You want a new jacket. So what do you do? You go to the store and buy that new Calvin Klein one you’ve been eyeing. You want that cool Coldplay album. What do you do? You go to the store and buy the CD (or, more likely these days, you head to iTunes and download it). You want to buy shares of a company or learn how. What do you do? Maybe you go to WeSeed or MarketWatch.
But how do you find a charity worth your money? Seems a little more complicated, doesn’t it? “It's more difficult to give money away intelligently than it is to earn it in the first place,” Andrew Carnegie once said. (And he didn’t have to deal with the onslaught of information we all have nowadays.)
Well, the folks behind Donation Dashboard say it can be just as easy. They recommend a donation portfolio that is tailored specifically to your own interests. Sure, you already give money to the groups you know and like, but don’t you think there could be others you might also be interested in? Donation Dashboard can help you figure that out.
Donation Dashboard founder and UC Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg created the tool because he believes that “people are feeling economically pinched, but still want to be able to share in an effective way.”
Here is how it works. First, you take an online survey that asks you to rate a small set of non-profits. Then, using a scale you indicate how interested you are in the ACLU, for instance, or Habitat for Humanity, or, say, your local symphony. The tool then gives a portfolio of recommendations scaled to suit your preferences and available funds.
Developed by Goldberg and several UC students as a project for the Berkeley Center for New Media, Donation Dashboard extends machine learning techniques used by commercial websites to recommend movies, music, and books. It goes far beyond existing charity ranking sites by statistically combining your ratings with the ratings entered by your fellow good Samaritans to compute a portfolio customized to your interests.
But why should you do this? I see three reasons:
• Broaden your philanthropic reach — Not only do you learn more about yourself and your interests, but you’ll discover organizations that match your philosophy but don’t have the marketing dollars to get your attention otherwise.
• Allocate your scarce dollars best — You don’t have as much to give as you’d like to. Nobody does. Donation dashboard can help you put money towards the issues and organizations you feel strongest about.
• Feel like a big-shot philanthropist (if only temporarily!) — It’s fun to see what it would be like to “give” the sum of your choice (go ahead, type in a million dollars) to the causes you believe in.
Now you should know that Donation Dashboard doesn’t endorse any particular charity nor take a percentage of gifts. It really isn’t a fundraising tool, either. It just opens your mind to the possibilities of charitable giving. Now that’s a fun ride.
Jennifer Openshaw, author of "The Millionaire Zone", is co-founder and president of WeSeed.com, whose mission is to help real, everyday people use what they know and love to learn about stocks, make smarter money decisions and ultimately take control of their financial destinies. You can reach her at jopenshaw@weseed.com.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of LendingTree, LLC.
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