Change the World in your Spare Time: Donate to Charity for Free with a Click of Your Mouse

So many people are suffering at any time, all around the world, and most of us have generous hearts. We donate what money we can, we pray for others, and we volunteer our time teaching, working at a food bank, or at the library, or some other way, and then another disaster comes along, and we feel that we just have nothing left to give. Fortunately, there is a solution for this problem, and I promise you that you can change the world for the better in half an hour a day--and mostly in the time you're waiting for someone to get out of the bathroom, or during a television commercial, or waiting on hold on the telephone. Most of the sites here take less than ten seconds to load and click the button--then it's off to the next site. I personally tested this by clicking on every site. Including playing the trivia games, my time was 20 minutes.

Now, by sitting in the comfort of your own home, using the same computer you're using to read this page, or even from your smart phone, you can make a difference in the world, little by little, day by day. And I've made it easy for you to do this because all the links are right here, and all you have to do is click the links. And each time you click on a link, you will be making a donation to a charity, and it won't cost you anything at all. So if you can manage the effort to surf the web, you can, over the course of a year, save thousands of square feet of rainforest, feed people around the world, and do much more good than you can possibly imagine!

I have tested each link here and have verified for myself that it is free of malware or other things that can harm your computer. That having been said, the usual precautions apply.

The news is full of not just earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and other natural disasters, but each day we are bombarded with images of starvation, deforestation, people being exploited and abused, and people all over the world starving, even in our own neighbourhoods. But starting in the 1990s, a number of charitable organizations teamed up with advertisers and with the public-private partnership, the idea of the click-to-donate site was born. These click-to-donate sites exist all over the world wide web, and support all kinds of causes: improving the environment, lifting people out of poverty, disaster relief, feeding the starving, protecting animals, and many, many more causes. The list grows every day, and the effort involved--I've timed it--to support every one of these causes takes less than thirty minutes a day. So I encourage you to keep reading, and see just what kinds of causes you can support with a few clicks!

Please note: most of these sites allow you one click, per cause, per day. Please do not abuse these sites or they will not be able to continue to provide help to ease the sufferings of others.

Care is one of the handiest sites to start your click-to-donate campaign. You can join it (they have email opt-outs) and it will track your donations, and give a boost to your desired charity. In addition, you can take actions on their site such as signing petitions, taking a daily action, making a comment on an article, or posting in the groups, and earn butterfly points, which can then be redeemed for giving to a charity of your choice.

As of this writing, Care2 has donations available to feed children, support efforts to save or reclaim rainforest, buy habitat to support big cats, provide free dental care, feed abandoned pets, stop seal slaughter, reclaim marine wetlands, feed orphaned primates, offset climate change, and protect wolves. You are not obligated to click on all these causes; you can choose only the ones that interest you. However, they are all free to click and it takes only seconds.

The Hunger Site has been around for over ten years, and currently supports not only feeding people in need, but donates mammograms, child health services, books to promote literacy, provide meals to U.S. veterans, preserve rainforest land, and feeds shelter pets. You can donate even more if you shop their stores--although it's not the most effective means of donating, if you're in the market for something, it doesn't hurt to stop by their stores and see if they have something that will meet your needs.

Ripple has four causes available: one click will provide six days' access to clean water, another click will provide food, another click will give access to education for two days, and another will finance a $100.00 loan for one day. In case you haven't heard of microfinance, this is lending small amounts of money (sometimes as little as ten dollars) to help people start businesses. The payback rate on microfinance loans is over 90%, and even one business can help lift an entire village out of poverty. Ripple supports, among its other causes, Oxfam and Grameen, both well-established and reputable organizations.

It should be no surprise to anyone that people throughout the world are going hungry. What is even worse than worldwide hunger is that many people are going without access to clean water. With a few clicks, you can easily donate substantial amounts of food and water to various places around the world, from the USA to Africa to Europe to Asia. On some sites, a single click can equal as much as a cup of food. With food prices steadily going up around the world, and crop shortages predicted, clicking to provide food and water, basic necessities to us all, is a kind of giving that makes real sense, even when we are financially strapped.

