Thanks for bringing up the Copenhagen Consensus, Napier. Interesting stuff. Wiki had a good article about it.
It might be good to stress again that microloans (and the Heiferproject seems like a kind of microloan as well) do not require that the OP donate his 1000 dollars. Instead, he loans his 1000 bucks to a bank that gives out microloans, and he still gets interest on it, albeit a lowish one.
Microloans are truly a great thing. The recent Nobel-Prize for the Grameen bank acknowledges that. Does any one know of an American bank or fund that gives out its money to fund microloans?
If you do this (or do any in-kind donations, i.e., giving goods instead of cash), call the charity first to find out exactly what they can use. Animal shelters often feed only one specific type of food to their animals, as a varied diet can result in digestive troubles for the animals, and a shelter full of diarrhetic dogs is not a lot of fun to clean up.
Why go through a middle-man who’ll take a cut for administrative costs? Instead, I can give directly to the organizations which need it and fulfill specific needs. To me, that seems a more efficient use of my charity.
Another option, for doing good/saving lives, which doesn’t even cost money is to donate platelets at your local apheresis clinic. You can do this every two-three weeks and one donation can save two-three lives. http://www.redcross.org/services/biomed/0,1082,0_19_,00.html (Red Cross is far from the only place that does this, so if you have a problem with Red Cross specifically, it doesn’t have to be a show stopper.)
Seconded. And not only do shelters use specific types of food, but they are quite likely to have found a way to get petfood cheap, so you buying food at store-prices would hardly be money well spent. For instance, the shelter where I volunteered had a deal with the pet-food factory that they got all the dented cans and cans with misprinted labels etc. Animal shelters always need help, but ask them what they need first.
My local shelter has a “wish list” on their website that has the brand of food that they use, as well as other items that they want. Check it, but call them beforehand to make sure it’s not out -of-date.
Huh. I knew about plasma (every couple days) and whole blood (which I’m doing, every eight weeks) but I didn’t know about platelets. That seems like something to check into. I assume it’s about the same procedure as donating plasma, procedurally?
This is unfortunately a widespread sentiment. You're confusing individual aid with government aid. While government aid has often been subverted by corrupt administrations in **some **African nations, targeted non-governmental charity work is not so easily subverted.
Many aid agencies have personnel at clinics who administer drugs, for example, so there is no point at which "warlords" are in control of any medicine, much less money. The same is true of many kinds of charitable donations that individuals can give.
While political problems in many African nations contribute to poverty, this is hardly a reason not to help. If anything, it is another compelling reason to help.
As I understand it, yes. I do double-needle, so they put a needle in each arm and I sit there for 1.5 hours and they scratch my nose when it itches and I can watch tv if I want.
You better wear this to the next yaoi con so I can see it!!
There are a lot of good ones already mentioned. My favorite is Child’s play. When my younger brother had cancer, I spent a decent amount of time in the children’s hospital and observed first hand how much videos, games, books, etc can mean to a sick child. My parents have money so they were able to constantly visit him and bring him new objects to make his stay less miserable, but many parents do not have that kind of money. Having a child in the hospital is a very costly processes. Often, one parent will cut back on their work hours as much as possible in order to have someone with the children but this isn’t possible for many people, especially those with more children at home.
How it works, is that the hospitals set up amazon wishlists so you know these things are ok and you don’t have to worry about them being rejected because they are too difficult to disinfect. You pick the hospitals you wish to donate to and the toys you wish to send them. They have a wide range of objects from $2.50 (crayons) to $300 (x-box). Most of the hospitals are in the US, but you can also send to ones in Canada and the UK. If you prefer to donate locally, here is the wishlist for the Oakland Children’s hospital. If you can’t decide which toys, boys, games, etc you wish to send them, then you can just send them batteries. From what I have observed with my brother (and cousin), giving the child something that will cheer him/her up on a day to day basis amid painful and time-consuming tests can make a huge difference in her/his hospital stay, life.
I don’t want to hijack, but you go to Yaoi-Con? I went a few years ago (with my very bemused male friend, who to spite me went into the bishonen auction) but haven’t been able to get the time off since.
Growing up poor, the only time I ever got new toys was at Christmas. So Christmas is a big deal to me and I donate a lot of money to Toys For Tots. It isn’t my only charity, but I do love to give to them.
I heard the same thing about our food banks; rather than food, give them $$ because they can negotiate bulk deals. I’m talking the large state food bank that supplies local ones.
Here are a bunch in the NYC area. Key words for searching include microenterprise, microlender.
When a costume breaks the thousand-dollar mark, do you think I’m not going to wear it whenever I get a chance?
Yep. I’ve been going since 2004. I got conned into writing for their anthology that year on a bet, and I liked the people enough to keep coming back. It probably doesn’t help this ongoing problem I have with people mis-guessing my orientation, but there are worse fates.
Coming back to the topic, today’s payday, so I wrote out two checks and I’ll be dropping them in the mail after work.
They are:
Organization | Donation | Efficiency | Actual good done...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Shriner's Children's Hospitals](http://www.shrinershq.org/)* | $107 | [94%](http://www.forbes.com/lists/2005/14/CH0150.html)* | $100
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Carter Center](http://www.cartercenter.org/homepage.html) | $59 | [86%](http://www.cartercenter.org/donate/faqs/index.html#2) | $50
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total So Far: | $166 | 90.3% | $150
General notes:
1 - My overall efficiency is actually a little better than listed. I round my checks up to the nearest dollar, which for example drops the Carter Center’s apparent efficiency by about 1.3%.
2 - Causes with an asterisk are tax-deductible. I’m not exactly sure how tax-deductible donations work, but I’ll tack more donations onto the end when I figure it out.
No, I’m not. Bribes / considerations / cash payments are SOP in much of Africa. Africa needs to be left to sort itself out without foreign intervention.
How about Amnesty International? They’re politically neutral, and you can help in two ways: donate cash (like all charities, they can always use it), or write and send letters on their behalf?
If anyone is unfamiliar: Amnesty is a human-rights advocacy group. Much of what they do is campaign against governments to release prisoners of conscience. A large part of how they do this is by publicizing various cases (eg, who’s being held, whether or not there’s suspected torture, who’s holding them), and asking the public to write letters to the involved officials, urging the release of the person in question. Now you can even send most of them direct from the Amnesty website - they have a formletter typed up, you just type in your name and click ‘send’. Personalized letters and/or snail mail likely has more individual impact, but everything can help.
(In case you couldn’t tell, I’m a big fan of what they do. You can help out for the cost of a few minutes online and it does help get people released. There’s really no reason not to occasionally send some emails for them.)
Fortunately, this isn’t entirely true. My parents have spent the last 14 years in Africa, working with the startup of a new University. Lots of donations for materials, construction and scholarships were needed. I’ve also been introduced to groups that take in homeless street kids, that provide money to send Maasai to secondary school and high school, that work with villages to put in clean wells and schools, and some that are running AIDS clinics. Most of those groups are run by Africans, with no requirement of outside money. But my $300 can pay for a years worth of schooling for a street kid. Do that for 5 years, and she now has the skills to get a job that keeps her and her family off the streets.
Yes, there is a system of bribes. Yes, it grates on my nerves. I’m not sure it’s really all that different then the US system which leads to people like Jack Abramoff taking and passing on millions of dollars in what really boil down to bribes to members of the US Congress.
