Update — poll is now closed. Thanks for all who have voted & comments. At the closing of the poll, we have 860 unique commenters in this thread so the final amount to be donated to the charities is $28,600. Top 5 charities from users' votes are:
- beyondblue
- Cancer Council
- RSPCA Australia
- R U OK?
- Médecins Sans Frontières Australia
Which would receive a donation of $5,720 each. I'll get that done this week.
If you have been a member of OzBargain for a while you'll remember that we have been doing biannual charity donations at around June (EoFY) and December (Christmas). For this Christmas, OzBargain will be donating $20,000 to 5 charities of your choices. Moreover, for every unique commenter in this thread, we will be donating an extra $10.
This is how the community can participate:
Check whether your favourite charity has already been suggested (under Poll Options). If it has, vote it up! Otherwise you
can suggest it by posting a top-level comment (i.e. not replying existing comments). Update: We now have almost 50 charities listed here. I think it's a big enough list and I'll pause the suggestion but you can still vote.
If you are suggesting a charity, please provide a link & 1 or 2 sentence telling us what the charity does. It would greatly help other OzBargainers making decisions.
Even if your preferred charity has been suggested, leave a comment and let us know! Remember every unique commenter on this thread will add an extra $10 to the donation.
The poll will run for 7 days. After the poll expires, votes will be revealed and the top 5 charities will be sharing the pool of donation of AUD $20,000 + $10 x number of unique commenters. For example if 500 OzBargainers commented in this thread, we'll donate $25,000 to the chosen charities at $5,000 each.
I am also putting a cap of maximum 1,000 commenters (just in case), making the cap of the donation at $30,000. If we can reach that level the donation will be shared with top 6 charities from the poll.
Which charity should I suggest?
It must be a registered charity eligible for DGR (deductible gift recipient). That would unfortunately make NPOs like Wikipedia & Sea Shepherd ineligible.
As we are OzBargain, it would be great if the charity is Australia based or benefits Australians.
There are many worthy charities. However as it's for Christmas this year, let's prioritise on charities working on social welfare. While we complained about spending way too much on impulse buys, there are many who don't have regular to access food & shelter, let along online shopping.
To get started, I have included top 10 most voted charities from last year's poll. Suggestion & commenting starts today (11 Dec) and will close at 12PM on Monday 18 Dec. I will then work out the total amount of donation we will send to the charities, and hopefully get all the donations made by Christmas 2017.
So many excellent causes, but I voted for beyondblue. Great work OzB!