Continuing upon the previous post, “Maximize Your Impact: The Best Strategies for Donating Money and Why You Should” where I argue that instead of donating money to content creators – bloggers, YouTubers, podcasters and the like, you can make a bigger positive impact by donating to a charity which will use that money on programs that independent evaluators have found to be effective and make an impact, we will now look at how you can support charities without donating.
To repeat, check out the charity evaluators GiveWell, The Life You Can Save or CharityWatch to see what the most effective charities are today and what you could accomplish by donating even a tiny amount. But not everyone can afford to donate regularly – most of us have been in a difficult financial situation, so donating is not always an option.
Let’s look at a few other things you can do to help.
Create a fundraiser on Facebook.
You can go to facebook.com/fundraisers to create a fundraiser. Fundraiser lets your friends know which causes you care about and enables them to donate to your charity of choice. Facebook will process the donation without any fees.
If you are an admin of a popular Facebook page, you can fundraise from the page as well, which might be a better idea since you’ll be able to reach more people than from your personal profile. When making a post, you have the option to select “Support Nonprofit”. Click on it, choose the nonprofit of your choice and make a post. Your audience will see the “Donate “option.
Create a fundraiser on JustGiving.
Similar to a fundraiser on Facebook, you can create one on JustGiving. For example, your birthday is coming up. You go to JustGiving and create a fundraiser. Then you share your fundraiser with your friends and tell them that, instead of gifts, you would like them to donate money to your charity of choice through JustGiving. Simple. An interesting feature of JustGiving is that you and your friends can donate using American Express Membership Rewards points.
Use Give as you live.
Give as you live is an interesting concept; you can raise money for charity simply by shopping online.
They get commission money from an online shop by sending you to them. Then, from that money, they give 50% to your charity of choice and keep the rest for their operating costs. So, you raise money at no additional cost to you.
To help you remember to use their service and to ensure your charity of choice gets the money, they have a browser extension – the Donation Reminder. Here is the extension for Edge, Chrome and Firefox.
Ask your audience to donate money.
If you’re a content creator yourself – blogger, YouTuber, podcaster or Instagrammer – chances are you have quite a few followers, especially if you count all platforms you might be active on.
I’m asking you to consider no longer accepting donations for your work as a YouTuber, podcaster, or travel blogger, and to direct your audience to search for an effective charity and donate the money they were planning to give you.
Alternatively, you could donate the funds you receive from your YouTube channel, Patreon, or similar platforms. But this post is about helping without making a direct donation. Not only that, but I don’t think that is very effective in spreading awareness about effective charities, so I would urge you to think about encouraging your audience to give directly to the charity instead.
I support the Against Malaria Foundation. They protect people from malaria by providing long-lasting insecticide-treated nets. There is strong evidence about cost-effectiveness. Check out their rating on GiveWell.
That is the philosophy of this page. I will never accept donations for my own work. Instead, I urge anyone visiting this page to donate any extra funds to charities. At the moment, I recommend Oxfam and the Against Malaria Foundation; I would donate to them.
Share the efforts on social media.
This one is super easy to do. Like or follow charities and charity evaluators on social media and share their content, preferably after making sure that the post makes sense and is relevant to your friends and followers – after all, you do not wish to alienate people from giving.
Also, if you donated money to a charity – SHARE that information with your friends and followers. People must see that donating to charity is a regular human activity and not something left to the world’s richest, but it can and should be done by ordinary people. Please don’t make ‘preachy’ or self-serving posts. Tell them that you donated and that even small amounts help.
Conclusion
In this post, we have taken a look at how you can help to make the world a better place by supporting charities without donating any money directly. As we have seen, you can raise funds for charities by buying through online shops or using services that donate a percentage of their profits, or by using your voice to inspire your friends and family to donate.
Don’t forget. Check out the charity evaluators GiveWell, The Life You Can Save or CharityWatch to see what the most effective charities are today.
