(1) Change your search engine of choice from Google to a charity-friendly search engine like SearchKindly.org or GoodSearch.com - These sites donate all or a portion of their advertising revenues to charitable causes.

(2) Spend some time clicking on donation web sites like TheHungerSite.com - Each click on one of these sites results in sponsors donating money for food to the hungry. These sites typically also feature online stores that donate as much as 30% of their sales to charity.

(3) Spend some time online playing games or giving virtual gifts - FreeRice.com is a vocabulary game in which each question answered correctly results in grains of rice being donated to charity. The (Lil) Green Patch, a Facebook application that indirectly raises money to save rainforests through advertising revenue, has been installed more than three million times and has nearly 500,000 active users.

(4) Donate miles to charities' frequent flier accounts - If you have "orphan" miles from an airline that you rarely fly, why not contribute them to a charity of your choice?

Taking the big picture view, it's exciting to see the ways that charitable organizations are embracing the Web and appealing to a whole new class of donors online. In most cases, these new online donors are much younger (and much less wealthy) than the traditional donor -- but are making much more of an immediate impact for causes that matter.

[image: FreeRice.com]