Free Philanthropy: Give to Charity for Free!

One of the biggest ironies of being an artist (I feel) is that we want to be of service to society, to heal its ills, to help its poor and starving, to speak out for those who don't have a voice.  If we were rich, we'd be sure to give a lot of it away.  Unfortunately, most of us are not rich.  Some of us are barely making it ourselves.  However, even in the worst of times, thanks to the internet, there is a way to support good causes without spending a dime.

1)  "Click to Give" Campaigns
A couple of years ago, I discovered a series of websites that allow you to click on a link once each day, and each time you click, sponsors donate a certain amount to the cause.  They even will send you email reminders with a direct link to save you time so you can get to clickin'.  There are various causes including hunger, child health, breast cancer; etc., and all of them exist as tabs on the page so if you click on one, you can easily switch to another cause and click for that too.  Here are the links:

Animal Rescue
Breast Cancer
Child Health
Hunger
 Literacy
Rainforest


2)  Letter Writing Campaigns
Letter writing for political change used to be a big deal, but now, with automated electronic letters and petitions, you can make a difference without taking time away from your day job.  These are just a few examples of organizations' websites that I'm aware of, but if you don't see causes that you want to support on these pages, just Google your pet causes and you will likely find at least one website that will allow you to sign an electronic petition or send an automated letter to your Congressman and Senators.  If you sign up on their action email lists, they'll email you each time there is a need for action so you can participate.

Child Health Site (don't be fooled by the name; this has a lot of environmental causes)
Stop Genocide Now
Armenian National Committee of America
Africa Action