How to Give More to Charity {without spending more}

Do you ever feel like there is so much need in the world, it's overwhelming?  Me too.  Natural disasters abroad, local people in need, hungry children, financially strapped elderly people, refugees starting over from scratch, and shelters with empty shelves. I want to help everyone, want everyone to have enough food, everyone to have their healthcare needs met, everyone to have a blanket and soap.  Sometimes the sheer volume of need can be sweltering. But where to start? We're not billionaires, we are not trust-fund-babies, we are not powerful politicians.

To paraphrase Teddy Rosevelt: I have to do what I can, with what I have.

When budgeting, we have line items for the mortgage, gas, etc.  As Christians my husband and I believe that we also need to have a tithe to our local church as part of our regular giving. (Malachi 3:10 ; Leviticus 27:30)  But that doesn't always seem like enough.  Enter my new plan:

I have long posted about how I make extra money online. Rakuten (ebates), Swagbucks, Microsoft, and Ibotta are my favorite money-makers. {Read: 4 Easy Ways to Make Money Online for the details}

Instead of using that extra money for things like Sephora and Amazon treats for ourselves, we decided to use the extra money towards increasing our giving.  We still do our regular tithe off our income but also are taking extra money we earn / come across to boost organizations that are in need.

I earned a bonus at work and bought feminine hygiene products off our local shelter's "most urgent" wishlist.  We used Amazon charity lists to send Spanish books and word searches to a group that provides Hispanic Senior Citizen programming.  We gave financial contributes to Raices, a group that helps provide legal assistance for refugees and immigrants.  I sent a bullhorn to Faith in Texas from their Amazon Charity List so that they can continue their public demonstrations calling for social justice in the name of Jesus.

I can't 'save' everyone but right now there are some senior citizens enjoying their day with a book we provided.  

There are women at a shelter who don't have to worry about their next cycle because the shelter has plenty of hygiene items. 

Somewhere in America is an immigrant who now has access to legal services to help them navigate tricky paperwork. 

Yes, this is just a drop in the bucket. But if we all add drops to the bucket, do you know what happens?  The bucket fills up!  

If you use ebates/amazon/ibotta/etc, will you consider committing to donate your earnings (or part of them) to those in need?

One more thing:

One super easy way you can make a difference is by shopping with Amazon Smile.  Simply go to smile.amazon and select which charity you want to benefit. Each time you shop on Amazon you go to smile.amazon and the charity you selected will receive a tiny % of what you spend. It's not much. But every little bit helps!

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Related Post: How I Made $334 With Swagbucks

Labor Day: Celebrating Workers

Source

Happy Labor Day!  More than just a day off work (yay!!), parades and picnics, Labor Day is a day to honor our progress as a country towards fair & safe working conditions.  We also honor those who fought to bring us these labor rights, some of whom lost their lives in doing so.  Here are 3 short blurbs from various websites to provide a little background for Labor Day.

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"In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living. Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages."
https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/labor-day-1 

"Only in the 1930s did the tide turn for workers. With Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House, allies in Congress, and the first female cabinet member in Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, a series of reforms were implemented. In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act that established the eight-hour day and five-day week for wage-workers. But don’t solely thank the politicians." https://time.com/5663465/labor-day-union-history/


[Martin Luther King, Jr's statement] “'There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American whether he [or she] is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid, or day laborer,' said King."
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/09/05/labor-day-remember-martin-luther-kings-last-campaign-was-workers-rights