I did it! I finally freaking did it! I accomplished one of my personal “video contest goals!” I won….an iPad!! Can you believe it? If you’re a frequent video contest-entrant you already know that like half the contests on the web offer iPads as prizes. I’m guessing it’s because they’re a coveted and cool piece of technology that costs under $1,000. Somehow I knew I’d eventually win one of these things and I finally did it! The iPad 2 is part of my prize for coming in first in my category in Randstad’s “Inspiring Experts” video contest. Oh….and the other part of my prize is $10,000.

Ok, technically I don’t get to pocket the whole ten grand. I get 5K and the iPad and another 5K goes to the charity of my choice. I’m excited about the cash but in a weird way, I’m more excited about the money I get to donate. Yo, I feel like friggin’ Bill and Melinda Gates over here! I try and donate to a few charities whenever I can but I can never afford to give more than a few hundred dollars a year. So having the power to donate $5,000 to any cause I want is a rush. I’ve been thinking about this for days and I’m having a really hard time picking just one organization. My friends on facebook sent me some really great suggestions but I wanted to really do something huge with the money. I wanted to….you know….alleviate some human suffering with the cash.

This is totally amazing! I won first place in a video contest that was run by a company named Randstad and as part of my prize, the sponsor will donate $5,000 to the charity of my choice.  Yo, I feel like friggin’ Bill and Melinda Gates over here!  I try and donate to a few charities whenever I can but I can never afford to give more than a few hundred dollars a year.  So having the power to donate $5,000 to any cause I want is a rush.  I’ve been thinking about this for days and I’m having a really hard time picking just one organization.   My friends on facebook sent me some really great suggestions but I wanted to really do something huge with the money.   I wanted to….you know….alleviate some human suffering with the cash.

So I’ve decided to donate the whole nut to a group called Charity: Water.  The group’s mission?  “To bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.”  Water is the most basic of human needs.  If you don’t have water, nothing else matters.  There are a lot of water-related charities but one thing really makes Charity: Water special.  Here’s a quote from their website:

When we started charity: water, we made a bold promise to the general public — 100% of all their donations would always go directly to water project costs. Even the credit card fees from your donation today are taken care of, so a true 100% goes to people in need. Private donors, foundations and sponsors cover our operating costs; everything from staff salaries to basic office systems to office rent and supplies. This allows us to continue using 100% of public donations for water projects.

Is that an ingenious idea or what?  I think a lot of people are hesitant to donate to charities because they figure most of the money will be spent on salaries and other bureaucratic stuff. So finding a few millionaires to cover all the operating costs will make average joes like me feel like this group delivers the biggest bang for our charitable buck.

The thing that really sealed the deal for me though is that a donation of $20 gives one person in the developing world access to clean water.  And a single donation of $5,000 can fund an entire, large-scale water project for an entire village!  It takes 18 months to complete one of these big projects but apparently, people who fund an entire well get updates and photos of of how the project is progressing.  I haven’t really gotten into the final details of this with Randstad yet but hopefully they’ll be able to keep me in the loop as far as the updates go.

Randstad ran an amazing contest and they gave out a ton of prizes.  A bunch of other winners also get to send money to charity.  You can see all of the winning videos here:  http://www.inspiringexperts.com/videogallery  Rather than post my own entry, I thought I’d instead use this space to post a video or two explaining how Charity: Water works.  They’re a really awesome organization and there are a lot of thirsty people in the word.  So if you ever win a nice, big, fat contest prize and want to share the wealth, this is a very worthy cause:

More info at http://www.charitywater.org