I must be the last person on Earth to have learned about Kickstarter, a community-driven way to fund creative-driven projects. You can pledge to ‘back’ projects with as little as $1, and many of them even offer rewards for doing so. Plus, you get to learn about the projects along with way with stories, videos, updates, and more. Each project must meet their funding goal before any of the money changes hands. It’s pretty neat!
I have only funded one project so far, Heritage Seed Co., but I’m pretty excited about it. One, because I think seed saving is not only fantastic but necessary – as many a documentary has told us, the agriculture industry is becoming dominated by a small number of very large companies who create genetically modified seeds to “commit suicide” after one season, forcing farmers to buy more each season, fining them if they find their patented seeds in their fields (often wind-blown from a neighboring farm), putting them in financial dire straits, not to mention sacrificing the integrity of food and the way it was meant to grow. These seeds are also bland, tasteless, and the crops are usually sprayed within an inch of life with pesticides. As a project backer, I got my choice of reward, and I chose a few packages of heritage seeds. Awesome! Watch the vid to find out more about seed saving & their project:
I love that every couple days I get emailed an update about their progress. It makes me feel like I’m a part of it, at least in some small way. So far they have 81 backers and are at $2,792 pledged. Their goal is $10,000 and they have 33 days to get there.
Learn more about Heritage Seed Co & poke around at the other many worthy projects!
I haven’t posted anything about the Japan earthquake & tsunami yet, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been paying attention. Rather than posting a series of scary images and stats, I wanted to give you a resource to help you make educated donation decisions. Giving is giving no matter how you split it, and at the end of the day it shouldn’t come down to whether or not you give, but to whom you give. So read up, pick one, and whip out your PayPal login. Every bit counts!
CN also provides some helpful tips on how and when to give your money – waiting a few days after the disaster to donate so charities have a more calculated response plan, carefully considering exactly where you want your money to go (children? supplies? medical relief?), thinking before you text-donate, and double-checking the website of a charity before giving, to name a few.
As tempting as it may be to just text donate and take a quick ten bucks off your cell phone bill, I highly suggest taking the time to research the .org to which you’re giving your hard earned money. ♥ Now go, give!
Hi friends, it’s me again. I have a quick favor to ask. You see, my very favorite LA animal rescue non-profit, Kitten Rescue, is currently in the running to win free cat litter. Yes you read that correctly – FREE CAT LITTER.
I’m sure each and every one of you share my passion for helping homeless animals and therefore, will have no problem with taking a second to click on the little button below (or in my sidebar) and voting for Kitten Rescue.
Thanks in advance, pretties!
Stuck on what to get your Valentine at the last minute? I’ve got a solution that will not only save your butt, but it doesn’t require waiting in any lines, spending an exorbitant amount of money on flowers, and it will give someone in a developing country clean water for TWENTY years. Each major holiday, charity: water releases a set of witty and adorable e-cards that you can send your loved one for the low price of $20. Sure, you can get one at Hallmark for $3.99, but that card won’t give someone clean water for two decades.
In case you’ve missed the memo, a billion people worldwide (that’s 1 in don’t have access to clean water for drinking, cooking, cleaning or bathing. Lack of clean water for basic sanitation results in 80% of all sickness and disease worldwide and each year, kills more people than all forms of violence combined, INCLUDING WAR. Women in developing nations have to walk more than three hours a day to fetch water that is probably just going to make them and their children sick. Little ones are particularly at risk for waterborne illnesses, of the 42,000 deaths a week from unsafe water, 90% of them are children under the age of 5.
Now that I’ve convinced you to cough up $20 that will save someone’s life (quite literally), check out these cute cards and pick your favorite. Then send it to your boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, brother, coworker, neighbor, heck, send it to yourself. 100% of your donation goes to freshwater projects in developing countries.
If only five of us commit to sending one of these cards, we’ll have provided a whole family with clean water for 20 years. I’m in! Are you in?
Have you voted in the Chase Community Giving Ultimate Challenge Extravaganza on Facebook yet? That’s not the official name of the contest, but it should be. Chase is giving one non-profit $1 MILLION DOLLARS! Brangelina can make this happen in a snap, but for a big corporation/bank, I feel like this is pretty big. Plus, the voters decide who gets the mega donation. I’ve seen this thing advertised EVERYWHERE but I haven’t actually voted until tonight. And guess what? It’s really easy. It took me one minute, tops. All you do is become a Fan and then ration out 5 votes to the charities you think deserve them most.
The final round of voting is going on til the 21st I believe – whatever five days from now is. Here are the charities I picked (because I trust them and/or have personal reasons), but you can pick whoever you like! Just do it!
Several of SocialVibe’s charity partners are nominated, like TWLOHA and Invisible Children (who are winning by a landslide at the moment. They’re cool though- rescuing child soldiers in Uganda. Amazing cause.)
P.S. I still don’t like Chase, and am happier than ever that I am back using USAA for my banking again. Credit unions are awesome!
