Fundraising / Charity Ideas Blog

I just found gogreentube.com the environmental equivilant of youtube. You go to their website, register and every video you watch you receive a carbon credit.

GoGreenTube LLC was founded in March 2008 and was launched in June 2008. GoGreenTube strives to be the destination for the world to share and view green videos online that help provide important information about our environment, green technologies, innovations, products, and services so we as governments, corporations, organizations or individuals can “Go Green” using the most effective means possible.

The videos on the site are largely environmentally focused with categories from sustainability, green transportation, global warming. They also have a large collection of cooking videos and tips for home theatres. If you have ideas you can add your own videos to the collection.

ok, that’s it for the environment for awhile. I’ll post some fundraising stuff next. What would you guys like to talk about?

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.

You can run an environmentally friendly fundraising campaign. These fundraisers help the environment several ways:

- Selling products that help the environment. Products like energy efficient light bulbs or by planting flowers.

- Fundraisers that divert objects from landfills like bottle drives, printer cartridges and cell phones recyclers.

- Be environmentally conscious during your fundraising. Hand out less paper flyers and direct people to your online webpage.

If you want to help fundraise for the environment we may have a few suggestions for you with our reusable bags, energy efficient light bulbs and candles.

There are new emerging companies on the web that have fresh ideas on generating cash and helping the environment. Check out Recyclebank and Terracycle

Share your ideas and suggestions for running an enviromental fundraiser.

She must have heard about it from this blog..hehe

I just tuned into the last couple minutes of her show and saw that tomorrow (April 22) Oprah will have an update on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. You might remember that from our blog:
Earth Day 2010. Thought I’d give you the heads up about it so you can catch it.

A simple way for you to get involved for Earth Day is to go to the movie theater.

This year, Disneynature is releasing OCEANS, the sequel to the incredible documentary Earth it premiered in time for Earth Day 2009 last year.

Nearly three-quarters of the Earth’s surface is covered by water and OCEANS shows in crystal clear imagery the seas amazing life . Narrated by Pierce Brosnan, the feature-length film showcases spectacular never-before-seen imagery captured by the latest underwater technologies.

Yup..there’s a connection between this movie and fundraising…wait for it…

Disneynature will contribute a percentage of proceeds from OCEANS opening week take(April 22-28, 2010) to The Nature Conservancy to save coral reefs.

Not bad huh! Another major company stepping up to the plate with a contribution to the greater good. You can also do fundraising for the environment by putting on your own fundraising campaign. We have a lot of ideas for you.

Earth Day 2010 is this weekend. Your probably thinking…hey didn’t we just get finished with earth hour? I’d understand why you might be getting a little worn out from these environmental causes but let me show you a little video I saw this week to give you a little motivation for another go:

That’s just a portion of the anarchy going on in the environment these days. Ok..now that we have that over with here’s what’s coming up for earth day.

Earth Day Network’s Campaign for Earth Day 2010

Global Days of Service – April 17-18 – Join millions around the globe to make your community and the world cleaner and more sustainable.

Help Generate a Billion Acts of Green – Register individual, community or business service acts and take action for Earth Day.

Events on The National Mall in Washington, DC

•Earth Day 40th Anniversary Events – April 22
•Change the Climate Rally – April 25
•Exhibitions and Performances on The National Mall – April 17-25
Arts for the Earth – Get involved in art that promotes environmental themes.

Song for the Earth Contest – Youths 18 or under who are passionate about music and the environment are invited to compose and submit a song. Winners will perform on The National Mall.

Athletes for the Earth – Athletes are signing up to change the climate!

40th Anniversary Global Advisory Committee – See who is part of the team!

It’s good to see activities for every interest included (hmmm I wonder if any of those musicians are looking for a drummer?) So over the next week make an effort to set things right and drop a comment telling us what you did.

Here’s a great series of articles from the star for this years Earth Day.  I really like the idea that it walks you through every hour to help you conserve energy and think green.

Take a look at the article about unplugging your appliances at night.  I find this one interesting because it’s so simple to do.  Lindsay talks about electrical “phantom usage”  from all your appliances and that unplugging things that have clocks and standby modes will drop your power usage 5-10%.  Sounds simple to do, but I’ve heard that it doesn’t really effect your power bill from people who have done it. I’m not sure,  it sounds so easy  but is it worth it?  What are your opinions?

Check out what’s happening near you on the Earth Hour home page.

Here’s a breakdown of what’s happening in Canadian Cities.

March 27 8:30, 2010 is this years Earth Hour. Unplug ….lots of great things to do in the dark.

I was looking around at the next Charity idea to write about. There are plenty out there but nothing was really standing out for me.

I then came across an idea that I’m LOVING! It covers so much territory with it’s idea. It has renewable energy ( I’m fascinated with that and I’d love to learn more about it this year, If you have ideas let me know.) Health, Education and Job Creation. It accomplishes this mainly in Africa but also in certain locations in South America as well.

solar-aid.org teaches Africans how to employ solar power to generate electricity and fully take advantage of something that has opressed them up until now.

I generally don’t think of them cosuming electricity like I do but come to think of it solar power can help them on so many levels. They light fires in their homes to cook and have no light to read or study by. There’s a video on the front page that says indoor air pollution kills 1.6 million people. That’s 1 death every 20 seconds! Solar power helps give them healthier homes to live in. Add to this their school systems, medical and community centres, you can see where a need comes in.

SolarAid teaches Africans to build solar lanterns, solar cookers, solar radios etc so they can earn a living selling the products plus it’s a step forward for their neighboors too. SolarAid gives education for the community by not only powering schools but by teaching finance, marketing and installation to the community.

SolarAid breaks down it’s projects and lets you make monthly or one off donations in your own currency. I did some poking around and found out that Cate Blanchett is on the board for this Charity. Yup the same chick that played the Russian bad guy in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ( besides a music nut Indy is my other obsession.)

You really should check SolarAid out and donate if you can. Good things will come of this project.

If you would like some ideas on how to fundraise for this project or your personal favourite check us out for more ideas.

Oct 15 is international Blog Action Day. 8,868 blogs in 148 countries band together to initiate change. This year we’re taking on climate change. None too soon!

I got on the web this morning and noticed an article featured on yahoo about melting ice at the pole. We’re running out of both ice and time. The article says in 20-30 years there won’t be any ice at the pole during the summer. That’s bad because the ice at the poles helps to regulate temperature and carbon emissions for the world. Not only that but the ride to that 30 year mark is going to be hellish. Floods, tsunami’s and more are going to be more common place. How many times do you need to be punched or hit to realize the game your playing is hurting you and damaging to all?

Meanwhile the political leaders are going to gather again this year to debate and talk. They hammer stuff out like Kyoto (which exempts China, India and the US the biggest polluters!) which is garbage. Political games with no substance.

Should we lock the politicians in a room until some REAL plan of action is determined? Wouldn’t some form of progress be better than none? Put SOMETHING into motion, we can nip and tuck it as we go, if everyone co-operates. But that’s the trick isn’t it, this climate change thing tends to get in the way of profit thus people refuse the change.

Ok, I’m climbing down off of my soapbox here and I’m going to tie this into music to ease the bad taste in my mouth. Here’s a music video I found in support of climate change. It also features one of my favourite drummers, Manu Katche on drums!

This is one cause that like it or not you are involved in. Get involved somewhere, somehow.

Nuff said…enjoy: