Start by Taking Charge of Your Change – a new way you can support the fight to Protect Clean Water.
We’ve all had this experience.
You make it to the end of the check-out line. Then, in front of everybody, the cashier looks you in the eye and says “Will you be adding a donation today for [name that worthy cause]?’
You say “OK,” because you know that if you don’t you’ll feel guilty afterwards. By the time you get home from shopping, you’ve probably forgotten the whole thing.
Donate-at-checkout requests happen for one big reason: They work. It’s hard to say “No,” and even if each donation is small, they can really add up. Some stores raise tens of thousands of dollars from just a few days of “round-up” or spare-change-at-checkout donations. Overall, US businesses raise as much as half a billion dollars annually in small donations from customers like you.
The money goes to all kinds of great causes. But they were picked by the store, not by you. The store gets all the credit for your donations. Your individual involvement can seem insignificant – if you remember it at all. There’s also the guilt factor. Nobody wants to feel guilty, but is guilt really the best way to generate support for even the most worthwhile causes?
What if there was another 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 farm stand, 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 (our favorite!)?
Well, this is exactly the kind of donation system Clean Water Action is launching for 2019. We tested it last fall with members like you and got an enthusiastic response!
We hope you will check it out, and sign up now.
Maybe you’ve seen that meme circulating on social media that says, “People want to make change without making any changes,” a quote attributed to Leo Tolstoy.* That quote reminds me think about what I like most about Clean Water Action’s new 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 positive 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.]
