Make Me Donate to Haiti Victims

You know how I get with the suffering kids. I don't know what it is, but I just don't like it. We all have our pet peeves.

Last week I noticed a ton of bloggers brazenly linking their Haiti donations to their personal gain by pledging donations for blog comments, links, Twitter followers and whanot. I thought about this all weekend: Am I brazen enough to do that? Or am I virtuous enough to give quietly like most of you decent citizens out there?

The answer, of course, is that I'm brazen. So brazen.

But I also realized that linking my gift to potential, theoretical financial gain -- in the form of more traffic to my ChicagoNow Frugalista blog -- would encourage me to stretch and give more than I'd planned.

So here's my offer, which I just posted on ChicagoNow: Follow me on Twitter today and I'll donate $1 to the American Red Cross for Haiti victims, up to a maximum donation of $200. I'm @carriekirby on Twitter. On Twitter, I mostly send out a lot of deals that I don't have time to post about, alert people of deals I did post about, and report when Pebbles has successfully used the potty. You know, news you can use.

Know what else? For every person who signs up for SwagBucks through me this week, I'll donate 10 Swagbucks to Haiti victims, which will convert to about $1 as well. So if you really want to push me, follow me on Twitter AND sign up for Swagbucks through my referral link. (What's Swagbucks? It's a way to get paid for doing regular Google searches every day, and last year I saved up enough by using it to buy most of Epu's Christmas presents.)

And hey, once I'm a big Internet millionaire, I'll be able to do even more philanthropy. It could happen, right?