As I mentioned earlier, one of my goals this year is to give more money to charity. But I want to be sure that I'm giving to charities that are worthwhile and perhaps have some personal meaning to me. Over the weekend, I was surfing around the Donors Choose website. Donors Choose is an organization that collects requests from teachers and then helps those teachers get projects funded. Teachers submit a proposal for a project, Donors Choose reviews that project, and then the proposals are posted online for donors to view and choose. You can donate enough to fund an entire project or you can donate a small amount. Every little bit helps. Every donor gets a thank you e-mail from the teacher, and if you donate over $100 or donate the last bit of money to fully fund a project, you get a thank you packet from the classroom.
I donated to a program to help pay for supplies for a penpal program. I had penpals all throughout grade school, and I just recently found some of those penpals on Facebook. I loved getting mail as a kid, and I love that the snail mail letter still exists somewhere.
And then, after I donated, I wondered if there were any personal finance related projects available. And there are! So I put together a giving page with some personal finance projects that still need to be funded. Want to help me fund these projects? I'll be donating over the next few weeks (having made my donation before setting up the page). Join me!