Fundraising / Charity Ideas Blog

The concept is the same as iTunes, Amazon MP3 and PlayDigital but with a built in charity component.

You can download and listen to your favorite music through fairsharemusic and half of the money generated goes to charity. The have over 8.5 million tracks to choose from. The service is British so they’ll charge you 79p for a track, which is roughly $1.25. A few of the charities they donate to are:

World Wildlife Fund
Oxfam
Amnesty International
British Heart Foundation
Centrepoint
Friends of the Earth

Fairsharemusic, which was founded by Jonny Woolf, a former commercial director at Warner Music, and Lee Cannon, a one-time A&R director at Mercury, estimates that if every legal song and album purchase made last year had been carried out through their site, charities would have received more than £9.5 million in donations.

Check out fairsharemusic listen to some tunes and help out.

There is a fantastic site called The Green Music Group comprised of musicians, music fans and music industry people who are trying to bring more sustainability to the music and touring scene. There has been criticism the past couple of years with the amount of power and co2 pollution concerts and touring groups produce.

Green Music Group is a project of

Reverb, a 501(c)(3) environmental organization founded by Guster guitarist/vocalist Adam Gardner and his wife, environmentalist Lauren Sullivan. Since 2004, Reverb has greened over 80 major music tours while conducting grassroots outreach to over 10 million music fans.

The goals of the environmental group are:

1. Creating an engaging online community of musicians, music industry leaders, and music fans all committed to addressing our greatest environmental concerns.

2. Facilitating large-scale greening of the music community through touring, venue, and label standards, resource development, green grants mentoring, and viral video and public service campaigns.

3. Providing environmental nonprofits with a megaphone for their cause, allowing them to expand their reach and support base.

4. Creating a sustainable green music guild to support and inform the efforts of the music community and position leaders in the music industry as voices for change, working to shine a light on the most pressing environmental issues of our time.

The green group targets music venues, transportation, waste reduction and enery offsets to minimize the damage a tour may due.

Dave Mathews, Willie Nelson, Sheryl Crow, Maroon 5, Bonnie Raitt, Bare Naked Ladies, The Roots, Guster and more are involved in the project. The bands are hoping to inspire a shift in your environmental thinking as well. The Green Music Group have contests every couple of weeks to help motivate you. The latest one involves picturing yourself commuting in the most sustainable method you can think of. The industry would like you to get involved and keep in touch by signing up with an email list.

All in all a solid effort by this group to help think environmentally and get the audience involved.

The video says it all

Sixteen-year-old Sarah Phillips has raised more than $75,000 for cervical cancer research in the past 10 days, just by posting a YouTube video.

I think of several things when watching this video. Strong family bonds, and the real reason people donate. Charities can show people all the charts and stats in the world but people donate because of an emotional connection. It’s because of this connection that the video has gone viral and people are passing this along.

Watch the video and if is strikes a cord consider making a donation

I’ve come clean on my interest in drumming and music before in my post Music to the Rescue. I’ve been playing and studying drumming for a long time and came across a great article featuring some of my favorite players donating parts of their kits for charity. Although the auction took place last December the reason why they did it is still relevant.

The auction took place for teenagers with cancer in the UK. Everyday the UK will diagnose up to 6 new cases of cancer in teens and young adults. In this age range cancer is the most common form of death after non-accidents. Survival rates are lagging behind adults because teens are often misdiagnosed losing time for an important early treatment.

The teenage cancer trust uses their fundraising to deliver presentations to schools for awareness and promoting a healthy lifestyle. They build units in hospitals devoted to teenagers with cancer. The units give the patients an ability to connect with other teenagers with cancer to connect and talk about their ordeal. They can also spend time on the internet, play pool, video games or with musical instruments while in the hospital.

Drummers (that noble breed of musician…ahem, cough, cough) came to the aid of the teenage cancer trust. “Snares, cymbals, toms and bass drums autographed by Phil Collins, Sting and The Police, Elton John, Iron Maiden, Kasabian, Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and members of backing bands for Pink and Paul Weller were all on offer for a very limited time.” Like I said the auction has already taken place but if your curious to see what was up for bids you can check it out at here.

That’s right I missed owning snare drums from The Police and Phil Collins. Crippling news my friends…crippling! (I know your feelin’ my pain here.)

I’m now accepting donations to help me save up for that Stewart Copeland /Police autographed snare drum! I’ll get them to open up the bidding for this. (C’mon people I’m expecting a group effort on this!)

Serioulsy though for more information on cancer check out:
The American Cancer Society
The Canadian Cancer Society
if someone can point out the official UK cancer site I’d gladly post a link to that as well.

Ok, so this month I’ve been including music with just about every post. Not something I’ve planned but the ideas just lend themselves to it.

Take for instance a video that someone past to me about activism and music. I could take a couple of paragraphs to explain it or let him…

This is the video that started it all…

Playing for Change.

(hmmm wonder if they’re looking for another drummer?)
Enjoy

Dig this…

I’m a huge music fan. I’m always surfing the web checking in on my favourite bands, performers or looking for playing opportunities. My passion for music/drumming is probably my defining interest. I heard years ago of musicians who go into hospitals, retirement facilities etc to play for residents, family and caregivers.

While I was surfing last week for my music fix, I came across a fantastic idea. Musicians on call is a collective of musicians in New York, Philadelphia and Nashville. These musicians bring live or recorded music into a patients room. Some high profile players have become involved in the charity like John Mayer,Rob Thomas,Maroon 5 and Seal. The real stars of the program are the local talent who drop into the hospitals. This is a real win-win situation musicians get to play and spread the joy of music while patients can be soothed and comforted during their stay.

Musicians on call promo video

I think they are looking at expanding to different locations. If anybody knows for certain let me know. I just thought this was such a great idea I wanted to put it out there.

I wonder if any of the bands are looking for drummers? Or maybe we could put on a drumming for charity gig?! Hmmmmmmm

Spread the word.