Namesforchange.org features 169 different items available for naming rights, each of which is showcased with a high-quality photo and lovingly crafted description.

Buy naming rights to an item for yourself or someone else, and you can customise a virtual poster immortalising your connection to Urban Ministries of Durham. Posters can be shared on social networks, sent via email or ordered as high-quality prints ready for framing.

A week after purchase, buyers receive an email, custom to every single item, letting them know how their item has been helping at Urban Ministries of Durham and inviting them to sponsor other related items.

In less than eight weeks, over 70,000 visitors from 161 countries named more than 1,100 items and donated over $40,000, all for a homeless shelter in Durham, North Carolina.

Just as importantly, we’ve changed attitudes about how important even the smallest things are to someone without a home. As one email said, “Looking at all the items the homeless need — simple things we take for granted — brought tears to my eyes.”

The Urban Ministries of Durham meet such basic human needs — food, shelter, hygiene — that people don’t often consider them when choosing a charity to support. We needed to make things like tampons, toilets and cans of tuna meaningful to people who have never gone without.

So we turned those items into things of beauty and invited people to grace them with their most valuable asset: their name.

At namesforchange.org, you can buy the naming rights to any one of 169 items Urban Ministries of Durham uses in their shelter every day. And in the process, you’ll see how the stuff you take for granted can change someone’s life.