It goes without saying that we should all do what we can to support good causes. The good news is that’s becoming easier than ever as entrepreneurial minds turn their thoughts to supporting worthwhile causes.
Here are five of our favorite innovative – and free – ways of doing your part.
Know Stuff? Win Free Rice 
Since 2007, FreeRice.com has donated 58 BILLION grains of rice through the UN World Food Program – with its rather addictive vocabulary game.
Visit the site, test your vocab and every time you get an answer right 10 grains of rice are donated to hungry families around the world – paid for by site sponsors.
If you don’t like vocab, you can also play quiz games based on art, math, geography and foreign languages.
People like quizzes, they like learning and they like helping good causes – a perfect mix which has helped Free Rice gain quite a bit of coverage from the likes of the BBC, Washington Post, CBS News and just about every major US daily paper.
Go test yourself – and win some rice.
The Hunger Site – Clicks Mean Food
Answering questions just too much work for you – no problems. Working along a similar model, The Hunger Site makes a donation every time you click on a button – about 1 cup of food per click.
It might not sound like much but it certainly adds up – the site has raised nearly 20,000 metric tons of food since 2002. Go check it out.
Search Helps Charities
We all know that you can make money through affiliate marketing. Well a growing number of websites have put that concept to good use – building search engines that donate their profits to charities of your choosing.
Check out GoodSearch.com, ClickNow.org.uk and EveryClick.com – pick one.
Send Email – Help a Cause
To be fair, we already featured this idea a while back – but hey, it’s for a good cause.
Here’s what we said about Reply For All:
Sign up for Reply For All and they’ll attach a simple charitable message to the footer of every email you send – sponsored by a brand. The brand gets exposure and association with a good cause and the good cause earns from the sponsorship paid.
Feel Good World
Feeling hungry after all that clicking? Feel Good World has the answer:
FeelGood’s (FG) vision is to “end world hunger, one grilled cheese at a time.” FG is the first student-run, nonprofit deli. Specifically, we sell grilled cheese sandwiches on college campuses and invest the proceeds in “empowerment, gender-focused models of development”.
Students are encouraged to start their own Chapters at their campuses so if you’re in reach of one – go buy a sandwich, complete with feel good factor.
(OK, not free but you were going to buy lunch anyway.)
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Those are great ideas and here’s another! Our site just went live where we donate up to ten percent of the shoppers total to their charity of choice. If you are planning to buy something online anyway, why not help out a good cause as well? Check it out at http://www.shoptoaid.org.