The shortage of clean drinking water is another acute problem in many places around the world. Some places just do not have the infrastructure to support clean drinking water; other places have had their formerly clean sources of drinking water poisoned by toxic runoff, pollution, or other environmental problems or disasters; and still other areas are experiencing unusual droughts which are drying up their formerly reliable sources of clean water. In any case, your donation of clean water with your clicks will not only help keep people from dehydration and the diseases that come with it, but the clean water can also be used for medical purposes.

Freerice is a very popular game, and has a lot of devoted adherents, but the Freerice site is highly inefficient if your online spare time is limited. If you play freerice as your major source of free online donations, you should know that it takes almost 500 correct answers to donate a single cup of rice. When compared with the other sites listed here, where one click donates a cup or more of food, in my opinion freerice is great to play if you have a lot of spare time on your hands, but you will do a lot more good with clicks on the other sites. So use freerice if you want, but consider these other sites first, and play freerice in whatever time you have left over.

It's not just in poor countries that people from all walks of life need help with their health care. Around the world each day people are suffering from easily treatable health problems, but with both government budgets and non-profit budgets, not to mention the family budgets, stretched so thin these days, it becomes difficult to help ensure that each person gets the health care they need. With your clicks to these charities, you can provide funds for research, for immunizations, help pay for operations, provide medicines, provide preventive care, and generally ensure that people around the world, both near and far, will have the medical care they need, in order to have the opportunity to provide for their families and contribute to society.  

There is so much going on with the environment it is difficult to know where to begin. Not only are rainforests disappearing, but with increasing pollution, the food supply and water supply are threatened all up and down the food chain. Add to those problems that increasing space taken up by people is encroaching on formerly wild areas, and it is clear to see that the balance of nature is being upset, our oceans are becoming less hospitable to their previously established environments, and there is just a whole lot to do! 

Fortunately, you can, just through your clicks, begin to help preserve wildlife habitat around the world, clean the oceans, replant or preserve forests, clean up pollution or support recycling efforts, support solar energy in poor countries, save endangered species, and much more. Choose one or more causes to support, and start clicking to change the world!

The Ecology fund has several ways you can donate. First, you can click on the buttons. After you click each button, you will see ads--if you click on the ads, you will double that sponsor's donation to that cause. You can also sign up for a free email account, which will make an additional contribution--even if you use it only for signing up for sites where you are likely to get spammed! And if you register, you get an additional donation.

The world is full of homeless people, and one of the surprising ways you can help provide shelter is through Habitat for Humanity in Poland. Each house will take 600,000 clicks to build--but if every adult American clicked on this site each day, we could build twenty houses a day for the homeless in Poland, and expand the program to other countries as well. 

With so many families in such desperate financial trouble, it is no shock that some families have had to give up their beloved family pets because they can no longer afford to feed or care for them. You can help shelters to support these pets until they find new homes and families to love them, by clicking to donate food for them. The two trivia games listed here are fun and easy. Best of all, you donate whether your answers are right or wrong, and you will learn something fun!

Solve poverty gives start-up seed money and other entrepreneurial and business assistance to young people in South and East Asia who want to start their own businesses. As their businesses grow, they can employ more local people and help raise entire neighbourhoods out of poverty.

The Nonprofits maintains a list of many click-to-donate sites. Although it's been recently updated, the links contain many duplications and sometimes the sites do go down. I have weeded out their links to remove duplicates and added a few. 

Profiting off the misfortune of others is wrong. All earnings from this hub - large or small - will be donated to the earthquake victims in Haiti. If this hub continues to earn after donations are no longer accepted for earthquake relief, continued earnings will be donated to other legitimate charities supporting sustainable opportunity in Haiti in perpetuity.