Sign up for a free newsletter from the United States Fund for UNICEF and an anonymous donor will contribute 5 USD. Popularmedia, the firm running the campaign, wrote about its success in UNICEFUSA Gets Viral: The Stats.
Become a fundraiser
Turn what you enjoy into a fundraising event with Firstgiving.
Crunch numbers
Download a distributed computing client, like BOINC, and contribute computer time to projects like FightAIDS@Home and Human Proteome Folding. Wikipedia has a list of projects.
10 More
Personal Finance Advice published 10 Creative Ways To Help Charities For No Money. They only err recommending eBay Giving Works, which uses MissionFish to process the donations at higher rates than others. Instead, sell items—on eBay if you must—and donate the proceeds directly.
Search the Web
Maki at Dosh Dosh has a great post about 14 Charity Search Engines that help you give money to charity for free.
And I bet there other ways to help without reaching for your pocket book. As with all things charitable: be creative, pragmatic, skeptical, and determined.
March 30th, 2007
Hey! I actually work for Firstgiving, and you’ve done an awesome job of summing up what we do. Mind if we quote you? (Really… email me if you’d like to discuss further.)
March 30th, 2007
Alison, absolutely or just take it and run; I’m just glad I got it right.