A new Internet phenomenon has emerged in the last two years. Free charity game websites pledge to donate to various causes if the visitor is simply willing to play an online game. Available games include simple word definition questions, geography trivia, number memorization, and even crossword puzzle questions. The visitor can play for as long as he wants, donating increasing amounts of resources to the designated charity.
It is now possible for a person to be selective about which site they want to spend their time on. Users can now choose between different games to play, as well as different types of donations.
Which sites are the best? Which ones should you visit? Below is a summary of the free charity game websites that currently exist.
freerice.com
Free Rice is the giant of free charity games. Since its opening on October 7, 2007, the site has donated more than 41 billion grains of rice to communities in need. Free Rice plays a bit like an endless SAT test. You are given a particular word, and then four possible response words are listed below. The player must choose the answer that is similar to the word listed. If the player guesses right, twenty grains of rice will be donated to the UN World Food Program. The site claims that playing the game can improve your vocabulary. The words used in the game become more difficult as the player answers more questions correctly.
charitii.com
Charitii.com is an interesting and fun take on the free charity game concept. The game is played as a multiple choice crossword puzzle. The clues are similar to those found in crossword puzzles, and the answer is what you would be writing in the boxes. Some of the puzzles are quite creative and often leave the player feeling “A-HA” after realizing the answer. For each correct answer, Charitii.com will donate five ounces of clean drinking water to the charity: Nonprofit Water. This organization will use 100% of the funds it receives to give water to communities living in poverty. The game is played quickly and water donations add up easily. The website claims over 10,000 puzzles in its custom database, and players can also submit new puzzles to the database for others to play. Charitii.com automatically adjusts the difficulty level of the game as the player solves more puzzles.
freeflour.com
Freeflour.com is a charity website that looks a lot like the Free Rice website. With the same boxy look and general design, the website hasn’t changed much, but the colors are now brown instead of green. The website presents users with difficult multiple choice geography trivia questions. For each correct answer, 1 tablespoon of flour will be donated in the player’s name. The site says that it takes 100 tablespoons of flour to make a single loaf of bread. Freeflour.com states that it will donate an amount of money equal to the value of the flour collected on the site to the “Bread for the World Institute”.
helpforchildren.com
This site also closely resembles the Free Rice website, using the same green square style. The game itself is essentially the same as Free Rice as well. You are given a target word and then 4 possible answers. Like Free Rice, you need to choose the word that best describes the target word. If you select the correct answer, $0.0025 (a quarter cent) will be donated to help purchase gifts for children through World Vision, a Canadian aid organization.
freepoverty.com
Like Freeflour.com, this site also uses geography trivia questions for the visitor to play. The website relies heavily on JavaScript to provide a more interactive experience. The game tells you the name of a geographic landmark or city, and then gives you a limited time to place a marker on a map indicating where you think it is. Depending on how close you are to the precise location, a different amount of water will be donated. FreePoverty.com does not currently specify anywhere on its website exactly how and where the water is donated, which is cause for concern.
helpthirst.com
This is another site built to donate water to poor communities. The site design is clean and simple. The game tells you a number, like 4295, which you then have about three seconds to memorize. After the time limit the number is cleared and then you have to tell the game what the number was. This site will donate 1 cup of water to World Vision for each correct answer. As you get more correct answers, the length of the number to memorize gets longer. The concept of the game is different from all other charity websites, but players may get bored of memorizing longer and longer strings of numbers.
Simple Click Charities
One-click charity websites like http://www.thehungersite.com are the original free online charity. They require you to click on a banner and then donate a predetermined amount to charity. There is no game to play. The website visitor simply has to click on a banner to open a page displaying numerous advertisements. This type of charity is somewhat limited as the user can only click on the banner once per day. Future clicks from that day will not be donated to charity, so users are limited in the amount of help they can give. Also, since there are no games to play on these websites, players can quickly lose interest and subsequently stop visiting them.
The number of free charity websites has been steadily increasing in recent years. I hope this guide has been helpful in understanding what is currently available on the internet.