Search Away

A week or two ago one of my community members/housemates told us about http://www.goodsearch.com. It's a search engine that donates money to a charity or organization of your choice each time you search for something. Goodsearch donates half of the revenue it makes from advertisements, so it's at no cost to the person users.

I know it's been around for a few years and maybe a lot of people already know about it, but I never used it before because I didn't realize it was free. Yesterday I used goodsearch for the first time and now I just want to search for things randomly so money will go somewhere good. Of course, only a small amount of money goes to the organization, but—like everything else—if enough people use it enough times it adds up and that's why I'm writing about it.

My only problem now is choosing from the many worthy charities and organizations out there. The good thing is, you're not locked in to one organization—you can even change where your money goes every time you search.

A few of the organizations I've been using/I suggest are...

Catholic Charities of Western New York (which sponsors CCSC and which Refugee Resettlement is under—or you could find your local Catholic Charities)
Harvest House (where my housemate who brought goodsearch to my attention does his service)
UNHCR
American Heart Association
American Cancer Society
NOW (National Organization for Women)
HRC (Human Rights Campaign)
United Way

Of course, you can search for your favorite charity/organization on goodsearch. I know I sound like a commercial, but goodsearch is powered by yahoo, so it's just as useful as any other search engine.

Maybe you could do double good by searching for a place to volunteer or educating yourself about different social justice issues and what to do about them.

Happy Searching.