Fundraising / Charity Ideas Blog

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.

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.