Season's Givings?

DevanJedi asks: "Many people around the world plan their charitable giving around this time of the year, for religious, tax or other similarly benevolent reasons. As a geek who spends an inordinate amount of time around his computer, I have compiled a list of entities that have made my geek life easier, in the past year. Which other projects does Slashdot believe to be worthy of praise, money, recognition, developer time or general applause?"

Comments

I'd love to read this list but

[butters the odd]

Apparently your server wasn't quite ready for the Slashdot effect.

Re:I'd love to read this list but

[gaveawaymyname]

"Sorry Timmy, there won't be a Christmas this year... Santa's list got Slashdotted."

Food banks

[Barkley44]

I find food banks are the best place to donate, especially in food form (instead of cash). Canned foods last well into the new year and many people benefit from the meals they provide - either peopel directly getting the food, or food banks preparing the food. We try to run such events every few months around our area. One time we went to make a large donation and the food bank had just 1 can of food left (for a city of 18,000 people). A lot of people don't realize how much a few $$ worth of food can go towards helping other people out.

Re:Food banks

[Anonymous Coward]

I know in my area, most people forget the food bank collects money. There's always a lot of "Free with food donation" concerts and such, or food drives at the gorcery stores, even on busses, but it never gets mentioned that the food banks need money too.

In addition to the reasons for cash you mentioned above, food banks are often needting to by perishables , such as milk, eggs, bread, meat, cheese and so on, in addition to whatever it's short of at any given time. Money is often invaluable to a food bank.

My annual donation to the food bank is always in cash.

Re:Food banks

[akamoe]

Probably just the scum of the earth.

Where I live, there are 2 food banks: one is staffed by volunteers, with a part-time (4hx5d/wk) co-ordinator. They will accept food happily, but have volume discounts with local retailers and wholesalers for cash donations. The cash helps tho, because they still have rent to pay, and lights to keep on.

Then, there's a food "bank", where the execuitve director and manager are husband and wife, and between them get $120,000/yr salary. If you try to donate food to them, they freak out, but if there's a nickle of charity money to be had, they will literally knock you down to get it (they knocked a fireman over one time who was involved in a fundraising effort for the other food-bank, because he wouldn't give up 1/2 the money).

Choose your favorite. ;)

Re:Food banks

[twiddlingbits]

I have a close friend who works on the Board of our food bank here in N. Texas. She says give MONEY. As they can buy food for around 17 cents/pound in bulk from the mfgs and/or the Regional Food Bank. I can't think of anything in the Grocery store you can buy at that price. The list you provided is good, but add in Infant Formula/Baby Food, Powdered Milk, Hot Cereals (Oatmeal, Grits, Cream of Wheat), Salt/Pepper, Sugar, Condiments. Frozen Meats (such as those on-sale frozen Turkeys) are also good as they can feed a family for a week with one of those!

Charitable giving

[ucblockhead]

I prefer to give my charitable dollars to the poor and infirm.

I sometimes also give money to middle-class white geeks running software projects that benefit other middle-class white geeks because I want those projects to continue to exist. (I am, after all, a middle-class white geek.) But I don't delude myself into thinking that this is "charity" because when I give money to these projects, I benefit in that the project that produces something that I use is going to be able to advance faster.

For example, giving money to the gnome people isn't "charity" unless you do not use gnome yourself.

Re:Charitable giving

[quizteamer]

I prefer to give my charitable dollars to the poor and infirm.

Its great to give money around Christmas to the poor and infirm, but if you don't have the extra cash (like me), another option is volunteering (and not just around the holidays).
I spend 4-8 hours a week helping students with math and science at the "poor" high school in my city. I also play guitar in a band that goes to the local hospitals a few times a month.
Giving money is good but its not your only option.

Re:Charitable giving

[ucblockhead]

Agreed! In fact, I'd say that giving money is the worst option. When you give time, you help directly, with nothing skimmed off the top.

Be unselfish

[ishmalius]

Maybe you address this in your article, but the server has turned to molten metal. So ignore this if I have it wrong, but: They made your life better? Whatever happened to altruism?

I, for one, am giving to the Salvation Army. During the hurricanes, they did an enormous amount of thankless work. They did not receive the publicity of the Red Cross, but as is typical, they are the first to arrive and the last to leave. They work endless hours, seemingly tirelessly, and never lose their smiles. They shun self-promotion. These are truly wonderful people.

Re:Be unselfish

[inkey string]

And I don't give a damn. If more churches acted like the SA (shunning promotion, attempting to illustrate the benefit of religion through selfless acts rather than shameless guilting) I would be a lot less leery of organized religion in general.

