SQUIDOO PIONEERS SUPPORT OF MICRODONATIONS TO WORTHY CAUSES

Irvington, NY – Squidoo.com today announced DonorsChoose and Modest Needs as the latest recipients of the Squidoo Charity Fund. These worthy nonprofits will each receive $2,000, raised entirely by Squidoo members online. By striving to remove the barriers to giving, and to make philanthropy as painless as possible, both of these nonprofits exemplify the concept on which Squidoo.com was founded: making the incremental monumental.

DonorsChoose allows web users to select and fund special projects from public school teachers in some of America’s poorest regions, while Modest Needs accepts donations as small as $2 to help deliver relief on one-time emergency payments like car repairs and heating bills that can mean the difference between subsistence and poverty.

The Squidoo Charity Fund, which is distributed among different registered nonprofits every month, grows from the generosity of tens of thousands of Squidoo users. These are people who build free web pages, or lenses, and then donate their lens royalties to a good cause rather than keep the money for themselves. Some Squidoo lenses earn a quarter a month. Others earn hundreds.

“Nearly half of our lensmasters are donating their royalties to charity,” said Megan Casey, Squidoo's Editor in Chief. “Microdonations are in. One by one, our members are revolutionizing the way philanthropy exists on the web. It's really exciting to watch them making a difference in real people's lives.”

Squidoo’s contribution to Modest Needs will cover one person’s chemotherapy bill, a year’s worth of real-estate taxes for a mother who needs to live near the hospital due to her son’s illness, and an overdue car payment for a woman who has recently fled an abusive husband with her two children.

Donors Choose will receive money to pay for two computers requested by a 6th-grade teacher in Slidell, Louisiana, where the majority of students lost their computers – and in fact their entire homes — in Hurricane Katrina. The new computers will allow students Internet access and word processing programs for everyday activities and research, plus Photoshop for the creation of their yearbook.

Both DonorsChoose and Modest Needs are now official Squidoo nonprofit partners, receiving continued donations and grassroots marketing on a monthly basis from Squidoo.com, for free.

For information on the Squidoo Charity Fund or becoming a Squidoo nonprofit partner, please email jill [at] squidoo.com

About Squidoo.com

Squidoo LLC was founded by bestselling author, noted blogger, speaker and Original Squid, Seth Godin. The stated function of the site is to enable extraordinary people to painlessly engage in philanthropy by building web pages about any topic of their choosing. Nearly 50% of Squidoo’s users donate the royalties they earn from the site to charity. Nonprofit Squidoo partners include ASPCA, Save the Children, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, roomtoread.org, and 65 other well-known organizations.

About Modest Needs

Founded in 2002 by Dr. Keith P. Taylor as a “living tribute to human kindness,” Modest Needs Foundation (http://www.modestneeds.org) is a 501(c) 3 non-profit organization that works to stop the cycle of poverty before it starts for low-income workers struggling to afford emergency expenses like those we've all encountered before: the unexpected auto repair, the unanticipated trip to the doctor, the unusually large winter heating bill.

Modest Needs’ programs – which exist entirely in an online format - are funded entirely through the “small change” of individual donors.

About DonorsChoose

DonorsChoose is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At this not-for-profit web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund. Since its founding by a teacher in the Bronx in 2000, DonorsChoose has placed over $10m in resources into public school classrooms across the country.