Love your blog. I'm a recent reader (not sure of the source, probably BlogHer) and was reminded to request my credit report, thanks to one of your posts.
We just wrote a bunch of checks too. We've supported a number of national organizations, but this year I was happy to find two local groups that fit too.
I am happy to see you encouraging people to have a giving plan. It is important to give back to the world in which we live. I personally have two main categories I give to: social services (I work for a non-profit in this sector and totally believe in what we do) and education.
I like your way of doing this, but it's a little complicated. We have a set amount that we give each month (which works out to 4% of our gross income), and we take turns picking organizations to give it to, with a bit of discussion each time.
[...] TBH has an excellent post on How to create a giving plan posted at Tired but Happy. Does it sometimes feel like there are more causes than you can afford to support? This post helps you narrow down the cause that means the most to you and will provide you the most satisfaction [...]
I do a similar thing. I'd like to know more about how you went about finding organizations that met your requirements. What are your requirements and where did you look?
I get a large list of pre-screened charities with short descriptions from my employer that I review each year and I do more research on the websites of the charities and places like www.give.org. I try to find places where small amounts of money can do a lot of good.
Just reading about all those causes can be quite overwhelming. I try to back off and decide which issues have the biggest impact. And I remind myself that although I can't fix everything, I can help with some things and others can help with other things.
Debbie,
Although I've found some good organizations by searching the web, we identified most of them just by word-of-mouth. Even tho we're boring and old and have a family and dayjobs, we still have lots of friends who are pretty committed activists and who work for tiny little nonprofits. My mother and my partner's parents are also pretty philanthropically-inclined (if that's even a word) so we've gotten a lot of good tips from them.
The other idea is to find an organization that roughly echoes your values that gives grants to smaller grassroots groups. For us, this group is RESIST. They give tiny grants, sometimes only a few hundred bucks, to lots of small grassroots orgs all over the country. Reading their annual list of grant recipients has given us good info of places we want to donate to directly. We still donate to RESIST (they're one of the places we give the most to because we like them so much) but we also trust their research and if they've vetted an organization that's a big plus for us.
There are still some major holes. I've done reearch to try to find a group that's working against military recruitment in schools, for example, and altho I've found some interesting things I haven't found a group that seems like a perfect fit for us. I also want to find a good environmental justice group (in a nutshell, that means environmentalism with an anti-racist twist) but I have only found a lot of websites that haven't been updated in a long time and with outdated contact info.
So yes, this is very hard. I'd say ask people you trust, and look for a foundation who gives grants to see who they support. If you're left-leaning but not as out there as me, you might find United Way's list of organizations helpful. Those are usually too mainstream for me, but they might be spot-on for others who consider themselves liberal Democrats or similar.
Very interesting. Thanks for the reply.
You're reminding me that I also got some good ideas after attending a lecture on a topic of interest. So there's another source.
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