Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2022, Day Five: Charities
Posted on December 2, 2022 Posted by John Scalzi 56 Comments
For the last four days, the Whatever Gift Guide 2022 has been about helping you find the perfect gifts for friends and loved ones. But today I’d like to remind folks that the season is also about helping those in need. So this final day is for charities. If you’re looking for a place to make a donation — or know of a charitable organization that would gladly accept a donation — this is the place for it.
How to contribute to this thread:
1. Anyone can contribute. If you are associated with or work for a charity, tell us about the charity. If there’s a charity you regularly contribute to or like for philosophical reasons, share with the crowd. This is open to everyone.
2. Focus on non-political charities, please. Which is to say, charities whose primary mission is not political — so, for example, an advocacy group whose primary thrust is education but who also lobbies lawmakers would be fine, but a candidate or political party or political action committee is not. The idea here is charities that exist to help people and/or make the world a better place for all of us.
3. It’s okay to note personal fundraising (Indiegogo and GoFundMe campaigns, etc) for people in need. Also, other informal charities and fundraisers are fine, but please do your part to make sure you’re pointing people to a legitimate fundraiser and not a scam. I would suggest only suggesting campaigns that you can vouch for personally.
3. One post per person. In that post, you can list whatever charities you like, and more than one charity. Note also that the majority of Whatever’s readership is in the US/Canada, so I suggest focusing on charities available in North America.
4. Keep your description of the charity brief (there will be a lot of posts, I’m guessing) and entertaining. Imagine the person is in front of you as you tell them about the charity and is interested but easily distracted.
5. You may include a link to a charity site if you like by using standard HTML link scripting. Be warned that if you include too many links (typically three or more) your post may get sent to the moderating queue. If this happens, don’t panic: I’ll be going in through the day to release moderated posts. Note that posts will occasionally go into the moderation queue semi-randomly; Don’t panic about that either.
6. Comment posts that are not about people promoting charities they like will be deleted, in order to keep the comment thread useful for people looking to find charities to contribute to.
All right, then: It’s the season of giving. Tell us where to give to make this a better place.
North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association
https://energync.org/
NCSEA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with a 4 star Charity Navigator rating that advocates for clean energy policies so that we have cleaner air, reduce GHG emissions, and create local jobs and economic development.
I like to give to the Sabin Vaccine Institute (https://www.sabin.org/), whose mission is to spread vaccination to those who can’t afford it. They also have a program to fight neglected tropical diseases that cause great suffering. They get an excellent rating from Charity Navigator (https://www.charitynavigator.org/), which is a useful tool for choosing between charities that might otherwise seem equal but that deliver different proportions of donated money to the people who actually need it.
Speaking of delivering money, if there’s a “notes” field when you make an online donation, ask them to not send you paper receipts and other paper mailings, which waste tons of money. Yesterday, for example, a charity that shall remain nameless send me a mailing (color calendar, pages and pages of notes) that probably cost more than $5 to print and send, not including staff work time. That’s an egregious waste of my donation money, and I told them so.
Last but not least, a reminder to look for periods when your favorite charity does “matching donations”; that is, times when some philanthropist will give the charity as much money as you did, thereby doubling the impact of your donation. To avoid missing these periods, ask them to put you on their e-mail notification list.
The Heinlein Society was founded by Virginia Heinlein and we’re in our 23rd year! THS exists to preserve the legacy renowned writer Robert Anson Heinlein left us in novels, essays, speeches, and short stories that remain as fresh as ever. We intend, in Heinlein’s words to “PAY IT FORWARD” since we can never pay back the benefits that we got from him and his work. We provide free educational materials as a download for teachers, librarians, and homeschoolers. (Learn more at: http://www.heinleinsociety.org/thseducation/ .)
