Whether you’re online shopping, stalking your favorite person on Facebook or doing research for paper, we collegiettes spend countless hours on the Internet everyday. You may even say to yourself “I wish I was doing something more productive with my time,” even though you have no plans of moving from your comfortable position for hours. Tab for a Cause is a great new organization that enables you to easily raise money for charity at just the click of a button — the new tab button that is.
About Tab for a Cause
Tab for a Cause is an organization started by two college students that helps raise money for important causes every time you open a new tab in your browser. All you have to do is download the extension for your browser and suddenly you’re helping raise money every time you open up a new tab—it really is that simple! Companies sponsor advertisements that appear on the corner of every ‘new tab’ page to help raise the donated money. Tab for a Cause raises money for global issues such as human rights, the environment, water, education, and health.
Please tell us a little bit about Tab for a Cause beyond just the, admittedly helpful, FAQs on yours page?
Tab for a Cause is a browser app that allows you to raise money for charity simply by browsing the web. In short, once you sign up, Tab for a Cause will become the new tab page in your browser, which contains a couple display ads. We collect the ad revenue from this page and give at least 50% to our partner charities. This week, we will surpass $100,000 raised for charity!
How did you get started with Tab for a Cause and how did you link the organic and genius idea of opening tabs with raising money?
We came up with Tab for a Cause while we were in college as a way to support some great charities without requiring too much money or time. We knew that there was a lot of money in online advertising, and wanted to figure out a way to direct some of that money towards great causes. New tab pages happened to be pretty blank, and most college students look at 20+ of them per day, so we gave that a shot.
What types of expansion are you looking towards as Tab for a Cause becomes even more popular?
Good question! First, we have a long list of features that people have requested for the new tab page, like shortcuts to their most visited pages. We love that more and more people are using the Tab page for more than just raising money for charity. As we are often the first thing people see online, there are a lot of interesting features to add there. Second, we’d love to expand beyond the new tab page, particularly into the mobile world. Now that we know many people are willing to see ads to raise money for charity, we’d love to replicate the idea on other platforms/across the web.
How can Bucknell students get involved with Tab for a Cause?
The easiest way is to get the extension and start Tabbing! It takes about 30 seconds to get started, and after that, you’ll be raising money for charity simply by browsing the web. If you’d like to join the Bucknell group, just sign up through this link! www.tabforacause.org/?g=227 After that, we would love your help spreading the word to your friends and family to help us raise millions for charity instead of thousands!
And further: as the company expands do you think you will create more categories of types of organizations people can donate to?
As we grow, we do plan to ask for user submissions and voting to determine what causes we will support. We very much see Tab for a Cause as a service for our users, and will always look to their feedback for determining direction. Logistically, we aren’t able to support any additional charity organizations at the moment, but that’s something we definitely want to do.
One of the things that I really enjoy about Tab for a Cause is how you can customize your homepage to be either a photo of some other useful widgets that are convenient to see every time you open up a new page in your browser. What was your inspiration for allowing everyone to customize their own homepage?
Glad to hear you like it! We decided to create this widget system as we get a lot of requests for new features and most of them are quite different. It became clear that to meet all of the requests, the page would either need to be very cluttered or we would need to allow for each Tabber to create their own page. Now, we love seeing all of the different ways that people use the page. We hope to add many more widgets over the next few months, so stay tuned!
What is the team dynamic like at Tab for a Cause? Size? Casual Fridays?
Right now we are a full-time team of three (Ti, Kevin, and me) with some part-time help from Josiah. We tend to be fairly casual during the workday. Right now we are working out of our (Alex’s and Kevin’s) apartment so there isn’t too much of an “office” feel. We are all hard workers but we are definitely a light-hearted group.
One word to describe owning your own business.
Exhilarating
Four fun facts about you and/or Tab for a Cause.
1. We usually re-structure our hours on Wednesdays to work in the afternoon, cook/eat dinner together, and then play some board games at the end of the night. It is a great way to catch up and break up the monotony of a 9am-6pm work week.
2. Speaking of board games, our current favorite is 7 Wonders.
3. Tab for a Cause began as a side project in college. At the time, Kevin and I didn’t know how to code, and our new tab was hideous when we first launched.
4. We have a team Spotify playlist that has everything from Respighi’s Pines of Rome to Kesha.
Download Tab for a Cause:
http://tabforacause.org/?r=11133350&c=13
Join the Bucknell Group so we can see how much money we can raise together: