- December 21, 2010 • 11:30 am PST
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For everyone, the internet has certainly made it easier to give back. Just a simple click can give your money to any of countless organizations or causes. But for a select group of innovative tech folks, the internet offers an even more exciting canvas for combining technology and giving. Here are eight organizations that combine tech know-how with the ability to give back.
If We Ran The World
How it works: Sometimes the most challenging thing about charity is figuring out where to start. There’s thousands upon thousands of causes and just as many charities. If We Ran The World founder and CEO Cindy Gallop thinks her website can solve that very problem. Says Gallop: “As human beings, we are a race of prevaricators and procrastinators. The moment we complete an action, however tiny, we feel enormously good about ourselves.” There are no frills, no gimmicks, and no message boards on If We Ran the World: you simply give your answer to the question "If I ran the world, I would..."and the site spits out a variety of possible actions for you to take. With each action, you build your profile, creating a list for you and others to prove that not only do you care enough about a cause, but enough about it to have actually done something about it.
Gallop envisioned the site as an answer to social media sites where much is said but little is done. So, just as the tweet is to Twitter, the micro-action is to If We Ran The World. The website is designed considering “that as you complete each micro-action, you feel good about yourself—you build your self-esteem.” Some people use the site as a checklist for household chores, but people often use it to find an outlet to chip away at the world’s bigger problems like Darfur or homelessness: “We want to demonstrate that cumulatively you can ladder up to have an impact on the bigger picture," says Gallop. "When you align that with the ability to help other people and to feel part of something bigger than yourself—that is the secret of human happiness.”
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