Well, of COURSE you visit TheHungerSite every day, right?

[conuly]

And its affiliates for breast cancer, the rainforest, child health, animal rescue, and literacy?

Do you know who helps support TheLiteracySite every time you click? That's right, Pigeonpresents.com, aka Mo Willems. This is because he rocks. And so does that pigeon.

(I needneedneed an icon.)

Comments

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

The animalrescuesite one is pretty crap, though - the money just goes to HSUS affliates.

[conuly]

???

[leora.livejournal.com]

Would you mind explaining that more? It's relevant to me as I sometimes use the store and pick a charity to get more support. Although usually I end up going with child literacy or child health care anyway. I know not all charities are equally good (in the sense of actually helping what they claim to help) but I don't always figure out which ones are better or worse.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

Sure.

Here's the list of charities that TheAnimalRescueSite sends money to:
The Fund for Animals = HSUS affliate lobbying for animal rights (not animal welfare) org; not an actual helping-animals organization, just a PAC.

International Fund for Animal Welfare - another HSUS affliate; lots of reports of animals helped in exotic places, very little substance about the eventual disposition of animals 'helped'

North Shore Animal League - this one IS actually a shelter, but frankly, it's not a good one. For one thing, they won't take back animals that don't work out.

Petfinder.com Foundation - thsi is the only charity on the list that I can recommend, and frankly, for the time, effort, and spyware in the site's ads, it's just less effort to send them a direct donation for $10 or so a year.


To be fair, if you're a big HSUS fan (I'm not; see NC Pit Bull case, see deceptive fundraising practices from Katrina rescues and the Vick bust; see the whole 'we're the experts on animal shelters even though we don't run one with our multi-zillion dollar annual budget'...), the first two are probably okay. And if you consider any shelter a good one to donate to, NSAL is okay. After all, it doesn't cost you anything. But to my way of thinking, the first is doing more harm than good; the second has a real dearth of actual information about them; and the third is one I really wish would go away and I worry that I'm contributing to their media budget.

My BIGGEST objection to the ARS is the deceptive marketing. Your clicks don't put food in a bowl. They don't even pay the salary of some poor scmuck who is cleaning cages (or worse) at a shelter. They go to marketing and lobbying efforts of groups that are not, in all but one case, directly involved in animal sheltering.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, that is disturbing. *sighs*

I don't have a lot of money. I don't have energy or the ability to volunteer. What I do have is time and the internet. I knew that free clicks don't donate very much, but I had hoped I was doing a bit more good than that.

I think I'll look up the care2 set of click to gives and make sure to hit them today and maybe play some more freerice, even though freerice annoys me (for reasons totally unrelated to its charity, which I haven't researched).

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

Well... if you've got time? See if your local shelter can use a phone person. I work with another person who volunteers once a week to call all the breed rescues who might possibly take a dog from my local shelter if there is one of the breed. I take my camera with me to the shelter (it's a small municipal shelter and doesn't post on petfinder), take the pictures, email picture + animal ID # and any info (usually just apparent age/sex, sometimes notes like 'injured/sick/aggressive') and she posts them on craigslist with the shelter information and calls each breed rescue group for any purebred dogs. It's about an hour of leaving messages (most rescue groups don't have someone answering the phone all the time) and 15 minutes or so ot post on CL.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I can't do things like that. Really, I can't do things. Clicking some links is pretty much what I can do. I'm really severely disabled with about 50 different specifics to it. Pretty much all sorts of things that seem like tiny trivial tasks aren't. I use most of my time, energy, and organizational skills working out ways to keep myself fed, which is a really hard task.

I like click-to-gives because they are at my level of what I have to offer, and they require no commitment. I don't do well with committing to do things, but I like something when I feel up to it I can do something really easy.

I have time, but I don't have time with things like energy. And phones are really problematic for me. And thinking uses up energy, so I ration it out.

I do appreciate the suggestion. I used to do a lot more than I do now. And maybe someday they'll figure out ways to make me healthier and I will again.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

yeah, phones are hard for me too, which is why I just go do the walking and photos part - the shelter only has 8 runs.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Thank you for volunteering. I really do appreciate people who do. I admit, had I not become ill, I probably wouldn't have had time to volunteer. I wanted to go to grad school and get a teaching certificate and become a high school teacher, which I feel is also a useful thing to spend a lot of time on. But I like that the world contains people who do help make things better.

[xianghua.livejournal.com]

Well, a lot of it is thinking of something you CAN do, even if it's only intermittantly. (One of my friends doesn't have time or energy or much money, but once or twice a year, she gets towels from the thrift stores that are too stained or threadbare to sell, rips them into strips, and braids them into disposable, cheap, durable toys for the one shelter that can use them.

[leora.livejournal.com]

Oh, and thank you for the info. :)

[conuly]

Well, that's pretty sucky. Damn.

[norinel.livejournal.com]

I've been bad about this lately... do you/anyone happen to know if there's an active aggregator site for all of those? My attempts to JFGI got me to http://www.charityclickdonation.com/, where the first three links I tried were dead.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do click! OK, maybe not every single day, because I have a brain like a thing with holes in, but I try.