Suggest a charity and I'll donate to them.

[mook]

I always try to donate a little coin to various charities around this time of year. This time I decided to make a little twist, and posted the following note in my Facebook account:

Suggest a charity and I'll donate to them.
In the spirit of the holidays, I'll donate $25 each to the first 3 worthy charities people suggest in the comments to this Note.

A few rules:

1. You pick the charity, but only one per person.

2. Make sure to include a link to the charity donation page in your comment.

3. Beer funds, college tuition and keeping away the repo man don't really count as charity. Alas. Also, I reserve the right to reject donating to NAMBLA, etc.

4. You have to copy/paste a Note like this in your own profile too. Hey, if I have shell out, so do you! (Go to Profile/Notes/Write a New Note). Feel free to adjust up or down the maximum responders and dollar value to what you feel like giving.

5. You have to tag 10 people in that note--people you think might participate.

Nothing like a little peer pressure to get people donating to worthy charities!

I just sort of made it up in about 20 minutes. Anyway, within an hour of posting it, I was already committed to the three donations, and those three people were then committed to three more donations. Kind of cool to see it pay forward.

It was also a really fascinating way to learn about what charities my friends were interested in. I pitched in to a Smiletrain.org, Rawart.org, and a local elementary school's charitable food donation program--three organizations I'd never have heard about without doing this.

If you're getting a little burned out with the normal holiday consumerism, post the above message in your Facebook account. If nothing else, for a few minutes it'll make put a certain NBA center's patella in perspective.

 

[dpc]

Thats really awesome of you. I'd do the same but running low on cash, and I've donated too Sea Shepherd and Invisible Children this year. But thats really awesome of you and a great idea.

Off topic.. over the summer I worked with two giraffe brothers. Everytime I see your avatar I can see both of them staring at me while eating, brings a smile to my face everytime.

 

[mook]

Ha! Thanks. It was a lot more fun making those donations than the usual ones. Much more rewarding than plopping some dough into a Salvation Army can at the local grocery store. I'm not sure why--I guess it's because I never really felt any connection to it.

But when a friend explains to you how their own adopted daughter has a cleft palate, and you could help out kids just like her in third world countries by throwing a few bucks at Smiletrain, man it really ups the ante.

 

[dpc]

Yeah I bet. Anytime I get a lot of money I try and spread the wealth as much as I can, but I'm obviously limited right now. I'm excited when in the future when I actually get paychecks that I can donate more and more often.

 

[jlprk]

I suggest donating to causes not jiving with American foreign policy (e.g. Sudan or Tibet). Give it to poor people in Ethiopia, which hasn't had a working government since Bush the 1st invaded, or to the Tigers in Sri Lanka, or anti-torture groups.

 

[BlazerWookee]

How about the "Oregon Society for the Increase in Attendance at Blazer Games by Wookiees?"

We take paypal...