Innovative Charity: Google “Chrome for a Cause”

Innovative Charity: Google “Chrome for a Cause” Raises $1 Million in 5 Days

Google’s making it easy for users to support their favorite charitable causes with a new extension for the company’s Chrome browser, and it won’t cost users a cent. Chrome for a Cause is now available on the Chrome Web Store — available for free installation with a single click.

         Install this extension on the Chrome Browser, and each tab opens results in Google  contributing to a worthy cause. At the end of each day, users choose to which charity they’d like to contribute. Included choices are  :

• The Nature Conservancy,  

• Charity: Water

• Doctors Without Borders,  

• Un Techo para mi País (which constructs transitional housing for impoverished families) and

• Room to Read.

As users work within the Google Chrome browser throughout the day, a running total of tabs they’ve opened displays on the browser’s toolbar. We’re trying it here, and there’s definitely a warm and fuzzy feeling every time we open another tab. Support this worthy cause by installing the Chrome for a Cause extension.
Even better than giving away free Wi-Fi on airplanes for the holidays, this is the perfect way to further that “don’t be evil” mantra, help people in need, and make users feel good. Everyone wins.

Web users who installed Google’s Chrome for a Cause extension opened more than 60 million tabs from December 15 to 19, effectively raising $1 million on behalf of Google’s partner charities.
The extension enabled Chrome users to donate their opened tabs to one of five causes at the end of each day. Google promised to tally up the total tabs and donate funds to these causes — up to $1 million total — as divvied up by user selection. It’s not clear whether a dollar amount was ascribed to each tab opened, but Google seemed pleased enough to donate the $1 million.
Extension users responded to the call by raising 60,599,541 tabs for charity; $245,278 will go toward planting trees, $232,791 will be used to provide clean water to people in developing nations, $112,078 will be allocated for shelters in Latin America, $267,336 will help administer vaccinations against meningitis, and $142,518 will be used to publish books by local writers and illustrators in Asia and Africa.
Google’s feel-good holiday tab drive is the company’s first Chrome for a Cause initiative, but future extension-driven projects are said to be in the works.