By: Lauren Ramakrishna

It may seem like you can celebrate just about anything with a national holiday these days. (Mark your calendars for National Kazoo Day on January 28!) One upcoming celebratory day we at ThatHelps can definitely get behind: Make a Difference Day on Saturday, October 26.

The concept is simple: Spend the day doing what you can to make a difference—for your friends, neighbors, strangers, and the planet. This year, ThatHelps is here to help you double your impact on Make a Difference Day. Here are three easy ways you can use the ThatHelps app to influence change—and you can do it all from your smartphone.

1. Support Americans affected by mental illness.

Have you ever benefited from someone’s random act of kindness, like a stranger holding the door for you or paying for your coffee? It can make your day. Make a Difference Day is the perfect time to pay it forward. When you join and complete our Act of Kindness Challenge on the app just by doing a random act of kindness, we’ll donate $5 to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a grassroots organization that helps Americans affected by mental illness. Make sure you complete your act of kindness by October 31, when the challenge expires!

2. Replenish the Earth’s trees.

Deforestation and man-made fires are ravaging parts of the Amazon rainforest. You may not be able to travel to Brazil to plant a tree, but you can help with efforts to reforest the Earth. Join and complete our Plant Trees Challenge on the app, and we’ll donate $5 to One Tree Planted, enough to plant five trees! Completing the challenge is as simple as using the Ecosia search engine instead of Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Ecosia uses its profits to plant trees all around the world, so you’re really maximizing your impact on Make a Difference Day. This challenge is open—our ThatHelps community has already helped plant 385 trees so far!

3. Help feed hungry kids in your community.

Millions of children in the United States suffer from food insecurity. If you join the our End Child Hunger Challenge, you’ll learn about local organizations that feed children in need. Then you can share this info with family, friends, and your social media followers to help spread the word. Once you complete the challenge, ThatHelps will donate $10 to No Kid Hungry, which can funds around 100 meals. So far, ThatHelps community has helped supply 5,500 meals to kids in need!

Photo: Luke Porter