Don't hate religion. There isn't anything terribly wrong with believing in a power beyond one's self and brotherhood with your fellow man. Hate the corruption and human fallibility that has wound tight over the millenia with the threads of innocent belief.

EFF

[wyldeone]

The site's dead, so I can't tell if this was on the list, but defintely everyone should consider donating to the eff. They have done so much good work protecting our digital rights and hopefully they'll be able to continue in the future.

Here's the article

[Trip Ericson]

Season's Givings

Many people around the world plan their charitable giving around this time of the year, for religious, tax or other similarly benevolent reasons. As a geek who spends an inordinate amount of time with around his computer, these are the entities that have made my life easier in the past year and deserve all the recognition, money and general fulfillment of all Amazon Wish List desires:

* Firefox : This has undoubtedly been the year of Firefox. If you aren't using it yet... what are you waiting for? With plugins, extensions, tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and the fact that it's free and open for all make it the IE-killer that we've all been waiting for.
Get FireFox | Get Involved | Donate

* Wikipedia If this year was the year of Firefox, then Wikipedia was a close second. This is the largest single resource of information ever created by men. They are having their quarterly fund drive; please give generously. Become a contributor; and editor. Many people believe they don't know enough or need to be an expert in order to contribute meaningfully. You don't have to be. I'm no expert and I've written about my home town, my college, my favorite sports team, and other random stuff I find errors or omissions in. Give it a try and enjoy.

* OpenOffice.org : By providing a viable, free and open option to the over-priced monopoly of MS Office, OO.o has shown us a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.
Contribute

* Fedora : The low-hassle Linux distribution that I've been using for a year or so; a worthy successor to the Red Hat name; easy to get up and running in addition to or in place of that MS OS of yesterday. Contribute

* Gnucash : This year, there was life before Gnucash and then there was life after Gnucash. And life after has been undoubtedly better. This is a smash free and open source personal (and small business) financial accounting tool that blows everything else out of the water- mainly because it's free and extensible to do what you want it to. Gnucash, you've changed my life for the better. I may not save more money than I used to, but at least I know what I'm not saving money on.
Contribute

* Emacs : Emacs, you complete me. 'nuff said.
Contribute

* Adium : There was a time when I would have multiple messenger applications running at the same time. Then came Gaim. There was a time when Gaim was ugly; then came Adium, a tremendous messenger client for the Mac OS that looks great, is extensible (has great plugins) and is free/open.
Donate (donate link at bottom of page)

* NetNewsWire : This piece of software is one of the great RSS readers of the world (for the Mac). In the new year, I will be buying the full version. Easy to use, great to look at and powerful under the hood; this is the app that made turned me into an RSS junky.

* Fink : Fink allows Mac OS to be more Unixey than it already is. With easy to install ports of all major UNIX/Linux packages through the command-line or GUI interface, Mac OS X without Fink is like Windows without Ctrl-Alt-Delete.

* Brattle : The Brattle Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. is in trouble. If they can't put together enough funding to pay past debts and future leases, they will be closed by February 2006. This is unacceptable- the Brattle is one of few truly independent movie theatres in the country. Without Brattle I would have never seen Casablanca on the big screen and would not have the opportunity to see the 1930s Kin

Penny-Arcade - Child's Play Charity

[SpyderPSU]

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

Self-Sufficiency

[turtledawn]

I really like Heifer International (http://www.heifer.org./ You're giving the gift of self-sufficiency to people that really want it: participants ask for help, and recieve training, assistance in building livestock pens and equipment, and depending on their individual and community situation at least one female livestock animal appropriate to their environment. The only thing Heifer asks from the participants in return is that they pass on an equivalent gift to another needy family, in the form of training or the first female offspring of their gift animal. Heifer works all over the world, including the poorer areas of the United States: they have a map on their site that shows current active projects. Due to the nature of their work they have to be in fairly stable areas -you don't want your newly-gifted goats to be stolen and fed to soldiers after all- but those are often the regions that seem to need the most help and that no one know s_how_ to help.

If it helps build their credibility, Heifer has been a Motley Fool choise philanthopy for at least two years now.

Another Idea

[keithmo]

• Take 10 $100 bills.
• Spend one day giving them (anonymously, if you wish) to people you see every day who make your life easier and who could really use the money. The "single mother" waitress who keeps your coffee cup filled at your favorite breakfast place. The anonymous immigrant who cleans the bathroom at your office. The teenage student who sacks your groceries when not studying for an exam. The elderly person working at the fast-food joint because they cannot survive on their retirement benefits.

These are the faceless people who keep our society running. We all depend on them.

No, you cannot deduct these donations from your taxes, but fuck it. Do it anyway.