Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Making Donations Count
An anonymous reader writes: As a recent college graduate I now have a job and enough money to actually buy things and donate to causes. Up until now I really haven't been paying attention to which groups are best to donate and which are scams. For example, Goodwill seems like a great organization until you dig deeper and discover they hire under privileged and disabled people only to exploit the related government handouts instead of doing it to benefit those people. What are some quality organizations to donate to? Who do you donate to and why? I'm looking for improving the poor, supporting constitutional rights, and supporting issues many Slashdotters can agree on such as net neutrality and anything against the media companies. I don't care what political group the money ends up going to. The specific case is more important than some arbitrary label. I'm also in the USA, so foreign recommendations are probably less helpful.
Since it's Slashdot:
Free Software Foundation http://fsf.org/
Electronic Freedom Foundation http://eff.org/
American Civil Liberties Union http://aclu.org/
Make sure they are registered as a 501(c)(3) so your donations are tax-deducible.
I'd skip sending money to ISIS or the Taliban. It's probably not tax-deductible and may result in unpleasant imprisonment.
thats always the best bet. keep it local
other than that, id say EFF is a good one
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Unless you want to spend several months a year of your life auditing inefficient "charity" organizations and trying to make judgments about whether they're doing it right and spending your dollars wisely...and hey if you think you're good at that you should probably start your own charity. But if you do, everyone will expect you to work for free. It's a viscous circle.
Donate your time, you'll meet people too.
Unless you're a multi-billionaire, then start a foundation and direct where the money goes.
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Help someone who shows promise.
We are going to die within +/-75 years of being born, and most of us are simply experiments in the gene pool. So quit thinking of yourself as a person who deserves to be alive, and start thinking of yourself as a step in the right direction.
Maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but these things cannot be discerned by individuals. Because to individuals, we all are important.
Pan handlers generally fall under the "don't donate" category. But you may meet someone under the "pan handler" category who deserves support. And don't just give $20 and call it good. Develop a relationship, encourage, and give when in makes sense.
The Renaissance happened in large part because people became patrons. We have Patreon to take a small percentage, or you can care about the people in your area enough to stop the parasitic investor class.
Find someone who shows promise, strike up a conversation, and figure out what they need. Offer it to them. They will be grateful, and you will have helped out a needy individual who will generate both individual profit and, most likely, profit for some bar or art store or indie label or whatever.
Boosting interest helps that individual, but it stimulates in real dollars the local economy.
Do you want to stimulate a foreign economy instead?
They're effective, efficient (per dollar), and badly needed. I spent some time looking for something I could be comfortable donating to monthly, and this is the one I concentrated all my charitable donations to (aside from my own volunteering in an unrelated area). http://www.msf.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
You bet. EFF and the Chicago Food Depository are two at the top of my list, but we've also made a sizable donation to http://www.law-arts.org/ because they helped me out a lot on several occasions when I was just starting out. Also, the Chicago Justice Project, http://chicagojustice.org/ gets some dough because they're actually trying to do some good here. They're data wonks who are fighting to get more transparency in Chicago policing and the data that Chicago policing generates. Tracy Siska is a good dude that has been a constant source of aggravation for the past few Chicago mayors and police chiefs, and I like that.
Though the old girl and I donate close to 10% of our annual income, the biggest donations I make are of my own time. Last Saturday, I spent the day busting sod over at the Englewood Community Garden, where students from Lindblom Academy (a public school in Chicago's inner city) have designed and built a terrific big organic community garden to address the food desert issue in that neighborhood. http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago... . I'm unskilled labor when it comes to vegetable gardens though. The wife does a lot better.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The reason the government and Goodwill "exploit" each other and the disabled people is that those disabled people really don't work efficiently enough to be worth minimum wage, and consequently without a subsidy, would be unemployable. Since the government unions won't allow the disabled to be hired directly, Goodwill is the vehicle that allows them to have a meaningful job. Sure, the CEO of Goodwill makes $850K/year, not actually that good for an organization with a $5B annual revenue. They're putting about 83 cents on the dollar into the disabled, which is a very low overhead when you realize how painfully expensive it is to deal with government contracting.
is a much better source than random shit on the internet.
You hit the nail on the head:
Student loans are the absolute worst debt one can get because they don't go away. Tell any other type of creditor other than a government entity to shove it, and they have a statute of limitations (4 years in Texas) until they have to write off the debt [1].
Say the economy hits the shitter, which it will, one winds up filing personal bankruptcy, has to use a bicycle, and has to find some cheap rent arrangement. After 7-10 years, one can continue with life. Student loan debts are permanent. When they shit on your credit score, that stays forever.
So, in a nutshell, the OP has a good heart for finding a charity, but he or she needs to first get rid of student loan debt for a better financial position to actually do more good.
Now, assuming there are no student loans, I'd probably go for local charities. The local food bank comes to mind. One never knows... they may be donating to it one day, having to get food the next.
[1]: One side note, when they do write it off, the IRS considers that as "income"...
The nra invented that definition of the 2nd amendment. The aclu doesn't agree because it's nuts.
The aclu isn't for unlimited freedom, it's for maximizing freedom. They're ok with laws and restrictions more, but only when cobstitutional and narrowly defined with independent oversight. More guns don't make us more free and nra backed politicians have been a disaster for civil liberties.
Underprivileged and disabled people have a hard time getting work, so Goodwill gives them an opportunity to be a productive member of society. The fact that they get government handouts for this means that they have more money to spend on other projects.