You Could Be Donating to Charity Every Time You Open a New Tab

Opening up a million browser tabs on your desktop is hard on your computer, but could be good for non-profits. A web app by Gladly, an ad network focused on giving users more power over the ads they see, collects money for charities every time you open a new tab.

Tab for a Cause (which we spotted through Fast Company) is a browser extension that trades a few milliseconds of your attention for money that then goes to nonprofits around the world. When you use the site to navigate to websites, Tab for a Cause earns money from their advertisers (there are two ads on the bottom right-hand corner of the website). The company then funnels a portion of that money to a pre-selected group of nonprofits. With the help of those few extra ads, each tab you open raises between 1/10 and 1/3 of a cent for charity.

The app turns opening new tabs and raising money for good causes into a bit of a game. When you invite friends or run Google searches through Tab for a Cause, you earn "hearts" that help you get to different levels of being "a tabber." Then, you can donate these hearts to the charity of your choice, including Save the Children, Human Rights Watch, and Water.org. You can team up with your friends to compare earnings and see who's doing the most good with their online activity.

However, you do have to navigate to new tabs using the Tab for a Cause screen. Clicking on a link in this article, for instance, won’t count—because you aren’t seeing that Tab for a Cause advertising. Those one or two extra clicks could be worth some real money for a nonprofit, though, so it’s a good deed.

Tab for a Cause works on Chrome and Firefox.