When my mother passed away two years ago, I had to take on the role of executor to handle her estate. Going through her finances, I was quickly struck by how much and how often she had been donating to charities. She was a hard working and successful health professional, but not wealthy by any means. Yet month after month, year after year, she donated regularly to causes that she cared about, and not modest sums either.
So, in 2007, I decided it was time for me to step up and start getting more serious about charitable giving. I've donated to various charities in the past, and I've given a lot of my time to various efforts, but with the success in my own career it really was time for me to get going with this. And so I embarked on a year of analyzing various organizations and spreading out the donations through the year.
After a year I've settled on the seven organizations below, most of which are tied to a general theme of helping the third world develop sustainable and free societies.
I've got these in a loose order -- from most interesting to least. You've gotta check out the first few. They are exactly what I had in mind when I started looking for charities to give to.
KickStart is an organization that develops simple technologies to solve third world problems, and then gets those solutions into the field via novel method: they sell them at cost to local people who create profitable businesses around the technology. The most common product is a foot- or hip-powered water pump, but they've also designed and fielded a soil brick press and a cooking oil press. They've really thought this through, from laying out basic design criteria for new products to explaining why they sell instead of give away. A donation to KickStart is not a handout to the third world, it's a step in building a functioning society.
Kiva is an organization that manages micro-loans. Micro-lending has been in the news a bit over the last few years -- for one, Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Kiva's online mechanisms allow you to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world. You might be helping a garment worker buy a sewing machine so that she could work on her own, outside of the confinement -- and abuse -- of a sweatshop. You might be helping a farmer open and operate a produce stand. And after the loan is paid back (in about a year) you can then loan to someone else. Personally, I just donate to Kiva to support their internal operations, so you can do that if you don't want to get involved in making loan decisions. They certainly have lots of compelling loan opportunities though!
The Union of Concerned Scientists is an organization that lobbies government, pressures corporations and educates consumers on various environmental issues. Junk science has really had the upper hand in the public sphere for a long time, it needs to stop, and I believe UCS will be instrumental in that turnaround.
The Planetary Society lobbies for space exploration, with an emphasis on unmanned probes like Cassini, the Mars Rovers, New Horizons, etc. I spend a lot of my personal time keeping up with this stuff (including via their radio show / podcast and via Emily Lakdawalla's awesome blog) and continued funding for exploration is important to me.
Amnesty International lobbies for human rights, especially for that of political prisoners. Obviously they are very well known operation, but I believe strongly in what they do, so I donate to them even though they already have tons of funding.
Similarly, Doctors Without Borders is a well known charity, but they also mesh with my interest in improving third world conditions.
Engineers Without Borders is similar to DWB in that they go to third world locations and help build infrastructure. They mean well, but after one year of membership I've found them frankly to be rather disorganized. Which is itself is pretty funny, or sad, considering they are engineers. It seems to be a very young organization, and it appears that they are focused primarily on getting US students to work with US professionals on projects in the field. Certainly they don't put out the glossy PR like all of the other orgs above do. But I can't help it, I've got to give them a chance.
As this tax year winds down, please take a look at the above charities and consider becoming a member.