In 2022, our scholarship program for STEM granted four $4000 scholarships, including our “Ginny” scholarship which is open to female STEM students only. In our 11 years of scholarships, we have awarded over $55,000 to 31 winners. We now have a separate scholarship fund so that we can continue to offer this level of Paying It Forward. A donation to this program could help us sustain the dollar amount and the number of scholarships we can continue to support in the future. (https://www.heinleinsociety.org/scholarship-fund/)
We also promote Heinlein Blood Drives at conventions. Since Robert Heinlein devoted a lot of energy to volunteer blood drives this is one of our core missions. We have now collected over 50,000 units since 2001. If you attend a convention that doesn’t have a blood drive, contact our Blood Drive Chairman at BloodDriveChair@Heinleinsociety.org and talk to him about volunteering so we can make an even greater impact. This year we have been doing a virtual blood drive–if you want a pin from the Ghost of Robert Heinlein as thanks for donating this year, email our blood drive chair. As the pandemic restrictions lift, we are looking forward to being able to resume in-person blood drives.
Our Heinlein for Heroes (H4H) program supports military members and veterans by providing copies of Heinlein’s books, as well as other science fiction books to deployed troops and military hospitals. Since its inception in 2013, we have shipped over 38,000 books to service members around the world.
As a private, nonpartisan 501(c)(3), The Heinlein Society survives on membership fees and donations to support “Paying it Forward”. As these resources plateau and the demands on our organization increase, we are asking for your support with a direct gift to the Society to support our mission. So, if you have ever grokked, shared water, been amused by or owned by a cat, loved AI computers, or have longed for the stars, pay it forward just a little bit by considering making a tax-deductible donation or by becoming a member. If you donate, you can choose which of our programs your donation supports http://www.heinleinsociety.org/
Your membership also supports publishing the Heinlein Journal. Members get the new issues delivered electronically and article submissions are welcome from member and non-member alike. See https://www.heinleinsociety.org/heinlein-journal/ for more information.
Also, even though we’re a charity at heart, one cool benefit for members is the chance to win a “Virginia Edition” leather-bound set of all of Heinlein’s published works. We’ve given five sets away so far and will be giving another one away for members in 2023. Thank you!
Betsey Wilcox
Secretary, The Heinlein Society
New York City is a tough place to be on the streets.
And it’s getting cold.
An ASPCA contribution made in their name is a good gift for the grandkids.
Let’s save some animals.
https://tinyurl.com/mwt86zbe
My mother passed away a couple of weeks ago. There were three charities that meant a lot to her, reflecting her training and experiences in early-childhood education:
The Bank Street College of Education, for teaching children and for training teachers: https://www.bankstreet.edu/
The Fiorello H. LaGuardia of Music & Art and the Performing Arts. The web site https://www.laguardiahs.org/ describes the schools, but donations are made via https://alumniandfriends.org/give/
The Mosaic Project to promote diversity in education: https://mosaicproject.org/
Every year, we raise funds through a small department of Artists for Community Transformation for a benevolent fund for artists — many of them literally or near-literally starving — here in NYC.
Some of the things we’ve done:
• We sent an actor to Georgia Ensemble theater for audition training. Afterwards, he landed a roll on Bound for Broadway and the Massachusetts Lottery commercials.
• We’ve given away over 200 CVS gift cards to literal starving artists on the streets of New York to give them basic needs.
• We helped a local chef produce his first cookbook for free.
• We sent some writers to WorldCon for free.
• We helped four different illustrators produce their first children’s books / comic books.
• We paid some 50 authors to publish their work, many for the first time.
We generally try to emphasize helping people make what they feel called to make, but if we see someone starving literally on the street and making art on cardboard, we try our very best not to pass them by. All funds given here go to that, nowhere else, no hidden administrative fees, and there’s only the credit card fee.
Right now, Tara and I are currently helping a dying theater and PBS film producer through end of life care. It’s messy. It’s hard. My own father passed away last year and I’m not finished with that. BUT: it’s good, moral work and it’s the sort of thing every artist needs at the end of life.
So that sort of thing is where it goes. Take good care of each other this season, friends.
I have supported the Center for Victims of Torture. It helps torture survivors heal from their trauma. I lack the words to adequately express how valuable their work is.
https://www.cvt.org/
I’m a longtime support of Cradles to Crayons, https://www.cradlestocrayons.org/. Their mission statement: “Cradles to Crayons provides children from birth through age 12, living in homeless or low-income situations, with the essential items they need to thrive – at home, at school and at play. We supply these items free of charge by engaging and connecting communities.” They’re a wonderful organization that operates in Boston, NYC, and Philadelphia, making sure kids have clothing and school supplies. A simple but essential need.
