Category: General News

Last time I talked about smile.amazon.com as a way to boost the size of the monthly pot at Charitocracy. But I'm reminded of an even better way: employer matching programs. We received our first such match last week!

If you happen to work for a big company, or an extraordinarily awesome small company, there's a good chance they match their employees' charitable donations 1:1. If for example you signed up for $65/year, your employer might accept a copy of your Charitocracy receipt email and send along another $65 straight from them to us.

We're more than happy to jump through any administrative hoops with your company if we're not already in their system; usually it only requires us to complete a quick registration form. Check with your HR department. And if you contact us to let us know you applied for a match and who your employer is, we can update your account's donation tally so you get credit for your employer's match when it comes in! Win, win.

Thanks to a heads up from the amazing Kim Andrews, I'm now aware of Charitocracy's presence on smile.amazon.com. I'll let Amazon explain:

AmazonSmile is a simple and automatic way for you to support your favorite charitable organization every time you shop, at no cost to you. When you shop at smile.amazon.com, you’ll find the exact same low prices, vast selection and convenient shopping experience as Amazon.com, with the added bonus that Amazon will donate a portion of the purchase price to your favorite charitable organization.

So if you shop at Amazon, you can reach it through the smile front door, choose Charitocracy as your charitable cause to support, and then buy what you would normally buy. Or better yet, buy one of EVERYTHING!

We have $230 in September's pot, and on Friday night at midnight we'll name our first recipient cause! And if after 9 months -- the gestation period for a web charity -- and 33 blog posts you don't fully grasp Charitocracy yet, I don't blame you! I've only just taken the time to really explain it here. (Existing donors need to log out first to see it, since it's geared toward new recruits.)

To be honest, 6 months ago when I took a guess at how many donors we'd attract in our first month, I guessed higher. I figured we might get 100 donors, since there were plenty more than that who liked our Facebook page. Currently there are 220 likes, but only 47 donors. Some of that discrepancy is due to households creating one account whereas multiple family members like Charitocracy. But I'm hopeful there are still a lot of friends and family members out there who simply need our persistent yammering here before they'll climb aboard. At $13/year and 2 minutes to enter your name and credit card info, it's not a steep climb!

At the same time, I totally underestimated the generosity of our donors. I imagined we'd average maybe $2/month from each donor, but instead we're seeing closer to $5/month! This is great, since it tells me our monthly pot will be somewhere in the vicinity of $500 once we cross that 100 donor mark. If you're reading this, you've probably already signed up, but if not, let me know what it's going to take. I will suffer a bucket of ice water. I will eat a lime. I will sing karaoke (or not sing karaoke if you prefer). Tell me what I can do that I'm not already doing to earn your $13! Operators are standing by.