Want to do a good deed? There’s an app for that.

Image credit: Gable Events

As you’re reading this blog, I’m hoping that you’re the kind of person that’s interested in making the world a nicer place (if not then you must be lost, please vacate this website immediately).

Ultimately, most people (I like to think) are at least vaguely interested in helping other people in some way. But despite our best intentions, in day-to-day life, doing nice things isn’t always easy.  It’s difficult to volunteer for a charity when you have a demanding job, a screaming throng of little’uns to entertain or an otherwise hectic lifestyle. Generous donations to the British Red Cross become a little unrealistic when electricity bills, MOTs and other dreary grown up stuff need attending to.

So ideas that make good deeds a little cheaper, a little easier and little more cohesive with the rhythms of our daily lives are always welcome.

Perhaps the phone company Orange are a rather unlikely candidate for world-saving solutions, but nonetheless, their ‘Do Some Good’ app is a gem of pragmatic loveliness amid a great deal of, lets be honest, utterly pointless digital creations, (to the person who wasted their time and oxygen implementing the ‘simulation stapler’ app, please go home and rethink your life ambitions).

The Do Some Good app, which is free, allows you to clock up reward points every time you do a good deed for a registered charity. The app catalogues easy to complete tasks, all of which can be done in less than 5 minutes, making it the ultimate busy-bee answer to altruism.

Once you’ve clocked enough ‘deeds’ and collected enough points, you can exchange them for tickets to music or comedy gigs for free. Its like Tesco Clubcard, except you get to earn points helping people rather than purchasing your body weight in Heinz beans.

Activities which merit points include filling out market research surveys for charities, reporting a problem in your community, or sharing a link to an organisation on Twitter and Facebook.

Charities, like the rest of us, are facing the strain more than ever in the age of austerity, and this is an easy and free way to support them and contribute to their work without having to shave your head or climb Kilimanjaro

It’s also fun and rewarding, and since there are now over a billion smart phones in existence worldwide, it’s a clever idea!

So go on- start clocking up those points and you’ll be warbling along in an undignified fashion to your band of choice in no time. All while doing some actual good for the world.