I give 25% of my income to the Red Cross, volunteer 30 hours a week to Meals on Wheels, give six pints of blood per day, and when I die I will donate my body to a local animal refuge specializing in rescued carnivores.

Perhaps I exaggerate, slightly.

The truth is that my wife and I make charitable contributions in lieu of gifts to certain family members on certain holidays. [Yawn.]

Although we are not wealthy, we regularly drop $40 on lunch. If we can do that, we can give a little more to good causes. But aside from the annual holiday rush (plus Mother’s Day, on which for the past two years we’ve donated to the Calvert Foundation because they’ve had this deal where you get an Eileen Fisher gift card when you donate, so it’s almost like not donating anything at all) we don’t have a regular habit of giving.

Enter Help Attack!, an Austin-based startup that lets you pledge money for each time you post to Twitter. It’s ridiculously easy to sign in, select one of over 5,000 nonprofits, and make your pledge. In other words, it’s perfect for busy, attention-span-impaired, social media diuretics like me.

One sense I get from Help Attack! already is that it’s going to be fun. I started with a 10-cents-per-tweet pledge to CARE and it’s fun to imagine a little ka-ching noise every time I tweet. It’s also fun to think about which nonprofit I’ll choose from next, and Help Attack! has baked in some fun with a series of “coins” you win as you go along (I’m curious to see what they all are.) The site is super-simple right now, in a good way, but with lots of potential to expand into other social media like Facebook, and for partnerships with for- and nonprofit organizations.

So go make a pledge. It’s ridiculously simple and will make the world a better place. Plus, you can send out smug tweets like “I just pledged a penny per tweet to Clowns Without Borders!” that will make you feel superior to your friends.

My Help Attack! page

Follow me on Twitter (puh-lease)