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Ask Slashdot: Where Should a Geek's Charitable Donations Go?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm in the position to direct (or at least suggest the direction of) a fairly large amount of charitable donation on behalf of a foundation interested in promoting education. As a lifelong geek, I'd like to see some of this money directed toward organizations involved in things geeks-like (e.g. spreading technology in education to those without it, improving the use of technology for those who have it, etc.). If it was up to you, what charitable organizations would you support and why?"
Education is a broad category... geek-ish is equally broad depending on application.
Prime Directive... LOCAL...LOCAL...LOCAL. Your operative or key word is impact. You want to insure that as much as your dollar achieves its intended objective and that you have the ability to (if you choose) to verify the impact. Avoid a national or international blunderbuss -- such an approach scatters your money, creates too much dilution and generally includes excessive overhead.
Out-of-the-Box Brainstorm Suggestions:
Crisis Hotline, Woman's Center (or an similar support system for domestic abuse), Big Brothers Big Sisters, Homeless Shelters, Addiction and Rehabilitation Groups
You can also use Charity Navigator to assist you in researching specific organizations.
Each of these can be geeked-up to provide uplift and outreach were normal "geek enablement" or "geek opportunity" might otherwise simply be unavailable due to lack of funding. KEEP IN MIND -- Educational opportunities and technical services are very low priority when safety, food, and shelter are priority one!
Just a thought...
He's trying to teach typing to 500 students in India. I think he could use some help with some tablets, keyboards and solar panels.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
https://eff.org/ - Doesn't need an explanation really.
https://archive.org/ - The librarians of the internet
Help the numerically challenged, give Mitt your money.
You walk away with some good games to boot.
Hey what do you know? A new one just started!
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Give-it to The Raspberry Pi foundation.
In a world that is becoming increasely dependent on computers, they strive so today's and tomorrow's children won't become mindless consumers, regarding any electronic device as magic.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
As someone who's kids are currently in Elementary school -
Find someone who's writing public domain textbooks for elementary education, especially those aimed at technological implementations (tablet based, etc). Why in god's name does my school district have to pay $60 for a fifth-grade math textbook - revised last year? What has changed in "3x=24" in the last, oh, 1000 years that requires a new revision of a textbook?
There's so much that could be done with technology and education that hasn't been. Why can't learning Multiplication tables be phrased as a game - come up with the answers to jump and capture a coin; take too long and you miss it? Why can't Spelling, and Grammar, be a game; Why can't the broad sweep of history be presented as a graph, with hyperlinks from points on the graph to an overview and details of that point in time? Why can't the out-of-copyright classics be available in a learning-reader format, with hyperlinks for all difficult words to pronunciation and definition?
Hell, give me the money and I'll get started!
And the worms ate into his brain.
The textbook publishers have managed to emasculate most of the "open textbook" projects so far. We need truly open textbooks that anyone can republish, and modify as time goes on and the art changes. These will be a gift to society that continues for decades.
Bruce Perens.
One of my favourite geek charities is the Ada Initiative which provides resources and training for women in open source and open culture.
Needless to say, you should speak directly to any charity you're seriously considering; they'll often have good suggestions for how they money could be used.
Good luck!
Rusty.
The National Science Olympiad gets a good chunk of my charitable donations. They do a lot to promote science education and I had a great time competing when I was in high school.
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
I participated in high school back in 1995. It and its younger cousins are still going strong, introducing hundreds of thousands of elementary, junior high, and high school students to robotics and by extension programming, engineering, and science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Robotics_Competition
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
MIT Open Courseware is a good project.
And everyone knows the Wikimedia Foundation, but they can use more help.
How about giving away a free voltmeter to any student from a 3rd world nation who passes the edX course "Circuits and Electronics"?
6002x "Circuits and Electronics", an online version of the MIT introductory electronics course. This was an exact copy of the MIT course, taught by an MIT professor, and was just as hard as the original course. Same material, same difficulty, online format.
Some of the 7,000 graduates were from 3rd world nations. For example, this article talks about a class of high-school students in Mongolia:
I'm reminded of William Kamkwamba, who built a wind-powered generator and was able to bring electricity to his village. His Ted talk is pretty interesting.
Mr. Kamkwamba had nothing. He built his windmill from scratch after learning the principles of electricity from books in the local library. He built his own circuit breaker by winding wire onto nails driven into wood.
