Microcharity: 5 easy ways to donate leftover pennies to a worthy cause

WASHINGTON — In 2017, the entrepreneurial spirit continues to innovate, finding new ways to separate you from your hard-earned money.

You can use your laptop to buy a car from a stranger in Montana. You can use your phone to have a game console delivered by nightfall. You can even tell your Alexa “smart speaker” thing to order more paper towels.

Oh, what a wonderful world.

Even better: It’s just as convenient to donate those hard-earned pennies to a worthy cause — even if you’re pinching them. Call it microcharity.

Here are some ways to donate your change, whether it’s in bit or coin form.

**Coinstar Coins that Count™ program** You probably know about the good folks at Coinstar, which makes those machines that (for a nominal fee) eat your coins and spit out a nice receipt that you convert to cash at the supermarket checkout. Those jolly green giants can also send your digested coins to such charities as the American Red Cross and the Humane Society of the United States. And you can use the receipt to instead get a tax deduction. Learn more on Coinstar’s website. (Courtesy Coinstar)

**UNICEF Change for Good** If you’re traveling internationally on American Airlines, you can donate any currency to UNICEF onboard the aircraft as part of its Change for Good program. And even if you’re not flying, but have a bunch of foreign currency lying around, you can still support the Change for Good campaign by sending to: UNICEF USA
ATTN: Change for Good Program
125 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038 (UNICEF even accepts donations of AAdvantage Miles.) Read more about the Change for Good program on UNICEF’s website. (Thinkstock)

**BStow** This is a service that makes donating significantly easy. Simply “link” the credit/debit card or bank account you’d like to use and choose a charity. Then with every transaction, BStow rounds up the transaction total to the nearest dollar and donates that rounded-up difference. Potential donors who use BStow can choose from more than a million organizations. Learn more on the BStow website. (Courtesy BStow)

Coin Up Coin Up works in a fashion similar to BStow: You link to an account or card; it rounds up each transaction to the nearest dollar and donates the difference to a partner charity of your choice. It does this, however, through a mobile app (available for iOS). Learn more about it on Coin Up’s website. (Courtesy BStow)

Spotfund Spotfund offers would-be microphilanthropists a range of causes (each with its own “story”) to which they can donate a few dollars. The idea is to encourage several small donations to several campaigns, then have those donors encourage others (via social media) to donate as well. Spotfund gamifies charity, giving out each donor an “impact score” that factors in the money you’ve donated as well as the money you’ve raised from sharing campaigns. Learn more on Spotfund’s website. (Courtesy BStow)

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