Locus Magazine’s fundraiser is worth a mention here.
https://t.co/gQsyIZSbu8
For more information see
https://file770.com/locus-launches-fundraiser/
(Also worth following whether or not you donate.)
RIP Medical to retire medical debt (cost-effective).
https://ripmedicaldebt.org/
Immigrant families together
https://immigrantfamiliestogether.com/what-we-do
Intertribal Friendship House
https://www.ifhurbanrez.org/
Located in Oakland, California, the Intertribal Friendship House serves native Americans in the urban Bay Area. From the website:
For urban Native people IFH has served as the Urban Reservation and Homeland. In many cases it is one of the few places that keeps them connected to their culture and traditions through pow wow dance, drumming, beading classes, and the many social gatherings, cultural events, and ceremonies that are held there. Intertribal Friendship House is more than an organization. It is the heart of a vibrant tribal community.
The San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium supports a network of small non-profit community health centers and free clinics in San Francisco that are all focused on providing equitable health care to the uninsured, underserved and vulnerable populations.
https://www.sfccc.org/donate
Full disclosure: this is the company I work for.
I donate regularly to SBP https://sbpusa.org which is a disaster recovery and resilience organization. Their roots are in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They have expanded to helping other communities in the US and the Caribbean with disasters, mostly but not entirely floods. Their goal is to shrink the time between disaster and recovery for homeowners by helping with rebuilding, sharing their model with other organizations, educating on risk mitigation strategies in advance, and advising and advocating with policy makers.
This unfortunately seems an area of increasing need.
Odylia Therapeutics is a non-profit drug development company specializing in rare diseases. They have a several programs working on rare genetic conditions, mainly focused on Gene Therapy solutions.
https://odylia.org/
If you are interested the donate link provides multiple ways to donate as well as to coordinate company matches.
A few of my favorite charities:
Family Dogs New Life Shelter is a no-kill shelter in Portland, OR that helps some of the most difficult to adopt dogs find new homes
https://familydogsnewlife.org/
Old Dog Haven in western Washington helps provide loving homes and care for older dogs
https://olddoghaven.org/
The Mary Parrish Center in Nashville provides housing and services for survivors of interpersonal violence
https://www.maryparrish.org/
Headquartered in Raleigh, NC GreenPower is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit improving North Carolina’s environment by supporting renewable energy, carbon offset projects and providing grants for solar installations at K-12 schools.
Since 2003, donors have supported more than 1,125 local renewable energy and carbon offset projects, producing 1.06 billion kilowatt-hours of green energy and mitigating nearly 107,000 tons of greenhouse gases.
Donors have also helped fund solar installations at 70+ K-12 schools in more than 40 unique counties, reaching nearly 55,000 students!
To date, the schools have collectively produced an estimated 842,000 kilowatt hours of green energy, a savings of about $84,000. Help NC GreenPower get to all 100 NC counties and donate today: https://www.ncgreenpower.org/donate
Whatever is a safe space for book-lovers, but I’ll lay odds most people think of books as containers for story and ideas–as they are. But they are also physical objects, and the story of how those objects evolved in the West is fascinating.
I’m asking y’all to consider a donation to the American Bookbinders Museum! While there are many museums in the US and elsewhere that celebrate printing, ABM is the only museum in the northern hemisphere that focuses on the book as a physical structure–how it developed, how it evolved, how mass production changed, improved, and diminished that structure. It’s a story that takes in a lot of human history (guilds! unions! women’s rights! censorship and smuggling!).
ABM is a new museum in a city (San Francisco) filled with better known cultural organizations. Even a $20 or $30 contribution goes a long way–we know how to make a penny give up its last drop of purchasing good. We have a lot of ambitious plans for 2024 (school outreach, video installations, increasing our lecture program) but we need help from the Community of the Book to achieve those plans.
https://bookbindersmuseum.networkforgood.com/projects/72469-everyday-campaign-landing-page
“The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.” –Norbert Frye
Disclaimer: I’m the Operations Manager. Also the Bookstore Manager, Rentals Manager, Art Department, and half of the crack copy-writing team.
I’m cranky and I think there’s too many humans on the planet, so I donate and recommend donating to Planned Parenthood. Also your local animal shelter, wherever you may be.
LaunchPad Job Club
https://launchpadjobclub.org/
I have been associated with the organization for nearly two decades, starting as a member in need of career advice, then later giving back by serving as Vice President.
LPJC helps people in Austin Texas get re-employed with great career advice, motivational speakers, mock interviews (practice makes perfect!), resume reviews, a Toastmasters chapter to help improve public speaking, and Leap to Success, a program that helps other non-profits by giving jobseekers opportunities to utilize their skills to fill needs those other non-profits might not be able to afford (active participation in projects between jobs looks GREAT on your resume!)
You can donate directly to the organization, or you can designate it as your charity on Amazon Smile for no charge (if you are an Amazon customer).
The founder of the organization was just recently recognized by Recognize Good
I’d like to encourage people to donate to their local land trusts. Land trusts do great in their communities preserving local space, ecology and access, and in areas with little public land they are often one of the only viable forms on conservation. Land trusts sometimes purchase at risk properties for conservation, other times work with landowners to establish conservation easements to preserve natural land while still keeping it in private hands. My local organization is Palouse Land Trust: https://www.palouselandtrust.org/. I’d encourage people to find groups working in their local area, but failing that, Western Rivers Conservancy is doing great work in wonderful locations: https://www.westernrivers.org/
This time of year is always hard for those who are food insecure. Consider giving to your local food bank this season, and then make it a regular donation throughout the year.
Fairly local to the Scalzis is the Dayton Foodbank. This also happens to be my local foodbank, and they really do great work. A group of us from my company regularly volunteer to help out and it’s always been rewarding. They have various programs – Kids Cafe and Good to Go backpacks; Drive-Thru distribution; and Mobile Farmer’s Markets. They also have their own urban garden/greenhouse to grow produce and herbs.
Online money donations are done through PayPal, but you don’t need a PP account to be able to send them a donation: https://thefoodbankdayton.org/donate/
I’ve donated to Alice’s Kids before. Heard about it from Patton Oswalt, who supports it. It’s a small charity that provides small donations to kids based on requests by teachers and social workers. It can be anything, from some clothes to a musical instrument based on what a struggling kid from disadvantaged families needs. It has very low overhead and very directly helps kids.
https://aliceskids.org/
West view Presbyterian Church, Longmont, Co. westviewpres.org , runs a pantry twice a month. At the moment it needs volunteers more than money.
You probably have a pantry or food shelf near you that needs donations and volunteers, give to them if you aren’t in Boulder County, CO.
Community Food Share is a national organization.
At Westview, when we started, we thought we’d be overwhelmed if served more than 100 families twice a month. At 4+ people per family, two times a month that was 800+ people eating. Since Covid, we are feeding about 1200 families every month.
The need is there, near you.
Westviewpres.org will give you more information.
Bats are much maligned but essential animals. They eat billions of dollars of crop pests a year, and one little brown bat can eat up to 1500 mosquitoes in a night. Other species are important pollinators and fill other vital biological niches. Yet these wonderful animals are misunderstood and vilified in many parts of the world, and many species are critically endangered. That’s why I contribute regularly to Bat Conservation International (https://www.batcon.org/) as well as Merlin Tuttle’s Bat Conservation (https://www.merlintuttle.org/). Merlin Tuttle is the founder and president emeritus of Bat Conservation International, and was and has been instrumental in making the world more aware of these wonderful animals and their plight.
To repeat what others have recommended: Your Local Food Bank.
Being hungry is horrible. And painful. Figure out how to donate cash, not unused cans and the such. My local food bank says 25¢ can provide one meal.
Thanks for hosting this!
First, I’d like to put forth a GFM for my brother who had a heart attack earlier in the year and then they found stage 4 colon cancer. Any help for him and his family would be great especially here during the holidays. https://www.gofundme.com/f/kenneth-kendrick-medical-recovery
Then there is the Balam Foundation which is a pet rescue group based in Mexico. https://www.balamfoundation.org/
Finally, Con or Bust which is dear to my heart as a FOC (fan of color). It allows POC to attend and participate in this wild wonderful world of convention fandom. https://dreamfoundry.org/con-or-bust/
We make multiple donations each year to World Central Kitchen (https://wck.org/), who helps feed people around the world who are victims of disasters–either natural or P/u/t/i/n man-made.
