About Us

Who We Are

This website is an initiative of Changing The Present, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit whose website the New York Times called, "an Amazon.com of the nonprofit world." See our tax letter here.

What We Do

We help channel to nonprofits, schools, and teachers some of the $450 billion that Americans spend each year on birthday, wedding, and holiday presents.

We do that by making the experience of a donation, which is given in a friend’s name, feel like a rewarding gift and a nice alternative to buying yet more merchandise. We provide tangible charitable gifts, personalized printed greeting cards, wish lists and registries, gift cards, wedding favors, and tools for bulk giving, all of which is too daunting for nonprofits to provide on their own.

Something Else We Do

We also launched this site, Free The Textbooks, to help lower the skyrocketing cost of college textbooks. If you care about students and education, please sign that petition and share it with others.

Participating Nonprofits

Among the hundreds of leading nonprofits that participate with our Changing The Present site are Rocky Mountain Institute, Natural Resources Defense Council, The Nature Conservancy, The Climate Group, CarbonFund Foundation, Heal the Bay, Defenders of Wildlife, First Book, Helen Keller International, Memorial Sloan Kettering, Water.org, ASPCA, Stand Up To Cancer, Best Friends Animal Society, Alzheimer's Association, Sesame Street, Operation Smile, Mercy Corps, and Kaboom! You will probably find many of your favorites on the full list of nonprofits here.

Our Advisors

We are also delighted to have attracted a prestigious list of Advisors.

Why We Created this Site

We have worked with hundreds of outstanding students, and we know what a tremendous help they can be. See their reviews of the internship experience here.

In the course of our work, we have heard from countless students about how difficult it is to find rewarding and convenient community service opportunities. We have also heard from many nonprofits about the difficulty in finding the right interns and volunteers.

We created this website to make it easy for student and nonprofits to find one another. We hope you find it useful.

Cities

We are initially launching in New York City, and we are then expanding nationally to serve all 18 million high school students, 20 million college students, and 1.1 million nonprofits.

We welcome your suggestions and questions, and we look forward to hearing from you!