We focus all our attention on finding great free iPhone downloads for our readers. But this post is about how we can use our iPhones to send free donations to our favorite causes. And it also does not cost us a cent!!
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Social Media has made it so much easier to raise funds quickly in times of sudden disasters. It has allowed money to flow quickly from the masses to organizations – like the Red Cross – that are geared to react to emergencies and to help people to recover. The Haiti disaster is the most recent example and we wrote about that a while back.
So the iPhonegizmo team decided to take a look at the 140,000 Apps that Apple boasted about at their recent iPad Event and see just what is on offer there to help us make donations. And much to our surprise we found the cupboard was almost bare!
There are a few (very few) apps for donations or volunteer work, but they have been largely ignored by the iPhone world with mostly fewer than a half dozen people rating the apps – and with most indicating they are not at all happy with any of these type of apps.
Well, there was a donation App launched just three days ago. But, although it has been developed by a fairly well known company, they do not bother to mention the App on their site (even though this is the site they record on iTunes for the app) and the support site is also the home site for the company and so also does not mention the app?!!
Nor will we! We have written to ask them to let us know if they think the app is worth promoting on their own site and to let us know if they intend to do so. It could be a good app. It sounds good. We just maintain (and we have said this before) if a company is not prepared to promote its own app on its own site – that says”don’t trust it” louder than anything else we can think of!
So – that leaves us with just one app we can tell you about. ONE app – out of 140K apps!
And its a strange one – though popular – and has received a 3.5 star rating from over 6,000 users.
The way it works is this – if you are happy to report your shopping patterns to CauseWorld, then they will reward you with “karmas”, each time you walk into a store. The karmas will be turned into donation $$ by sponsors such as Kraft and Citi, that go the the charity of your choice.
Or, to be a bit more detailed, CauseWorld have:
lined up some great sponsors that have pledged to back each karma a user earns in the application. You earn karmas by walking into a store or restaurant and checking in. No purchase is required to earn karmas. When you earn enough points you can donate them for charitable actions, from planting a tree to caring for an injured animal. Donations are carried out by our partner charities.
If this sounds like something you are happy to do – after all there is little effort, no cost and hey presto, help flows out from your iPhone…then give the CauseWorld app a go.