They are often the first people on the ground make sure that people have food to eat.
I would like to suggest donations to charities supporting the people of Ukraine in their fight for survival and freedom against a genocidal Russian invasion. (Or, if you’re not sentimental about such things, their destruction of a large chunk of the Russian armed forces and revelation that it is actually kind of a lousy military, a highly cost-effective approach to diminishing Russian strength without actually putting American lives on the line.)
Razom for Ukraine (https://www.razomforukraine.org/) is a 501c3 organization in the USA. Their Emergency Medical Response project (https://www.razomforukraine.org/razom-emergency-response/) focuses on delivering first aid kits, medical supplies, and medical technology. They also have a variety of programs assisting children, veterans, doctors-in-training, etc.
If you prefer a more snark-laden approach, Saint Javelin (https://www.saintjavelin.com/) offers clothing and other merch with cheeky images and messages on a variety of themes including pseudo-icons with Javelin and HIMARS weapon systems, Patron the bomb-sniffing dog, Russian Warship Go F**k Yourself, and Winter is Coming. Profits go to humanitarian aid, first responder kits, winter kit for soldiers, etc. Despite the name, they are not associated with or financed by Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, or any other weapons producer.
There are many other organizations as well.
Doctors Without Borders came to my attention years ago, when they were in the news caring for Ebola victims in Africa. This was back when about the only things known about Ebola is was easily, was highly lethal, gruesome, and deserved a high ranking on any sane persons’ Disrecommened Ways to Die. The word hero is over-used these days, but those men and women were regarded as such back when that meant a lot more.
Hi! Independent Animal Rescue saved me when I was a kitten and alone and outside. They fostered me, gave me my shots, got me fixed, and taught me how to hang out with humans.
Now I live in a great home with my brother (also rescued by Independent Animal Rescue) and my sister, who was rescued by my forever home peoples.
I hope you can support this great animal rescue organization that saved me and many other cats and dogs.
https://animalrescue.net/
Thank you!
As a teenager I discovered SF novels and became a voracious reader. Most of these books were in libraries. So I urge you to donate to your local public library. Some libraries will even accept targeted donations so that funds will go specifically to acquire SF books [or any other genre you prefer to support].
And yes, I do work in a public library, and it is satisfying to find books for teens and children to keep them reading.
I support The Tor Project to protect online privacy.
Tor is a non-profit that creates browsers and other software that protects people’s privacy online. The technology they’ve created is also used to protect human rights activists, worker organising, and whistleblowers.
Donate on their website at donate.torproject.org.
These are all so inspiring!
Cranky Granny, I agree with you! And Hugh, I LOVE bats, so I’m happy to learn about the batcon org.
I donate to the Trevor Project: thetrevorproject.org and to National Lawyers Guild (which helps a lot of disenfranchised people navigate the legal system} http://www.nlg.org
The Cat House on the Kings (https://www.cathouseonthekings.com/) takes in cats. Thousands of cats. Homeless, orphaned, sick; they are made as healthy and contented as possible, and are available for adoption, or they live out their lives right there. Check out the videos!
Did you know what most domestic violence shelters don’t take pets? Abusers do, and threaten to harm or kill pets if their victims leave them. A quote from Ahimsa House: “Up to 71% of victims of domestic violence report that their abusers also threatened, harmed, or killed the family pets.” Another: “Concern for a beloved companion animal’s welfare prevents or delays as many as 50% of battered individuals from escaping domestic abuse.”
Fortunately, there are charities that will take the pets and foster them until the victim gets back on their feet. Ahimsa House is one of them.
https://ahimsahouse.org/
Not in Georgia? Looking for a similar organization near you? Safe Havens has a directory here:
https://safehavensforpets.org/
(P.S. I am not affiliated with Ahimsa House or Safe Havens, I just support their work.)
