Did you know you can use a search engine and donate to charity without using any of your own money? Listed below are several search engines that donate part of their advertising revenue to charity whenever you use their search engine or click on an advertisement from their home page. Some charity search engines can even be set up to send you an email reminder to search daily, so those clicks can grow from a few pennies to a good-sized donation to your favorite charity. United States Good Sense, Inc. at http://www.goodsearch.com. Goodsearch.com is a search engine based out of Los Angeles, California and founded by a brother and sister, Ken and J.J. Ramberg. Goodsearch.com donates money to charities by giving away a portion of their advertising revenue to charities every time a user clicks on a sponsor's advertisement. This site is powered by Yahoo! so you should get the same high-quality results you expect from a Yahoo! search. How to Donate: On the Goodsearch.com homepage, you can select charities that you wish your donation to go to by selecting a charity from a pull-down menu box. Givesmart.com http://www.givesmart.com Givesmart.com is founded by Brian Carrozzi. In Givesmart.com users are not required to click to donate. GiveSmart.com donates part of its advertising revenue to charities and a user only needs to browse the site and read the news articles to generate a donation. This web site runs news article from Associated Press and is a shopping portal for 700 merchants. Other Sites that Donate When You Click Each time you click on one of the web sites listed a donation is made to that specific charity. You will need to click on the donate buttons of their homepage to make your donation. This list was obtained from an article in Smartmoney.com, Charitable Clicking, by Aleksandra Todorva, December 16, 2005. The article is located at http://www.smartmoney.com/dealoftheday/index.cfm?story=20051216. The Hunger Site at http://www.thehungersite.com Mercy Corps at http://www.mercycorps.org Second Harvest at http://www.secondharvest.org The Breast Cancer Site at http://www.thebreastcancersite.com National Breast Cancer Organization at http://www.nationalbreastcancer.org The Child Health Site at http://www.thechildhealthsite.com Prosethics Outreach Foundation at http://www.pofsea.org Hellen Keller International at http://www.hki.org United Kingdom Everyclick.com at http://www.everyclick.com was founded by consultants in the U.K. and lists many U.K. charities that you can select for a donation whenever you use this site. Rectifi.com at http://www.rectifi.com. This site was founded by Johnny Platt after his experience volunteering at a hospital in India. This site is also powered by Yahoo! This search engine is not an international site and charities are local to the United Kingdom, but this may change as use of this site grows. Charity Cafe at http://www.charitycafe.com/. Charity Cafe began in October, 2000. It was founded by Mills Services of Brighton, U.K. and is not a registered charity. Word of Caution: If you choose to click on an advertisement or the search engine requires you to provide personal information, such as filling out a registration form, be wary of providing personal information. The risk of identity theft increases every time you give personal information over the Internet.
Submitted by Jenny Zook, Reference Librarian on March 6, 2006
This article appears in the categories: Law Library/IT
