Recently we decided to take a more organized approach to charitable donations.
We chose a percentage of our take-home income to give and then broke down that amount by percentages for different causes. I don’t particularly like giving money to causes that aggressively ask for it (like the people who stakeout street corners downtown) and it was fun to sit down and think proportionally about giving locally vs. internationally etc. I really liked the feeling that we are in charge of our gifts, as it should be.
Also, living where we do, I’m satisfied that we’ve given to a good local cause (Northwest Harvest) that is much more cost-effective than giving directly to the homeless people around us.
Here’s how our gifts broke down:
Here’s a brief mission statement or comment about each cause:
- http://www.womenforwomen.org/ – “Helping women survivors of war rebuild their lives.”
- http://www.ewb-usa.org/ – “Our vision is a world in which the communities we serve have the capacity to sustainably meet their basic human needs…” … like safe drinking water.
- http://northwestharvest.org – “The mission of Northwest Harvest is to provide nutritious food to hungry people statewide in a manner that respects their dignity, while fighting to eliminate hunger.”
- http://www.wta.org/ – Washington Trail Association is an extraordinary site for hikers.
- http://www.kuow.org/ – Public radio is vital.
- http://www.kiva.org/ – “Empower people around the world with micro loans.” We funded an accounting student in Cambodia and a sewing workshop in Ecuador.
- http://wikimediafoundation.org – I love Wikipedia.
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