Has this ever happened to you?
You’re finished shopping. You’re ready to head home with your groceries, or that special gift you just bought, or that last item you needed to finish the project you’ve been working on.
Then comes The Ask: “Would you like to donate your change to [name that worthy cause]?”
Sometimes you say, “OK.” Other times you just can’t be bothered, even though you know you might feel guilty afterwards. Either way, by the time you’re back home, you’ve probably forgotten all about it.
The rationale behind this fundraising is clear. It’s often easier to say “yes.” The donations may be small, but with enough “yesses” they can really add up. Some retailers raise tens of thousands of dollars from just a few days of “round-up” or spare change checkout donations.
The causes are typically good ones, but they were picked by the store, not by you. And your individual role in these businesses’ charitable giving success can seem insignificant – if you remember it at all. Then there’s the guilt factor. Nobody wants to feel guilty, but is guilt really the best way to generate support for even the most worthwhile of causes?
Yet, businesses across the U.S. raise as much as half a billion dollars in small donations from their customers each year. That’s money a lot of the beneficiaries might never see otherwise, and it adds up to a great deal of good.
What if there was a way to channel the positive power of these kinds of small change donations into real impact for a cause you are passionate about – maybe one that’s not often represented in those in-store charity check-out campaigns? What if you chose the nonprofit, instead of letting the store where you shop do if for you? What if you could make those small round-up donations part of every purchase you make – at the supermarket, at the gas pump, at your local farmstand, online shopping or even bill paying? What if the donations happened automatically, exactly the way you set things up, and you could monitor your giving and your impact throughout the year?
What if the cause you were passionate about was clean water? (My personal favorite.)
Then you’re in luck! I’ve spent the last several weeks with our team here at Clean Water Action getting ready to launch a new Connected Giving program that does all of this and more. Our new giving platform that puts you in charge and allows you to make small round-up donations with every purchase is now live.
I hope you will check it out, and sign up now.
A couple of days ago, I saw one of those internet memes on Facebook that said “People want to make change without making any changes,” a quote attributed to Leo Tolstoy.* I like wordplay, and the quote made me think about what I like most about this new Connected Giving program for automatic round-up donations:
- It’s easy.
- You don’t have to make any big changes in what you’re doing every day.
- All that small change can really add up to make big change – for our water, for our health, for our movement to protect clean water, now and for future generations.
- You’re in charge of your round-up donations, and you get the credit and appreciation you deserve, direct from Clean Water Action, when you support us this way.
To help get this new program off to a strong start, the first 50 people who sign up will be entered to win one of ten $100 gift cards. Think about the difference that could make for you and for Clean Water Action!
[* It’s unclear whether Tolstoy ever said this. He may have written something more like, “Everyone thinks of changing the world but no one thinks of changing himself.” Probably not originally in English, either. But that wording leaves women out altogether, and is a bit less catchy, so I went with what I saw in the meme.]
