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Benj and Jessica launched a nonprofit. Follow our journey as we built a 501(c)(3) and a web site, and now usher in an endless stream of worthy charity nominees and monthly grant winners!

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October 2019 winner Reach Out and Read

Charitocracy's 38th check to October winner Reach Out and Read for $1682

We have good news about October winner Reach Out and Read, right after this quick update...

Sharing is Caring

Over the past couple weeks I've made a big push to improve the experience of sharing at Charitocracy. Whether you nominate a cause, vote for a nominee, or just read about one in our blog, you can share that with your friends and family on social media. That's how we'll attract new donors and more dollars in the monthly pot, without the cost of ads. You are our advertising department!

Sharing Is Caring

Many of the building blocks, such as opening the site content to non-donors, creating share images for each nominated cause, and writing one-liner descriptions, I've slowly completed throughout 2019. But now you can click on those Facebook and Twitter share buttons, and put all my work... to work! While you're at it, go ahead and Like/Follow us if you don't already. Thanks, as always, for supporting us.

October 2019 winner Reach Out and Read

At midnight on Halloween we named Charitocracy's 38th monthly winner. Congratulations to Reach Out and Read, nominated by donor RoamX. They give young children a foundation for success by incorporating books into pediatric care and encouraging families to read aloud together. You can find their web page here.

Now you have a week to further sweeten the pot with a special one-time donation of any amount, which we'll add straight to the check we write to Reach Out and Read. We've already received one giant $500 pot sweetener! ❤️

Before you go, check out this inspiring video describing Reach Out and Read's fantastic Leyendo Juntos (Reading Together) program for Spanish-speaking families. Then feel good about your part in our collective $1682+ grant to help with their work!

Have a great November and be sure to log into Charitocracy to update your votes or nominate a new cause!

No such thing as over-Sharing

Social Sharing Pop-Up

Sharing is Dead

Sharing nominee cause pages has been broken at Charitocracy for a long time. Any time you voted or nominated a cause, you'd get an annoying pop-up asking you to share with your social medium of choice. And no matter which cause you just nominated or voted for, it would always just share a link to Charitocracy's home page with a generic image. BORING!

And then even that annoying pop-up stopped working. Some change in my Charitocracy code or our social sharing plugin broke it, and I didn't bother to fix it. Honestly, that pop-up disappearing was an improvement, since the social sharing experience was terrible.

Well, I'm proud to announce: The annoying pop-up is BACK!

Long Live Sharing

I've been quietly laying a lot of the groundwork all year:

  • Most of the site, including the discussion/voting pages for nominated causes, was unreachable to the general public behind the "pay wall" unless they donated and logged in. So you really couldn't share anything but the front page anyway. I opened up the whole site to everyone, but only donors can click on Vote buttons.
  • When sharing, you want a nice big image to go with it. Furthermore, Facebook and Twitter prefer images of different sizes and aspect ratios. So I had to make some! 87 x 2 so far, to cover all past nominees.
  • After voting, Charitocracy used to redirect you to the Dashboard page where you could cancel votes or adjust percentage split between different causes sharing your vote. But then if you tried to share after voting, you'd be sharing the Dashboard page instead of the cause page. Nope! So now the vote adjustment controls are at the top of each Vote page, and voting just reloads the same page. So you're at the right place when it's time to share.

Call to Action

If you're on Facebook or Twitter, I hope you'll share your voting activity with friends and family each time. (If you're on both, please share to both!) You don't have to write anything extra in your posts, so it takes literally 2 buttons clicks. It may take some time, but when your people see your engagement with Charitocracy and the great causes you're supporting, they're bound to get curious and get tangled in our web of love and generosity.

And no better time to test it than right now. Get on there and vote!

September 2019 winner Dorian Relief @ Red Cross

Charitocracy's 37th check to September winner Dorian Relief at American Red Cross for $1305

We have good news about September winner Dorian Relief @ Red Cross, right after this quick update...

Home Again

Jessica and I returned home last weekend from our epic family RV trip, ending with my brother's beautiful and so-much-fun wedding in Montana! Now we're getting back in the groove of our normal routine, inspired by the end of another month, and its well-deserving winner:

September 2019 winner Dorian Relief @ Red Cross

Last night we named Charitocracy's 37th monthly winner. Congratulations to Dorian Relief @ Red Cross, nominated by donor TdotWING. The American Red Cross provides food, shelter, comfort, and hope to families affected by Hurricane Dorian. You can find their Dorian web page here.

Now for a big shout-out to TdotWING. We have a handful of two-time winning nominators, and had one other three-time winner (props, Stephanie!). But this is a brand new Charitocracy record, her fourth successful nomination out of four!!

Now you have a week to further sweeten the pot with a special one-time donation of any amount, which we'll add straight to the check we write to the American Red Cross.

Before you go, check out this 1:20 video describing how the American Red Cross is helping the people of the Bahamas in addition to those affected in the U.S. Then feel good about your part in our collective $1305+ grant to help with their work!

Have a great October and be sure to log into Charitocracy to update your votes or nominate a new cause!