Top Five Ways to Give Online (courtesy of replyforall)

5. Give Your Name. Signing petitions to Senators or foreign diplomats may seem like it won’t make a difference, but sometimes just a collection of people taking a stand has real power. Just look at Amnesty International’s track record. They’ve been relying on your names to help repeal laws, obtain stays of execution, and secure the release of hundreds of prisoners in foreign countries. Sign Amnesty’s petition to free US journalists Laura and Euna.

4. Micro-Volunteer. You don’t need money to give time, and now with companies like The Extraordinaries, you don’t really need that much time, either. Just download one of their phone apps, and you can volunteer with those ten minutes you’re waiting at the doctor’s office. You can help translate a nonprofit page into a foreign language, fact check for reporters, review congressional bills, even tag images for the Smithsonian. So you can do what you can, when you can, and still make a difference.

3. “Friend-raise”. Social networking is a great way to keep in touch with friends, acquaintances, and family members. And now, it’s a great way to raise awareness about your favorite nonprofit or cause. Over 26 million people actively use the Causes application on Facebook, and influence others to join their cause. You can support your cause by merely inviting your friends to join or posting your charitable actions in your status message.

2. Transform your search engine. We’ve ushered in a new age of technology, relying on search engines for answers from the momentous to the mundane. Why not fight desertification, global warming, and habitat loss at the same time? Don’t just search, Ecosearch. Ecosearch is a search engine that uses Yahoo technology and helps reforesting trees and safeguard water resources in the Amazon region, which constitute today one fourth of the fresh water reserves of our planet.

For every 10,000 searches, Ecosearch and Aquaverde (their nonprofit partner) plant a tree in the Amazon and in the Canary Islands. The website even keeps a running count of how many trees have been planted and how many more searches are needed to plant another tree.

1. Donate your email. What better way to make a donation than to have someone else pay for it? replyforall is a free cause email signature that is automatically inserted into your outgoing email messages. You choose your cause, personalize the information to appear in the signature, and you’re all set! replyforall then shares the advertising revenue with its nonprofit partners allowing you to donate without cash. Now you can raise awareness, drive donations for your cause of choice and monitor your impact all by doing what you do everyday – email.

Wow, great news from DonorsChoose.org. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will fund 50% of any classroom project request that preps students in rural and high-poverty schools for college. The catch is that the rest needs to be funded purely by citizens like us. 50%! That’s pretty damn amazing.

Things we can fund are college prep books, science equipment, etc. School is starting up soon (or just started as is the case for my daughter’s kindergarten class). Let’s fund some projects!

Watch a video featuring Stephen Colbert to learn more.