’s nonprofit is Give an Hour, an organization that coordinates free mental health counseling services for soldiers suffering from depression or PTSD following their tours of duty.

Check it out. Sign up. Even if today’s cause doesn’t appeal to you, tomorrow’s might. You may not be able to fix a problem on your own, but every act of kindness, every little contribution you make, helps.

I’d love to use this service, but they require passwords with no symbols (i.e., less-secure passwords), signing up for a payment system I’m not familiar with, and giving them your bank account number and routing number. Yes, I know why they’re using mPayy, and that they supposedly don’t keep your bank information, but it’s still just that little bit too sketchy for me to trust.

So instead, I’m going to follow Philanthroper’s RSS feed and donate directly (and more than a dollar) to organisations I really believe in.