(I’m sure this has been done before but it’s fun to think about.)
You have 1 million dollars. You have to give away every penny to charity. It can be 10 charities, or just one. Your choice.
So who gets the money and why?
No official charity. Just people I find who need a helping hand.
If I actually wanted to help people, I’d probably give it to the Red Cross, or some disease research foundation. Maybe to homeless shelters, orphanages, etc.
If I wanted to show off that I was giving away a million dollars, I’d give it to my alma mater and get something named after me. What would be better would be if I could give ten million, because then they’d be more likely to go along with whatever ridiculous conditions I set on it. Something like a gold plaque commemorating the Sublight Memorial Foosball Table and Student Grill.
You know what I’ve always wanted to do? Go to the mall and make an offer to randomly chosen people to pay off one of their credit cards. Take them to the side, and just pull a credit card out of their wallet, and make a call to find out the balance. I’d then write a check directly to the cc company, and drop it in the mail right in front of the person. That way the person would be assured that I wasn’t stealing their credit card information.
That would help people get out of debt and I think it would really make a difference in their life. Of course, they may just run up the bills again, but I suppose I don’t really care about that.
If I had a million dollars, I’d like to do the above with about $300,000. Then I’d split the rest among The ASPCA, Humane Society, and Red Cross.
With 1 million dollars (which is not really a huge huge amount of money if you look at it one way), I would invest the lump sum, and with the profit from this each month I would raise my living standard considerably, and also become a “monthly supporter” or whatever you want to call it of a number of different charities, say 3 or 4 key ones, and have another sum per month as a “floating donation” that kan just go to whatever is tugging my heartstrings this month… So say, 40% to me, 20 to red cross monthly, 20 to unicef monthly, and 20 to “Save the Squirrils” this month…
I’d give it all to Covenant House. Those booklets by Sister Mary Rose really get to me.
Um, Iteki:
the OP says you gotta give it ALL to charity 
Ain’t no such critter as the Iteki Fund.
I have heard of a BBC programme which filmed someone in a shopping mall trying to give away (no strings attached) £20 notes to random passers-by. IIRC they achieved a success rate of around 7-8% (i.e. over 90% of people refused the offer).
Good luck with asking people if you can pay their CC bills for them…
Grim
Hmm. 90% turned down free money?
Could it be because we are so unused to “no strings attached” situations, as in when someone does something for us just because they’re a good person, that we freak out when someone tries to be good to us?
I gave a friend 10 bucks once. She asked if she could borrow it and I said no, but you can HAVE 10 bucks. It took me a while to convince her that no, seriously, she didn’t have to pay it back.
Why is it we have no problem whining to our friends on the phone for 3 hours about our problems, but we won’t accept money?
At least you can make more money. You can’t get time back.
Someone on Survivor mentioned sticking the money in an interest bearing account and constantly donating the interest. Thought that was an excellent idea.
I’d give it all to the ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) Society for research, for personal reasons.
I’d give a big chunk to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (or whatever it’s called).
The sister of a high school friend died of it, waiting for a transplant 
80% to the ACLU, and the remaining to Amnesty International.
80% to the ACLU, and the remaining to Amnesty International.
nahtanoj
I would give it all to medical research.
That way it benefits everyone, directly or indirectly.
I’d split it up among 10 AIDS Charities. Not just research, but also the charities that are helping people with HIV/AIDS live every day, delivering food, driving people around who don’t have cars or who can’t drive them…
… why? Because I lost a good friend two and a half years ago, and his death still makes me shudder.
I don’t know what percentage I would give to each, but I’d probably donate to:
Habitat for Humanity
School of the Americas Watch
UNICEF
The Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund
I always wanted to be able to anonymously send money to people who’s tragic stories I read about in the paper or people who have had tragedies in their life.
I’d also like to walk around and hand people hundred dollar bills but that might take awhile with a million.
Badtz Maru’s School for Wayward Girls…which I would establish shortly after getting the money…
Research to make high-solids anaerobic digestion of municipal and other organic solid wastes pay. You can make electricity with the biogas it produces and the end result of the digestion is compost.
It’s been proven at pilot scale, but there are material handling problems at community scale. Also balancing the feedstock can be picky.