This is the second of two posts about donating to charity. To learn how to give money when you don’t have any of your own, click here

You may have noticed that on Tuesday when I posted about donating to charity- for free, I didn’t mention the most common way to give without spending any money- volunteering. There’s a reason for that. Volunteering is often a pretty expensive endeavor. Your time is precious, and many, many people who can’t afford to give monetarily to charities also can not afford to give their time. They are already working two jobs or do not have enough time with their families as it is.

Volunteering is a great way to give back to the community, but we have to admit it has a cost.

I’ll be honest, I keep thinking about volunteering in different ways- being a “cat cuddler” at the local animal shelter, fostering dogs through Old Dog Haven, helping veterans with PTSD through animal assisted therapy at Rainier Therapeutic Riding, or even being on staff for Geek Girl Con. But I haven’t done any of it (though fostering is on the household goal list for 2012). Why? Time. I like being home. I like being with my dogs and hanging out with C.

I want to give back, but I also want to take care of me. I suspect I am not alone in this.

But what if I told you you could volunteer right from your home, right from your computer, for 15 minutes (or less) at a time?

We have micro-lending, micro-payments, micro-fiction (I had to throw that one in), and now, micro-volunteering from Sparked.com. I wrote about Sparked.com on my daily blog when I first found it, and I continue to love it.

When I find myself in front of my computer in the evening and one more game of Bejeweled (I am a total casual gamer) just is not holding an appeal, and I have read all the blogs I read, commented on the message boards, but I am not ready to surrender to the mindlessness of television, I can click over to Sparked.com and look through their challenges.

I’ll be honest, I do not always find a challenge I am interested in doing, or that I can do in the time I have available. But often I do. These are small tasks- help with brainstorming ideas, crowd sourcing new ideas, copywriting or internet research help. I have designed spreadsheets for volunteer tracking and spruced up copy. I have read student writing and provided feedback. Sometimes I spend a few hours on a task. Sometimes I spend 5-10 minutes.

I can choose tasks based on my skill set or based on the causes the charity supports. I choose the complexity of the task and the amount of time spent on it. Easy peasy.

So the next time you think to yourself, I would love to volunteer, but I just do not have the time or the desire to be out of the house another 5-10 hours a week, remember Sparked.com. Not only can you donate to charity through a few clicks of your mouse, you can volunteer from the comfort of your computer chair, too.