Today is Blog Action Day, an annual nonprofit event uniting the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to post about the same issue on the same day.  Bloggers everywhere will participate in this virtual event today by publishing posts that discuss poverty in some way.

Here at Firstgiving, we usually like to keep things lighthearted.  We get a kick out of the creative and zany ideas our fundraisers come up with to raise money for the causes they care about.

But when you work with charity organizations, like we do, there are also a lot of very serious things to think about. Many charity organizations work to help meet the deep physical, emotional and spiritual needs of people here in the United States and around the world.

In honor of Blog Action Day today, we’d like to focus on one of the important causes for which charities work and our fundraisers fundraise: ending poverty. 

Firstgiving helps people raise money for non-profit organizations (NPOs), so when it comes to the poverty discussion, we’re helping people fund projects designed to end poverty and improve standards of living. 

We value efficiency and effectiveness, which is why we’re continuously working to provide an easy, user-friendly platform to help people raise as much money as possible for NPOs they believe are doing good work and doing it well. 

Perhaps this goes without saying, but a lot of good work is being done to combat poverty.  None of this work can be done without funding, however, and that’s where we see great potential for online fundraising.  What’s more, we see this potential realized when our fundraisers end up raising thousands of dollars online with their personal fundraising pages.  Whether NPOs are providing emergency or disaster relief, clean water solutions, health and sanitation programs, or microfinance, Firstgiving gives fundraisers the tools to combat poverty by raising money online.  Very exciting stuff.

Blog Action Day organizers have asked the community to take action on poverty today by blogging to raise awareness and by donating to charity.  We are big proponents of this awareness & action combination, so, taking on a challenge from the event website, I have also decided to use my earnings today to donate to the Grameen Foundation on Firstgiving.com.  Blog Action Day is tallying all donations made to combat poverty today, so I’m going to email my receipt to: central@blogactionday.org.

One of the reasons I love working at Firstgiving is that beyond being a fun place to work, I am constantly reminded of how seriously we take causes like ending poverty and how serious we are about providing the best tools to help make that possible.

Have you joined the Blog Action Day discussion?  Post a link to your own blog post in our comments section below.  Are you donating your earnings or a percentage of your earnings today?  Creating a fundraising page to combat poverty?  Post the link to your page below!