His task would have been so much easier if he could have measured continuity, or the output voltage of his generator.
Most of the modern world is based on electronics - measurements, actions, communications, and so on. Having the tools and understanding would allow people to repair broken equipment and machinery, to take pieces from ewaste and hook them together in new ways, and generally have better life opportunities.
Supplying 5,000 students (a generous estimate) would cost only $10,000.
Here is the contact page for edX.
Childs Play, and also really any charity you agree with. Just because your a geek doesn't mean your going to revoke your geek card if you donate blood and donate to something like the Red Cross instead of something more "geeky".
Consider giving it to the Center For Applied Rationality. Their goal is to make people more rational, by teaching about cognitive biases and scientific decision making, and studying how to do so effectively. They're doing great things, on relatively little resources; your marginal dollars would go a long way.
Consider your local community college when deciding where to put your money. You can probably connect with someone in the college's foundation and get a great tour. Community colleges provide cheap education for geeks and non-geeks alike. They've seen enrollment skyrocket as the economy (and state funding) has tanked.
Connect up with the college's foundation for options. Depending on how much you're talking about, you can do endowments or 1-time gifts, etc. You can set it up to go to one or more departments if you like what the faculty members are doing (CS, math, science, applied tech programs of different kinds), or to student clubs if you like what they're up to, or just set up scholarships for students in technical fields. You could target basic skills (math literacy), specific sciences, computing, even the library.
Free Software in Education
The pirate parties of all countries need lots of donations to organize the upcoming elections...
I just happened to mention this to my Mum, who works with several charities in the UK.
She says - "Don't just give money. Most local charities are in dire need of help with their IT."
RS
Find out if there's a hackerspace near you. The one I go to (not nearly often enough) has worked with schools before -- you might be able to get some community involvement going on. Ask if they'd be interested in hosting a class field trip, or developing extracurricular activities or class projects. Think Stirling engines, robots, 3D printers, arduino gadgets, laser cutters, all kinds of cool hands-on stuff. Obviously YMMV pretty significantly from one space to the next, and they're not all charities, but it could be really cool if there's a good one near you.
You can look for a hackerspace near you at hackerspaces.org or just use your favorite search engine with your region and "hackerspace". If not, maybe look for other local clubs that are into hands-on activities; rocketry, halloween, stagecraft, burners, whatever.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Friends of the Library. Your local library probably has one. You might become active with them if you want to promote technology access for those without...your local library is probably the only internet access for a substantial portion of the people who use it.
As a volunteer for the club that restored Germany's first radio telescope (see http://astropeiler.de/ ), I am certainly quite biased, but I think that technical, hands-on museums would also be a good target. Check your area for volunteer-run astronomical observatories, open electronics labs, private physics labs... essentially places that are open to everyone interested in science, give people a hands-on experience with old (or current) technology and where everyone can repeat important experiments that shape our world-view. For example, we offer everyone the chance to repeat the measurements by Oort et al. from 1958 that show that the Milky Way has a spiral structure, and hope to support and promote an evidence-based world view by doing so. (And, besides, it's just great fun to operate your own radio telescope!)
Donate to MOOC like Coursera and edX and request the money be spend on technology to facilitate access to disabled students. It is well proven education spent on disabled people is having a great ROI and enable them to avoid living in poverty.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Help fund local after school clubs: activities run in your local schools that further education local kids in a more informal environment. Get in contact with a local school and ask them what would help them run a technology / computing after school club. Perhaps they could do with some electronics tools (soldering irons etc) or some raspberry pi's, or basic robot kits.
These activities really help both academically struggling kids to find something they enjoy and catch up with their peers, reduces the chances of them dropping out, and also give gifted pupils the opportunity to push on further. The teachers can be more laid back as these activities are outside the core curriculum and not strictly evaluated so they often encourage the children to try out more experimental activities and emphasise fun and individual learning more than exam passing. And it's a good place for kids to be after school, they also learn a lot of positive social skills.
To be totally selfish, helping local kids to become inspired and enjoy education is better for your neighbourhood as well, and builds future social capacity as well as economic capacity in the area!
