Help Me Decide Where To Donate $1,200

Back at the start of October I asked readers if they’d like the site to continue to donate at bare minimum 10% of the sites revenue to charity or if they’d prefer that that money was given out in the form of reader competitions instead. The results of that poll were as follows:

• Charity Contributions: 39%
• Mixture: 34%
• Reader Competitions: 26%

I’ve recently spent some time in South East Asia for work and more recently some time in Myanmar/Burma as part of my vacation time. I’ve also spent a lot of time in other developing countries such as Bolivia where poverty is a real day to day struggle for a lot of people. This has just reinforced how important giving to charity is for me.

I’m pleased that this blog has been able to donate $1,385 to five different charities this year but I’ve been disappointed about the level of reader involvement in helping to choose who we give money to and why. Reader, Liz, suggested having a poll each month in which readers can vote for the charity they’d like to see donations go to. I liked that idea and it’s something we’re going to use going forward. Because we have not made any donations for the months of September, October & November we’re going to donate a total of $1,200.

Here is how it’ll work:

• Readers can submit charities as comments to this post. The only rule is that the charities must have a four star rating or higher on charity navigator.
• We’ll compile these suggestions and then make a separate post with a poll. Readers can then vote on this poll.

At this stage I don’t think it’ll be a winner takes all situation, as the amount being donated is relatively large but I’m not sure what the exact break down will be. As well as your charity submissions, let me know why you’d like this site to donate to this charity. I’ll make sure to include a little bit on each charity in the post with the polls so people can make an informed decision.

In the coming months I should have more time to update this site more regularly, in addition to that I’d also like to make more positive changes. Below is a list of the immediate changes I’d like to make:

• New website design that focuses on being much faster. At the moment this site is ridiculously slow to load and it’s difficult to find information easily.
• Go carbon neutral/positive. I’d like to offset the carbon emissions this site makes (e.g running the server and possibly the power that our readers would use to access the site). I’m a greenie and a capitalist, I’m all about doing the right thing by the environment and making money at the same time.

What charity would you like us to donate $1,200 to and why? What other changes would you like to see implemented here? Let us know in the comments below.