Qarma - Changing the world from your smartphone

Written in collaboration with Qarma NL

The Sunshine Journey is always looking for smart and easy ways to implement doing well into our everyday life. And since we are on our smart-phones all day, the app Qarma might be the perfect way to implement donating into your routine.

Recently I came across Qarma and I downloaded their app to try it out. Qarma is a donation-app where you can give a monthly donation to charities. The app makes it really easy to donate and help out without having these charities receive your personal data (so you won’t get newsletters or magazines in return).

The app works with the well-known swiping technology. When you first open the app, you get to choose your preferences in categories of charity: Animals, Nature, Humanity, Health and more. Then you get to read, see and preview the charities which you can ‘like’ as a personal preference. You can swipe left or right in order to browse through. In the app you can find more than 300 charities in total. For each charity there is information collected about their vision, mission and current projects. You even get an insight in the financial situation of the charity organization and their spendings of each donated euro (or what the CEO earns). This makes it very transparent. Once you found the charity you prefer, it’s easy to donate with a single click.

The focus of this app is to promote and make it easy to donate to smaller charities. This app creates awareness and spreads information for these causes, because smaller charities usually don’t have a huge marketing spending. I personally like to get to know smaller charities and their work-field/specialization and support them to reach their goals.

You can already start with a donation of only € 5,- each month, which for me is the perfect start to make an impact in 12 small non-profit charities each year. Qarma is easy to use, personal and safe and therefore I would recommend using this app to give back monthly (especially after not catching any collectors in the past year – oops).

As Qarma is a development from The Netherlands, only Dutch non-profit organizations are connected to this app. If you like to use a comparable app in your area, please find my tips below:

SnapDonate – a UK based app which works also identical to Qarma (adding a camera function) and has a list non-profit UK based organizations involved.
Donate a Photo – a brilliant US-based App by Johnson & Johnson were you can upload a photo each day and J&J donates $1,- to your picked charity-cause. They’ve made a huge impact so far.
Charity Miles – Donating to charity because you run, walk or bike. A small amount of money gets donated by corporate organizations for each mile you hit. You get to pick the charity yourself and see how much you donate. This app is also US-based but it connects runners with 40-worldwide operating charities.
Givelify – a well-known US based application which makes donations effortless and focusses more on local charities such as churches and communities.

Qarma costs you a monthly donation of at least €5,- and you fully get to decide where the money will be donated. It makes you automatically donate a small amount every month and if you forget to pick your preferred charity, the app will do it for you. If you would like too, it’s easy to unsubscribe as a giver anytime. Qarma is available for Apple and Android (Google)