Sacramento State students have a new way to donate money to their favorite charitable cause, and it involves doing some things that many of us do on a daily basis: search for information on the web and make online purchases.

According to a recent press release, the Give2Network has partnered with Yahoo to create a method of donating money every time Yahoo users search for information by using their free toolbar or by making purchases on Give2Network sponsored websites. Their attempt to simplify the donating process for users.

“Yahoo gives a portion of the advertising money to your group,” Chelsea Wright the marketing coordinator for Give2Network said.

“How many times are we online searching for things? Especially on a college campus. Each click is different, and it depends on what you are searching for, it could be a couple of cents or a couple of dollars.”

This simple way to donate appeals to Lauren Woodford, pre-nursing major.

“I think it is a good idea because people are donating and it’s an ongoing thing,” she said. “People are putting the effort into donating, and by buying a shirt online they are (helping).”

Just a simple search adds up after awhile. According to the Give2Network website, by using the search engines partnered with the Give2Network twice every day, a charity with 25 supporters will raise $600 in one year. A group with 500 supporters with the same 2 searches daily can earn up to $12,000 in one year.

Online purchases tend to contribute more, with 7 percent of an online purchase being donated, according to the press release.

Wright said there is a wide variety of shopping options available through the tool bar such as clothing, travel and school supplies. A few of the better known websites are Staples, Target and Amazon.com, which many students may already be using to purchase school supplies and textbooks.

The first step to donating money on this site is to have a charity in mind that you wish to donate to.

“There isn’t a list of groups to choose from,” Wright said. “You have to have an idea of who you want to support.”

Wright did not know which clubs and groups from Sac State are asking for support, but said that Sac State itself is on the list of charities that need help.

After deciding on which charity you would like to support, Wright said the next step is to download the toolbar, which is used for both searches and shopping. She said that as long as the shopping site is selected from the specially downloaded toolbar money will be donated from your purchase.

There is the option to support more than one charity but only one can be supported with the toolbar at a time.

“You can change the group on a daily basis,” Wright said.

She said this can be done by clicking on the link where it says to register your tool bar and then do a search for new causes you would like to support and click on it.

There is also the opportunity for clubs, groups and charities on campus to benefit from Give2Network. The website could help raise more money in addition to common ways that clubs, fraternities and sororities already raise money.

“We usually just do pizza fund raisers and party fund raisers,” Dao Tran, Lambda Sigma Gamma member, said. “We haven’t used it before.”

All that is needed for any organization, such as Lambda Sigma Gamma, to join Give2Network is a valid tax ID number.

Stephanie Dumm can be reached at [email protected].