Today will be a quick one because I have a load of things to do (including writing my always-lengthy Things I Love Thursday) and I plan on spending most of my night watching A Charlie Brown Christmas for free on Hulu tonight. Short blog post, but huge message. Today’s daily morsel of quotation goodness is:
“We make a living by what we do, but we make a life by what we give.”
- Winston Churchill
Mr. Churchill, you are so wise! The most rewarding things and moments in life are always the ones centered around making those around us happy – people we know and don’t know alike. Would you believe that at one point in my life, I actually believed that giving was a selfish act, designed to make ourselves feel good? What a misguided child I was. Giving feels good because giving IS good, and we are built to want to help others – yes, you are born with that instinct to jump in the lake after that drowning boy!
With Christmas shopping on everyone’s mind this time of the year, I think it’s especially important to keep this message of giving in the forefront of our noggins. Here is what I suggest: go the extra mile this season. Volunteer to prepare a meal for the homeless, collect blankets and socks and donate them to your local mission, spend some time with an underprivileged child, clean out your cabinets and take those cans of nonperishables to a shelter, or even better – decide to forgo all the holiday gifts this year and buy for a family in need instead. I guarantee it will make you feel more warm and fuzzy than even the softest set of pajamas.
One of my favorite non-profits, Do Something, has a great tool called Act Now that allows you to find local volunteer opportunities around your favorite cause, how much time you have to give, and how big a group you have volunteering. Check it out here.
How are you feeling today? Pretty good? Happy it’s Friday? Amped for the holiday season? Me too. I have a challenge for you – watch these videos – any of them, all of them – and tell me how you feel afterward.
So, what do you think? Still jonesing for that $500 handbag? Still thinking about which 5 star restaurant you’re going to dinner at this weekend? Dreaming about your next vacation or complaining about your job, when 10% of Americans are unemployed? I’ll tell you how I feel: I am humbled. I am in awe. I am shocked. I am ashamed. And I’m inspired. And I think I just discovered the purpose for me living in this city I loathe so much.
Thanks to Mark Horvath (@hardlynormal) for his incredible work with the homeless community in LA and around the country, I found these videos on his site, InvisiblePeople.tv. His story is quite an inspiring one, if you have a minute, read this. Or just watch this:
I originally posted this story on the SocialVibe blog, but it is such a great campaign that I want to share it with my personal audience. The products we buy make a huge impact on manufacturing practices around the globe. Each purchase is a vote, whether you’re buying handbags, coffee, or dog food. Don’t spend recklessly, research where your money is going. Onto the post…
What kind of a handbag are you carrying? Do you know who made it? How about where it was made, or under what conditions? Invisible Children launched a new program today called MEND and we are kind of in love with it.
MEND isn’t just a place where you can buy unique and handcrafted handbags, but where you can also watch videos of and read stories about the person who made that very bag. Take for example, this video about Monica, who loves to dance, has a talent for making people laugh, and oh yeah, is a former child soldier.
Monica is just one of many of the creative handbag makers that you can learn about through MEND. All of the handbag makers are are former child soldiers, victims and survivors of the 20 year war in Uganda.
Are you ready for Halloween yet? We sure are, and this year, it’s time to take the focus away from cavity-creating candy and onto doing good around the world. Today, SocialVibe launched a new program called Click 4 Good, a virtual neighborhood of haunted houses where you can go trick or treating to benefit charity.
For each spooktacular door you knock on, you’ll be greeted not by a ghost or goblin, but by a donation that will be made to one of these incredibly worthy non-profits:
- Stand Up 2 Cancer: Aims to urgently move cancer research forward by advancing technology available to scientists and clinicians.
- charity: water: Provides clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
- The Surfrider Foundation: Dedicated to protecting and preserving our world’s oceans, waves and beaches.
- Keep a Child Alive: Provides life-saving anti-retroviral treatment, care and support to children and families whose lives have been affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa and India.
Each visit yields a specific impact, such as 18 gallons of water for people in need through charity: water or 1 hour of HIV/AIDS treatment for a child through KCA. After you earn your impact, you’ll have the opportunity to share it on Twitter or Facebook, encouraging your friends to do the same. Each time that friend goes trick or treating, the impact grows. This has amazing potential to create enormous positive social impact around the world.
Take advantage of your time online and get some trick or treating practice in a little early this year by visiting SocialVibe’s haunted house neighborhood at socialvibe.com/click4good.
Wonderful, you found my blog! I'm Sarah, a writer, runner, RVT student, believer, lover of pretty things (and cats.) I'm also a newlywed, which I'm finding quite enjoyable. To learn more about me, just click here. I hope my blog brings you a little bit (or a lotta bit) of happiness today.
don’t have access to clean water for drinking, cooking, cleaning or bathing. Lack of clean water for basic sanitation results in 80% of all sickness and disease worldwide and each year, kills more people than all forms of violence combined, INCLUDING WAR. Women in developing nations have to walk more than three hours a day to fetch water that is probably just going to make them and their children sick. Little ones are particularly at risk for waterborne illnesses, of the 42,000 deaths a week from unsafe water, 90% of them are children under the age of 5. 
