# How can I change the world with five bucks?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [May 17, 2008, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616 "2008-05-17T00:49:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ducktail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ducktail)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/1 "2008-05-17T00:49:28Z")
So today I was given a five-dollar bill and instructed to change the world.
No, really.
Here are the rules:
1. I cannot simply give the five dollars to charity. There has to be some sort of investment involved, some sort of multiplier effect, either monetary or emotional.
2. There is no definite time limit in which I must spend the five dollars. So I can wait until a good opportunity comes around. Although it’s not really doing all that much good taped into my sketchbook for safekeeping.
Various ideas have been tossed around among the several other dozen recipients of the five bucks and marching orders. One of my friends is going to use it to inspire people to start a fundraiser for her church. Someone was saying something about buying livestock for a family in a developing country, which sounded like a good idea, but I’d like something with a little more emotional investment on my part.
I haven’t come up with any good ideas so far. I’m open to somewhat more symbolic uses–using it to pay for bus fare to get to somewhere where I could donate my time to charity crossed my mind. All my other ideas are rather harebrained and impractical; I’d tossed around the idea of using it to buy yarn and crocheting accessories (I’m a closet craft nut) to sell and donate the money, but I really don’t have any idea of how to go about doing that, and a five-dollar yarn investment isn’t all that much.
So, Dopers, any suggestions?
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### Author:  [@Doctor\_Who](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Who)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/2 "2008-05-17T01:03:17Z")
Buy a tree from someplace (e.g., like [this site](http://arborday.org/shopping/trees/trees.cfm)) or a local nursery. Plant it. Voila!
Yes, you will have to shop around to find a five-dollar tree, but still … pretty good bang for your buck!
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/3 "2008-05-17T01:58:20Z")
Buy a gallon of gas for your favourite activist’s car. 🙂
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### Author:  [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/4 "2008-05-17T02:14:17Z")
Check out [Heifer.org](http://Heifer.org)
The gift that never stops giving.
You _could_ change the world!
It’s may favorite charity at the moment. You pay to purchase a breeding pair of some animal or other (could be bees, geese, goats, sheep, etc.) which is provided to a woman in the third world. She is also provided with the animal husbandry instruction to succeed in producing a herd, etc.
This provides, not only food for her family, but eventually income that will send her children to school. The gift is always to the woman as they have proven unwilling to gamble away or sell them off as the husbands might.
Part of the deal is that once her herd (or whatever, depending on what you decide on) is substantial she then provides another woman in her community with a breeding pair and instructions in the applicable animal husbandry. And so on, and so on…
Effectively, your gift never stops giving.
Good luck, and let us know whatever you decide, inquiring minds want to know!
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### Author:  [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/5 "2008-05-17T02:19:04Z")
Two words:
Titty Bar.
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/6 "2008-05-17T02:48:24Z")
[QUOTE=Doctor Who]
Buy a tree from someplace (e.g., like [this site](http://arborday.org/shopping/trees/trees.cfm)) or a local nursery. Plant it. Voila!
Yes, you will have to shop around to find a five-dollar tree, but still … pretty good bang for your buck!
[/QUOTE]
Buy a fruit bearing tree which would allow someone to sell the fruit.
Or buy Al Gore a bus token from the airport to his next save-the-planet event and call it a carbon credit.
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### Author:  [@ASAKMOTSD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASAKMOTSD)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/7 "2008-05-17T12:29:35Z")
Check out [kiva.org](http://kiva.org)
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### Author:  [@Blue\_Mood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blue_Mood)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/8 "2008-05-17T15:30:43Z")
You could use it at the toll booth. Everytime you go through a toll booth pay for the person behind you, having the collector tell the following car that you paid for them with the wish that they do something kind for a stranger that day. Corny, but it would go a long way.
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### Author:  [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/9 "2008-05-17T15:32:44Z")
[QUOTE=ASAKMOTSD]
Check out [kiva.org](http://kiva.org)
[/QUOTE]
Agreed - five bucks can be a lot of money to somebody in the third world trying to start a business.
Also I give to Heifer.
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### Author:  [@Harmonious\_Discord](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harmonious_Discord)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2008, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-can-i-change-the-world-with-five-bucks/449616/10 "2008-05-17T16:10:03Z")
$5 is a lot here too. It’s hard to believe an opportunity is not available locally. Change the world doesn’t mean in a big way. If somebody gets fed today that would not have, you have changed the world.