As the year ends, and the holidays begin, charitable giving generally increases.  However, sometimes it can be difficult to find a charity or cause that suits your philosophy and intention. I am interested in giving to charities that are connected to travel and benefit kids.  Have you ever thought of giving while you travel? Have you considered giving travel to a person in need or an at risk youth?  Do you travel to volunteer?

Here are a few travel-related charities: Context Travel offers scholarships to at risk youth to travel abroad, with the intention of changing their perspective.  TogetherforGood.com makes it easy for travelers to give while visiting a foreign country by providing a list of places that need help.  Airline Ambassadors has 10,000 flight attendants who deliver supplies around the world and provide medical escort for needy travelers.  The list goes on but where do you begin and how do you manage your giving? GiveBack.org makes it easy to organize your donations.  You set up a “Foundation” which is your account.  You can add as little or as much money as you would like to the account and receive 100% tax deduction.  If you buy products from their list of sponsors, a percentage of your purchase will be added to your foundation account.  The process is easy.  Once you locate a charity you like you can donate immediately or you can add them to your “follow list” which shows up on your “My Foundation” page.  You can allocate the funds as you see fit.

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I was given $500 to allocate and I donated some to Lake Eden Arts Festival because they are building a Cultural Center for street kids in Kigali Rwanda and my friend is the project manager.  It does make me feel more comfortable knowing who is managing the funds.  I gave some money to Airline Ambassadors because they are totally amazing and deeply committed to stopping child trafficking.  And the last bit went to Context Travel because my kids still talk about their Context Travel tour in Italy and like them, I believe that travel can change a young life.

Site issues:  when I tweeted my donation, the link made me think the general public could see My Foundation page, showing the world my account balance and charities I am following.   However, it only shows that to me, the public is taken to the GiveBack home page.  I would like to see the tweet linked to the charity page.

The tab “My Foundation” made me think I could start a TravelingMom foundation and have other people contribute to it.  For now all I see is my own account info. I would like to see GiveBack create a way for me to collect donations on behalf of My Foundation to benefit the charities I selected.

The Search feature isn’t great. I put in Context Travel and got Journey Through Hallowed Ground, Holland Senior Citizens and some others that were similarly off-base.

The site is still in beta and likely working out my “issues.”  GiveBack.org is organized well enough to start giving right now. 

This post was sponsored by GiveBack.org. The opinion and charity choices are my own.

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