I am a very active participant at a web site called Wheresgeorge. This site allows you to track the travels of your paper money across the United States and Canada, and is just an unbelivable amount of fun, especially for the price, which is free! All you have to do is write the address of the website on your bills, then enter them into the database. When someone else re-enters your bill, you get email telling you about it, then you can go back to the web site and see where the person was located. Very simple, and the amount of fun you can have is just shocking.
Now, depending on what link you followed to get to this site, you may be asking, "What does this have to do with contributing money to charity and having fun while doing it?" That's an excellent question, and the answer is that getting out-of-state "hits" is extremely exciting. You have to experience the feeling to know what it's like. The first time it happens is just an amazing experience and it doesn't get less exciting as you rack them up. To get these out of state hits, you can wait for your bills to travel by themselves, or you can mail them away. And what better place to mail a bill than to a charity you support? All you need to do is write on a bill or use the stamp sold on the wheresgeorge website, enter the bill into the database, wrap the bill securely in paper or tape it between two index cards (to foil those who would steal it), and mail it off to the cause of your choice! You aren't promised a hit this way, but at least you know you've got at least one bill floating around in some state across the country. I am a broke college student myself, so I always use one dollar bills, but if you are more ambitious, feel free to send fives or tens or whatever.
Please bear with me while I let you know one more important thing about this process. Most organizations like to thank those who contribute, and if you include a return address, they will send you a thank-you letter. I personally consider this a problem, because I don't want to see 33 cents of my dollar being spent to thank me for sending it. Please take this fact into consideration if you choose to participate in this game. Either send your bill with no return address, not even on the outside of the envelope, or ask for acknowledgement by email rather than postal mail, or do something else of your choice to avoid the problem. Your money will go much farther that way.
I personally have mailed stamped one dollar bills to all of the organizations in the following list. You can choose a cause from this list to send money to, but please don't feel any pressure to do that. That's not the point of the game-the point is to support charities *you* like while at the same time sending your money far away in hopes of getting a cool hit.
Thanks so much for visiting this site, and I wish you all the fun and happiness I've been given personally from this game!
Please note: This list is in alphabetical order by state.
to find out how! 