You don’t need to have a lot of free time or money to make a difference. The following apps help you to give back without changing your daily routine. Donate to a good cause by tracking your exercise, eating, sleeping, taking a break from your phone, doing surveys while taking a bathroom break, taking photos or watching meaningful videos in addition to your favorite YouTube channels. Doing good feels good, and you can begin today!
Charity Miles
Swimsuit season is around the corner. Although all bodies are beautiful just the way they are, many people are hoping to exercise more and improve their fitness. Charity Miles is a free app for both Apple and Android users that rewards users for exercising by donating to charity. Once you download the app, you can track any sort of workout or movement. This can be walking, running or even dancing. For every mile (1.6 kilometers), money is donated to a charity of your choice. It is also possible to get friends to sponsor you for extra motivation and donation!
Feedie
Feedie is a great app for foodies. It is a free app for Apple and Android, and it literally helps feed those in need. So far, Feedie has donated 12,168,836 meals through this app and from event donations. The best thing is that most of us already have all the skills we need for this, thanks to social media. Once you install the app, you will see a list of the restaurants that Feedie works with. Once there, you just order a meal as usual. Just don’t forget to take a photo before you dig in! The restaurant will then make a donation equal to one meal to The Lunchbox Fund. You can request that your favorite restaurant join Feedie as well. However, it seems like a great way to branch out and try something new while making a difference.
Spotfund
Many people wish they could donate money to worthy causes, but not all of us have the finances. Spotfund was made for people just like this. It is a micro-donation platform that only allows you to donate $1, $2 or $3 max to a good cause. It hopes to bring people together and turn conversations into actions. It can be embarrassing to donate just $1 on a Facebook fundraiser or GoFundMe campaign. Because Spotfund ONLY allows you to donate a small amount, everyone can participate and feel included. Imagine the difference you could make if everyone in your social network donated $1.
If the amazing feeling of making a donation isn’t enough, Spotfund also gives you points for anyone who donates because of you. Your impact score tracks the size of your civic footprint based on these impact points. Each point represents a dollar donated by you and your network. If 100 likes on Facebook feel good, imagine how amazing it would be to know that you raised $100. Spotfund is an app for Apple, and it has a great slogan: “It’s not about the size of your wallet. It’s about the power of your social network.”
Deedly
Young people are the future of the world, and Deedly hopes to empower them. Deedly is available for both Apple and Android, and it offers a program that helps in more ways than one. First, users log in to the system and watch a daily video that is up to five minutes long. These videos are intended to educate viewers about world issues as well as the charities that are striving to fix them. After watching the video, users need to pass a quiz or complete a relevant activity. This earns them Deed Dollars that they can donate towards a charity of their choice. Each user has a Deed Wall where they can track the difference that they have made!
HTC Power to Give
Imagine if you could donate the processing power of your smartphone towards research. HTC Power to Give does just that. Once you download the app, you can donate your phone’s processing power while you sleep. All you need to do is plug in your phone to make sure it’s charging and keep it connected to the internet via WiFi or mobile data. As HTC explains, “your spare computing power will become part of an enormous grid, providing processing power to a project you’ve selected from a range across the world.”
Donate a Photo
People take photos every day. We take photos of our food, our pets, our adventures and ourselves. Sometimes we post them online, send them to friends or we forget about them on our phones. Donate a Photo is here to help you put that selfie to good use. All you need to do is download the app, pick a cause, pick a photo and share the photo on the app. You can share up to one photo a day and Donate a Photo will donate $1 to your chosen cause. This is available for Apple and Android, allowing over 200,000 people to donate over 4 million photos to help 242 causes!
Good Guide
Good Guide is a free app available for both Apple and Android. Its goal is to direct you to spend your hard-earned money in a more responsible way. Good Guide helps the user identify products that are healthier and more sustainable. The app uses product ingredient information coupled with authoritative sources for chemical regulations to rate products. Good Guide makes this easy by allowing you to scan products to get this information while you’re on the go. You can also search products on the app or website if you’re shopping online.
Maximus Life
There are certain things we do in our everyday life that are just for us. It is hard to imagine that they could also benefit others! Maximus Life aims to connect everyday life to impact. The app allows companies to engage their employees and create campaigns that make an impact. Maximus Life connects your personal fundraising page to Facebook, YouTube, Fitbit, Strava, Apple Health and more for a fully modern and redesigned fundraising experience. You can personalize the fundraiser to raise money while you walk, sleep or do any other activity of your choice! It’s a great way for companies to work with their employees to make a difference. This app is available for both Apple and Android and can be downloaded for free.
MicroHero
There are always ads on social media for making money by doing surveys. While there are actually ways to profit from surveys, there are also ways to donate via surveys. MicroHero partners with companies that want to do market research or that need quick answers to urgent business questions. This app is only available for Apple, but they hope to expand to Android as well. You can participate by downloading the app and answering survey questions in your spare time. The companies that asked those questions will then donate money to a charity of your choice. Time is money, after all, and your time can make a difference.
Forest
Most do-gooder apps require you to do something actively. Forest is the opposite, as it requires you to do nothing on your phone. Forest is available for Apple for just $1,99 and it is free for Android. It feels almost unfair to call this an app, because it feels much more like a game. Whenever you want to take a break from your phone and/or focus on work, your friends or a home project, the adventure begins. As soon as you need that time to focus on something else, you can turn on the app. It will then begin growing a tree. You need to stay off your phone for a certain amount of time for your tree to fully mature. If you use your phone too soon, the tree will die and you will not get any points. Any points earned allow you to buy actual trees that will be planted in real life. So far, Forest has planted over 670,000 trees!
Title Photo: Shutterstock
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