A charity that is close to my heart is AbleGamers
https://ablegamers.org/
They help people young and old who happen to be disabled to combat social isolation by giving them accessibility tools that allow them to play games, have fun, make friends.
Do the stuff most of us take for granted.
A small donation here can make a big difference in someone’s life and open up a whole new world to them.
And allow them to have fun.
The Sheldrick Wildlife Trust has been working with elephants and other animals for so long they are now seeing wild-born grandchildren of orphan elephants they rescued being born. Every time I read somewhere that “elephants will soon be extinct in the world” I remember the awesome work these people are doing and beg to differ. Adopt an elephant here: https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/
Meals on Wheels. Each chapter is local and specific to your county. Feeding seniors through free lunches at Senior Centers or delivering free meals to their door. Donate money or spend some time volunteering in the kitchen or delivering meals.
I founded and run Bridge to Enter Advanced Mathematics (BEAM), which works with students from low-income and historically marginalized communities to help them become scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and computer scientists. It’s my life’s work and, not surprisingly, I believe deeply in it.
We work with kids beginning in 6th grade and continuing through college graduation. We give them access to advanced math that really prepares them for college, grad school, and in general much more challenging problem-solving in the future. We stick with them for ten years, helping them navigate high school, get into great colleges on scholarship, and succeed at college and beyond.
More importantly, we create a deep community of people who love math. They find out that there are lots of people from their same backgrounds who love it, and they make friends for a lifetime.
Here’s a video that shows our work in general as well as during the pandemic.
Right now, we have a matching challenge where all donations are multiplied 5x, in honor of our new strategic plan which seeks to grow our organization 5x in the next ten years.
If you’re interested, get more info or donate here.
Sheldrick works in Kenya, rescuing orphaned elephants and other wildlife and returning them to the wild. They know of over 50 wild born babies born to orphans they’ve raised. The orphans return to show their babies off to the keepers!!
Houston Texas is death for domestic pets. The animal cruelty rivals anything in so-called third world countries. My spouse and I have worked for decades to rescue abandoned, abused, and other problematic dogs from Houston, through https://m.facebook.com/100072105151664/ Petronus Rescue. I hope this pasted right 😂
As a member of the board of Clarion West, I should certainly start by suggesting us. Our mission statement is “We support emerging and underrepresented voices by providing writers with world-class instruction to empower their creation of wild and amazing worlds. Through conversation and public engagement, we bring those voices to an ever-expanding community.”
That means the six-week summer workshop, and many, many online workshops, as well as local events here in Seattle. We’re working hard to increase accessibility and we’ve updated our workshop methodology to hopefully be more supportive to PoC, the queer community, and others who haven’t felt at home in the traditional Milford-style workshop model.
Supporting Clarion West is one way of helping establish new voices in the community–for example my classmate Cadwell Turnbull, whose books and short fiction are amazing.
http://www.clarionwest.org/
If you’re in Seattle, it’s not only speculative fiction writers who need support. The Bureau of Fearless Ideas provides free writing workshops, creative classroom visits, and afterschool homework help at two locations in the city, the program helps children of all backgrounds for absolutely no money. I’ve been a supporter for more than fifteen years now, and I’ve watched kids from challenging backgrounds find themselves and succeed not just at writing but at life.
https://www.fearlessideas.org
Besides these, I think it’s worth noting that food banks and support services for homeless youth have been hit hard by the pandemic, by inflation, and by the increased precarity of the moment. In my neck of the woods that means supporting Ballard Food Bank — https://www.ballardfoodbank.org — and YouthCare — https://youthcare.org — but in your locale, the best organizations to support may differ.
The Ali Forney Center. They provide shelter, meals, medical services, counseling and other services to homeless LGBTQ+ young people. 80% of these kids are homeless because they have be put aside by their families. https://www.aliforneycenter.org/our-story
They assist over 2,000 youths per year through a 24-hour Drop-In Center which provides over 70,000 meals annually, medical and mental health services through an on-site clinic, and a scattered-site housing program.
Thanks for doing this. I support a number of different charities in the DC area. Here are the two I’d like to give a boost to this year.
