Money doesn't actually talk. We do.

FreeRice: Use Your SAT Words to Feed the Hungry

This week I spent an hour of my time on a site called FreeRice.com. In that hour, I donated 730 grains of rice to hunger-stricken areas in underdeveloped countries after answering 73 multiple-choice vocabulary questions correctly.

FreeRice is the brainchild of John Breen, founder of Poverty.com and TheHungerSite.com. The concept here is ridiculously simple:

• You answer multiple choice questions that test your vocabulary
• Advertisers pay FreeRice to place ads on the web pages alongside the questions
• The advertisers’ money pays for the rice
• The more questions you answer—and the more ads you eyeball—the more rice you’re able donate

Unlike most other charities, you don’t have to spend any money in order to help alleviate hunger. All you need is your brilliant vocabulary.

Turns out FreeRice’s creators aren’t sitting on a pile of rice counting out the grains each time you get an answer right. Instead, FreeRice gives the money it gets from advertisers to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), which in turn uses the cash to buy rice for the needy in impoverished areas.

But when the site says that you have donated 10 grains for every correct answer, it isn’t just making up the number. FreeRice uses a formula to figure out how much rice your eyes have earned by scanning ads on a page.

The amount of rice the site has donated has been growing rapidly on a daily basis. On October 7th when the site launched, users racked up 830 grains of rice. By November 20th, word-nerds donated 218, 510, 070 grains in just one day.

Think counting grains is inefficient? Since it’s launched, FreeRice has donated 2,840,667,010 of them, which is 130,470 pounds of rice.

So why rice? John says it’s a “clean, non-controversial, cost-effective, food—natural to many developing countries.” (He added that he likes his rice with butter and soy sauce. “Seriously, I really do!”)

He thought up the vocabulary quiz notion while helping his son prepare for the SATs. He then loaded in 10,000 vocab questions, hooked up with the WFP, got companies like American Express and iTunes to advertise and FreeRice was born.

If you’re a Jeapordy addict (which I am) and obsessed with always being the smartest person in the room (which I also am), you’ll lose a lot of time on FreeRice.com. The difficulty of the questions adjusts as you go, and the site feeds you words designed to stump someone of your skill level. I also got fixated on increasing my vocab level, which is displayed on the bottom right corner of the screen and fluctuates based on questions you get right. I am embarrassed to say I never got past level 43 (the highest you can get is 50.)

So this Thanksgiving Day, before the food coma sets in, prove to that annoying cousin of yours that you are smarter — or at least better at guessing the meaning of ambiguous words like Bonsai and Cistern.

And for more on small moves of your own that can help others in a big way, check out our piece on microfunding.

–Irina Aleksander