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What projects/orgs are you donating to?
Every year, I donate a modest sum to combat climate change. Since my employer matches my donations up to a certain amount, I try to maximize their contribution.
This year, most of my donations have gone to the following two orgs:
- Information Technology and Innovation Foundation - a highly regarded US think tank focusing on clean energy research and advising policymakers
- Eden Reforestation Projects - apparently $7 donated here offsets a year worth of personal carbon emissions
Are there any projects/causes/orgs you are very keen on donating to? Are there any that we should look out for?
Edit: Please feel free to list technical projects, Kickstarters, Patreons, etc.
I donate to GiveDirectly because they are very efficient and transparent, I like their model/approach, and poverty and income inequality relates to a lot of other problems. I would like to give more for climate change causes, since it's kinda my #1 cause, but I'm not sure how much can be done by charities and research in that space, I think we need broad-scale change by corporations and governments. :/ That said I do have an account with Ecologi, who invest money in a variety of climate projects.
There's a This American Life episode on GiveDirectly, which is where I first heard of it.
Yeah, I agree that climate change would probably be a lost cause unless we bring fundamental changes to our civilization, but for what it's worth, ITIF apparently scores very highly on effective altruism metrics 1. That's what convinced me to donate to them (or was it just Bill Gates?).
The only three charity/non-profit organizations I still have recurring donations set up for are:
Tildes, Internet Archive, and Médecins Sans Frontières (AKA Doctors Without Borders).
But in the past I have also donated to a few other Orgs as well, e.g. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Arbor Day Foundation (via #teamtrees), etc.
And while I also have a bunch of Patreon/Floatplane/etc donations set up as well, they are mostly to pretty niche content creators (e.g. for Forgotten Weapons, Travel Trolls TV, etc) who I very much doubt anyone else here would be similarly interested in donating to. :P
As a Brit raised in a context that views American gun culture with heavy disdain, I have found Forgotten Weapons to be immensely educational, entertaining, and a great insight into gun culture at its best rather than (as we over here are more often exposed to) its worst.
I am Canadian, and so also generally viewed American gun culture with disdain as well (still do, for the most part), but I have now come to at least appreciate some aspects of it through Forgotten Weapons too. I mostly watch the channel for the Military History and Engineering Technology aspects of it though.
p.s. InRangeTV (another channel Ian from FW is a part of), also does a good job of showcasing some of the positive aspects of American gun culture as well. The channel focuses on an assortment of firearms and history related content, but also showcases competitive shooting events created/hosted by them, which are geared towards developing practical shooting skills and self-improvement (both physical and mental). It, like Forgotten Weapons, also intentionally avoids getting overtly political in their videos too, which is a breath of fresh air.
I'm a big fan of and contribute to many different tree planting, and clean water projects of various kinds.
I'll use projects in Namibia as an example:
I paid for a school in Namibia to get (sanitary) toilet facilities so they have bathrooms at school for the first time.
In a different part of the country, I paid for the construction of a well which provides clean water for the 3200ish people who have this as their closest water source. The well is anticipated to last for 40-60 years.
In a third part of the country I've contributed to various tree planting projects that employs locals to grow forests and live off adjacent farmland that becomes sustainable nearby.
Around half of children that die in Namibia do so from lack of clean water or water at all. As much as 1 in 4 children that die in the country die from diarrhea.
There are effective charities, or worthwhile causes, developments, projects or people in all sorts of things all over the world. Pick something you feel good about supporting. There's an almost unlimited scope for spending money on things for the sake of helping out.
I feel it's great that people do support things. It's secondary to me exactly what people support. You do you!
https://www.givewell.org/ is fantastic.
I predominantly donate through Effective Altruism Australia, most recently $20,000 after I sold some of my stock compensation. I'd consider myself an Effective Altruist, and trust EA analysis on effective giving. My main reservation about EA is that it sometimes feels like treating the symptoms and not the disease.
I give $20/25 (can't quite remember) monthly to Equal Justice Initiative which seems to be a pretty good charity.
I don’t have a credit card, which makes it hard to donate through services abroad. It’s probably possible with something like PayPal but I’m admittedly forgetful. Next time I’m at the computer I’ll definitely check if I can donate to Tildes somehow — it’ll certainly be a small amount because the Brazilian Real is worth less than one fifth of the US dollar right now.
I’d really like to donate directly to Emacs development but that’s not really possible, so I may donate to Doom Emacs. Doom Emacs is an impressive piece of software mostly maintained by one guy.
Either way, the amount would probably be symbolic for each project.
That’s great. It’s not really possible to donate directly to core Emacs development, though. You must donate to the Free Software Foundation and who knows where your money will end up.
Those are awesome projects worthy of our support. I’d probably donate to Doom Emacs due to it’s awesomeness. It solved my “init bankruptcy” and made Emacs fun to use again.
The FSF is the principal organization behind the GNU Operating System and related projects, which Emacs is a part, and has been consistently given near perfect scores on Charity Navigator. You can even see the breakdown of their yearly revenue, expenses, and spending here:
https://www.fsf.org/about/financial
Of note; GNU projects made up about 21% of their total spending in 2019.
And IMO they are a pretty great organization overall that aligns with a lot of the ideals that I have seen you mention having (e.g. with you being a member of the Brazilian Pirate Party, IIRC?), so even if not all of your donation would go towards Emacs specifically, the money would likely still end being used in ways you would approve of.
I understand that the FSF is awesome and it would absolutely employ my donation on something I stand for. But, as an Emacs user, donating 100% directly to Emacs would give me great satisfaction.
Ah, okay. It's just the way you said "who knows where your money will end up" that made me think you might not know what the FSF was about, or just how transparent they are about everything. But wanting your donations to go specifically towards something you use to further its development makes total sense. Sorry for the presumption of ignorance.
No need to be sorry my friend ;)
I'm wondering if it would make sense to find somewhere to donate locally?
GiveWell makes the argument that it makes sense to donate to foreign causes so that your money goes further (provided they're good causes). But it seems like that's a US-centric argument, or at least it depends on the exchange rate.
I have a few consistent donations to typical things... but lately I've been hitting that 'buy me a coffee' button for a lot of odd sites like this Codenames site I used one night. It was handy and well worth a tenner.
My spouse and I have been attempting to do some more immediate and local giving. We've recently bought a bunch of bulk food from Costco for our local YMCA to give away to locally unhoused people. Next month we'll focus on giving them clothing as it gets colder here.
I’ve given to Feeding America, Wikipedia, and Vote.org.
For financial reasons I'm sporadic with my donations. I've supported a couple projects with individual developers (Qutebrowser, Radium Tracker, which is technically "commercial" software, but open source), and figure with the little excess I've got, I can give to projects I feel enrich areas that aren't typically supported, where I feel my dollar will go furthest.
I've donated to Wikimedia, but that was a one-off, I don't usually have the money up when they're running a pledge drive.
Child’s Play, and hopefully nobody comments to tell me this charity is bullshit too like so many...
I don’t give much, maybe $16/m but it’s something.
I have donated to Child's Play a few times in the past too, through some of their gaming marathon fundraisers, various Humble Bundles, and even a previous Games Done Quick event too, IIRC. And while it hasn't been fully rated yet, Charity Navigator gave them a 100/100 for Finance & Accountability via their Experimental Rating System. That's not definitive, by any means, but it's at least somewhat encouraging to see.
https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/203584556
I have a monthly donation to Save The Children. Also do Tildes, and when I have a bit more extra money I go on Donor's Choose and pick out a couple of teachers to help.