Ethics Alarms, like its progenitor, The Ethics Scoreboard, often identifies unethical websites, of which there are far too many. It isn’t often that an unusually ethical website appears, but the Tax Prof Blog found an excellent one. Illinois Law Professor  Suja Thomas and her husband Scott Bahr have created a site called The Give Blog: Conscious Living and Giving.  Its mission is to …

…motivate ourselves and others to give away more money to charitable causes…to live our lives in such a way to enable us to give more. We believe that if we think more consciously about each monetary decision we make, we are less likely to spend money on things that we don’t need and more likely to give money away to people in need…When we think about spending any money, we now ask ourselves whether it is something we really need or instead is something we can do without. When we spend less money, it is easier to give away money.

Thomas and Bahr’s goal is to use their blog to raise $100,000 to five charities – The Hunger Project, The Grameen Foundation, Safe Passage, Catholic Charities USA and the Eastern Illinois Foodbank—by the end of this year. They have announced that they will match contributions from new donors up to a total of $10,000 to each charity, using the money they save on discretionary purchases they once would have made for themselves.

It is an excellent and ethical concept, and we should hope that many others will be inspired to create similar sites, as well as to adopt the Give Blog’s philosophy.