GlobalGiving Launches 'Green' Site
GlobalGiving Launches 'Green' Site
GlobalGiving, an online platform that connects donors to projects in the developing world, has introduced a new Web site listing twenty-five projects that generate minimal greenhouse gas emissions and work to have a positive impact on climate change, the New York Times reports.
With funding from the
David and Lucile Packard Foundation, GlobalGiving hired EcoSecurities Consulting, a company that develops carbon trading programs, to develop a scoring system gauging a charitable project's impact on the environment. The twenty-five projects selected for the new site, GlobalGiving Green, help limit those emissions in some way and offer broader environmental benefits as well as economic and social benefits.
As an example, one high-scoring project on the site works to bring fuel-efficient stoves to homes in Honduras, where indoor smoke inhalation is a major factor in poor health. Indeed, many of the projects focus on efforts in the world's least developed countries, which, according to GlobalGiving co-founder and CEO Dennis Whittle, produce more greenhouse gases than wealthier nations.
Timothy Ogden, editor of Philanthropy Action, an online journal for donors, said the strategy would help distinguish GlobalGiving from other online donation systems, as well as appeal to donors. "One of the big challenges for individual donors is that it isn't all that clear what any one person can do to contribute to environmental efforts," Ogden said. "What they hear about what's happening in that arena largely involves public policy and governments, so it's hard for a donor to feel like he or she alone can have an impact."
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