As college students, we may want to donate to charity but it’s hard when we don’t have much money to give away. So it’s pretty cool that I’ve been donating to a few different charities over the past few years, without spending any money myself.
My title might be a little misleading– I’m not literally doing nothing. I am doing nothing different. All I do is something that I would be doing anyway...
Open new tabs.
Think about it: how many tabs do you open over the course of a day? What if each of those tabs raised a little money for charity?
Thanks to a browser extension called Tab for a Cause by an organization called Gladly (started back when its founders were “broke college students” themselves), they can do just that.
When you install the Tab for a Cause extension (there’s one for both Chrome and Firefox), your new tab page is replaced by a page where you can customize the background and add bookmarks, sticky notes, and a few other widgets. Most importantly, off to the side and bottom are a couple of ads. Like on other websites, these advertisers pay Gladly according to the number of times their ads are seen. Gladly then donates this money to its selected charities.
As a user, you get a say in where the money goes. Each time you open a tab, you earn a “heart”. Whenever you choose you can “donate” your hearts to one of the eight charities Gladly supports (chosen for their global scope, efficiency, and financial transparency). When heart donations for a charity reach the equivalent of $40, Gladly donates $40 to that charity.
By this point you’re hopefully thinking this sounds great. You're also probably wondering if this could really win a prize for Gannon. Well, if enough people get involved, it just might.
Gladly is hosting its own spin off on March Madness, called March Gladness. Colleges will compete to see who earns the most “hearts” over the course of March. The winning school gets an on-campus scavenger hunt with $1500 in cash prizes. (Yes, I have a vested interest: I’ve always wanted to be part of a giant scavenger hunt.)
Spots in the tournament are determined by the number of active members in a college’s group: the 64 colleges with the most members get a spot. Here’s what amazed me: as of now, Gannon would need only 19 more people to get on that list!
So, if you want to possibly win Gannon a cool prize this month, and definitely do some good in the world (by doing nothing extra) on into the future, download Tab for a Cause and join the Gannon group. (Clicking here should let you do both.) Even if you're a broke college student, you can make a difference.
