pelf-ism is contagious

Guess what? Guess what?

If you enjoyed one of my previous posts on Charity Guide and HATI, I’ve found something I’m sure you’d be delighted to learn about! *grins*

Have you heard of FreePledge??

FreePledge is a site that helps you support your favorite causes and non-profit organizations at NO COST to you. It provides you with a new and innovative way to fulfill your charitable intentions when you shop for books, videos, CDs, electronics and other goods and services online at your favorite stores such as Amazon.com, Apple, Drugstore.com, Office Depot, Target and more.

- FreePledge - Shop, Donate, Feel Good

But how does FreePledge work, you ask? When you shop through FreePledge’s network of retailers, FreePledge is paid a referral fee AND 100% of the listed referral fees is given back to the nonprofit organizations of your choice! For each retailer, FreePledge lists the percentage they give back to the nonprofit organization. 100% of the listed percentages are donated. For example, Amazon.com purchases result in a 5% donation; on Drugstore.com purchases, they donate 7%. Isn’t this cool?

So all you need to do is to select one of the 154 non-profit organizations (and this number is growing) affiliated with FreePledge. You may search for a particular non-profit organization by name or keyword, category (e.g. disabilities, environment, health, AIDS etc.) or state (any state in the US). Then you SHOP from 160 retailers, which include Shutterfly, Amazon.com, Flowers.com, Kodak EasyShare Gallery and more. And you’re done! Once your transaction is completed, FreePledge will donate the listed percentage to the non-profit organization of your choice! It’s as simple as that!

Sign up now so that you can track your purchases as well as donations, but if you don’t like the hassle of the signing-up process, no worries, you’ll still be able to shop and donate but you will not be able to track your donations.

So what are you waiting for? Shop, donate and feel good!

If charity and volunteerism are two subjects close to your heart, read on. I may have found something that might interest you

CHARITY GUIDE

Charity Guide’s purpose is to inspire and facilitate flexible volunteerism. We promote opportunities to make a difference that are entirely flexible and immediately actionable. Charity Guide serves well-meaning people with busy or unpredictable schedules. We use one-to-one marketing techniques to appeal to “would-be volunteers” on the cause of their greatest interest and at the moment of their greatest willingness to act.

Charity Guide offers service projects that are entirely flexible and immediately actionable, organized by duration:

• how to make a difference in 15 minutes
• how to make a difference in a few hours
• how to make a difference during a volunteer vacation

Or, you can search for ideas to make a difference by cause:

• animal welfare
• children’s issues
• community development
• environmental protection
• health & safety
• poverty
• random acts of kindness

And you can promote charity and volunteerism by using any of Charity Guide’s pretty and colourful banners available here. Trust me, the banners are all very nice I almost wanted to display ALL OF THEM here in my blog!

HATI

Now, HATI, on the other hand, is the Malaysian version of Charity Guide.

HATI is a resource and platform for people and organisations that are involved in community work in Malaysia.

Like Charity Guide, HATI also provides a platform for volunteers as well as a directory of charities, NGOs, communities and projects that will definitely benefit from the participation of the general public. Another interesting point to note is that in HATI, the directories are categorized into states - which makes browsing through them as easy as ABC.

HATI is currently looking for part-time/full-time volunteers to manage the various functions in HATI. This includes the operations of the portal, content updates and new content etc. So if you are interested in helping HATI help others, register now as a volunteer.

While we’re clean and dry and preparing turkeys and practicing on our off-key caroling and decorating our Christmas trees and making last-minute shopping and warming up to the Yuletide, there are about 75,000 people out there who have just lost their homes, their belongings, their family members.

These flood victims need food, blankets, pillows, mats, disposable diapers, CLEAN clothes and underwear, sanitary napkins and other essential items VERY VERY badly.

So if you are able to donate some of the above items to keep them safe and warm through the “cold” Christmas, you can send the items to any of the following venues:

• Dewan Serbaguna at the Parliament House
• Kontena Nasional Outpost at PJ
• Red Cresent’s Flood Relief Centre at Puteri Pacific Hotel, JB (Hotlines: 07-219 9995 and 07-219 9996)

Or you can also post this message up on your blog as well as spread the message via SMS. You should now put the SMS function on your phone into good use.