I don't agree with a lot of the suggestions posted here, particularly those supporting the provision of funds to larger internet-based organizations. Many of these organizations won't put the money to effective use and there's a good chance that it will simply be gobbled up by operating costs or other miscellaneous expenditures. Ideally you want a lasting return on your investment, so considering education is definitely a priority. Many families who live on either low or no income are not able to afford a decent computer, printer and internet connection and since education begins in the home, this is another area where the money would be well invested. Schools are generally well looked after (in most countries) in terms of their I.T., but schools in smaller countries (such as Samoa and other Island nations), some of which do not enjoy many of the basic schooling supplies-- let alone computers-- would definitely benefit. Making use of solar in countries which are fortunate enough to have year-round or near year-round sunshine should definitely be considered. Recent advances in IC technology have brought a range of different products to market which are capable of running on very little power. Some examples are VIA's range of small form-factor systems and mobile solutions from companies such as Nvidia (which incorporate a CUDA-powered GPU). Samoa is one such country which would be an excellent candidate for this sort of setup. Of course, there's no use supplying the technology without having the right people to educate others in how to use it effectively. Funds should be devoted to providing not just training, but the _right_ training to the teachers and other educators who will be assisting students to use this technology. Students need to be able to get the most out of the equipment and software, without having to be put through extensive training and with minimal supervision. The whole experience should place an emphasis on fun, to the point where the students don't even realize they're learning. Lastly, local investment is key -- create jobs locally, source as much as possible from the local economy and wherever possible, use Open Source operating system and applications... don't throw any more money at Microsoft or any of the other 'Big 3'.
What's more important:
People eating? People having access to the Internet?
People not being shot? People having a laptop each?
People not dying from diarrhoea? People offering lessons on the Internet?
People going to school? People going to a school which has Wifi tablets or OLPC's?
I work in education. Computers, and technology, do not make that much of a difference over plain, ordinary education. In fact, in some cases it's quite plainly DETRIMENTAL to the quality of education given (the kids know how to google an image, paste it into word, and print it out but can't do simple sums without a calculator).
Sure, in a good school, with decent funding, and teachers who know how to use it effectively and do so all the time (the last of which is very rare and the only people you ever see demonstrating their results improvements!), IT can make a difference. But it's not that much.
But out in the African deserts, Indian slums or wherever you wish to focus your efforts, it's not going to make a jot of difference. For the price of such junk you could just train a decent teacher who doesn't NEED instant, fingertip access to the works of Shakespeare to teach any subject you want them to. All you're doing is putting a technology burden on charities and people who can't afford to eat.
I don't "get" tech charities at all. In any country. If you want to make a difference, give a kid some manky horrible porridge that will keep him alive this month, or work to get them out of the slums through basic, normal education (i.e. funding a school building and a teacher is MORE than enough to get him going and any IT crap is just getting in the way after that), or give them an injection to make them immune to some killer disease, or support efforts to make their home countries safer from rebels killing and raping them.
Don't give them a hand-me-down gadget that you think is "cool". Just don't. Give them a life, instead.
And, take it from someone who works in schools: Don't donate your old crap to your local school. Hell, don't even encourage them to have "one PC per child" or whatever. It hurts basic education in your average school compared to just employing a slightly better teacher.
The NRA is a charity ?!? Mind blown.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Geeks Without Borders is one I like (geekswithoutborders.org) which sounds like it may be a good match for your wants. I know many of the people involved in it and it's legit. However, usually we (the organizations I'm in) go for local children's literacy programs instead. If you can't find one then buy and donate a pile of geeky books to the city or school library. We have also supported a local group that goes out and fixes up/repairs schools.
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
I would seriously consider the Wikimedia Foundation, publishers of wikipedia. Particularly in the third world, this sort of freely available information is vital.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
See a reminder of the role of free software in education. You can focus your donation on a particular concern, too.
I'm not talking about expenses used to run the charity. And a childcare provider at a woman's shelter isn't really overhead, but part of the charitable work if they're watching the children of the women being helped.
As far as admin expenses, I'm not talking regular admin, or even a CEO making a million a year. It can cost that much to hire someone competent enough to run a large multi-national charity.
However, there are charities around that basically look like money funnels. Small charities where the admin expense and CEO pay is a significant portion of the intake. Even worse, where fundraising expenses are half or more of the total. To me, these look like the CEO has buddies who run fundraising companies and is using the charity simply as a way to funnel business to them, probably with kickbacks. It's also a way to funnel money to family and friends by hiring them for various do-nothing admin positions.