Friends of Guest House provides re-entry programs and assistance to women in Northern Virginia who are re-entering the community from incarceration. Friends of Guest House serves their clients through three core programs: the Residential-to-Aftercare program continuum, Workforce & Life Development Program, and the non-residential Outreach Program.
https://friendsofguesthouse.org
The Homeless Children’s Playtime Project in DC cultivates resilience in children experiencing family housing insecurity by providing and expanding access to transformative play experiences in the shelters where they live.
https://playtimeproject.org
Books To Prisoners programs do exactly what they say. They mail books to prisoners all over the United States, based on what prisoners requests. You can donate money or books. Dictionaries are very popular, both the kind with definitions and Spanish-English. Sometimes called prison book program or “Books Behind Bars”
Amnesty International fights for the rights of the unjustly imprisoned and persecuted everywhere from Yemen to Yellow Rock. I’ve been a member for years.
Your local public library, food bank and community services center are excellent ways to make our communities better places. I also second recommendations for Doctors Without Borders.
My personal favorite charity, though, is charity:water. Did you know that nearly 1 in 10 people worldwide do not have access to clean water? That’s about twice the population of the US! Access to clean water without having to travel a day or more means their kids can go to school, their meals and clothes won’t make them sick, and they can spend more time earning money – that one change can make a huge difference.
charity:water is working to change that, one community at a time. Help them build sustainable access to clean water for those in need.
How about a program for the homeless and recently homeless, co-run by homeless people? The Material Aids and Advocacy Program of Massachusetts helps people where they are. Maapma.org
apopo.org pairs humans and a type of large rat to sniff out land mines and disease. I love the human-animal partnership in this. The rats don’t weigh enough to set off the mines! There always seems to be millions available for weaponry but so little for putting things back together. These folks are doing that.
This holiday season, Give the gift of education!
Delugees Environment Club is a Kenyan Organization Dedicated to teaching environment education to pupils in rural Kenya and planting trees in their schools.
This year, they are raising £7500 to teach Environment Education to 20,000 pupils and plant 20,000 trees in 2023!
Kindly considering giving to Delugees Club and make a difference for the kids.
Join The Cause on Justgiving and help children develop and adopt sustainable habits through the link below:
https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/delugees?utm_term=RPDKxYmyv
APOPO train and deploy African Pouched Rats to find landmines and to detect TB. They do both using their amazing sense of smell.
I sponsor Carolina the TB detector rat based in Dar Es-Salaam, Mozambique. Carolina saves about one life per day by sniffing out positive TB samples that human workers have marked as negative. That’s a pretty great second chance!
Find out more at the apopo.org website
I’ll take this opportunity to plug Medshare’s Ukraine fund
[https://impact.medshare.org/campaign/medshare-responds-crisis-in-ukraine/c394354]. The following is shamelessly stolen from zeihan.com:
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
Lifering Secular Recovery, https://lifering.org … secular, as in non-religious, not anti-religious, alternative to AA/12step. Former board member.
Adopt A Homeless Animal Rescue (AAHA) is an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) Non Profit Organization dedicated to rescuing and assisting animals in crisis that was established in 2001. AAHA has a particular commitment to the Pit Bull and aims to raise awareness about this very misunderstood breed of dog.
AAHA advocates for any animal in need and serves as a resource and liaison for shelters and individuals.
Every single penny goes directly to helping dogs in crisis.
Please consider donating any amount at all to help save dogs lives.
https://www.aaha-rescue.org/donate
Tell them John Scalzi sent you. :)
The foster care system often leaves kids without any focus or ways to grow. My friend Ed was a product of 8 years and 14 foster homes, and credits a high school theatre program for helping him rewrite his life’s script. He died young, but we have set up a charity in his name to allow other kids this way out of their trauma and redefine themselves with art.
https://bct.givecloud.co/edward-f-morrill-memorial-scholarship-fund
My favorite charities are:
The Carter Center https://www.cartercenter.org/donate/index.html – Dedicated to Peace and health programs
Heifer International https://www.heifer.org/ – Ending hunger and poverty, plus you can gift a goat, or a cow, or even a water buffalo!
Cascades Raptor Center https://cascadesraptorcenter.org/ – in the PNW doing great work saving endangered raptors and educating the public