Title is explanatory
I'd consider donations of time, money or goods to all fall under the term "support"
Myself? I give donate a small sum each year to
Chicago Public Radio because public radio is the shit and my 1 hour commuting every day would be intolerable without it.
This American Life is brilliant.
Marketplace is usually very good, as is
All Things Considered.
Aside - am I the only one with the audio "I'm (insert Melissa Block, Michele Norris, or Robert Siegel) and I'm (one of the other 2)" burned into my subconscious?
Anyways, what do you support?
Posts
Otherwise, I give blood. Too poor to give money.
Oh, sure. Why not.
Also giving blood is a noble endeavor. You remind me that I haven't donated blood in about 2 years; I need to get out and do it again.
Just a little note though, Doctors Without Borders is relentless. I donated for the first time after the tsunami, and ever since, whenever I come home from school there's at least one, usually more envelopes from them asking for more donations. A bit irritating, but they do good work.
Just think they probably spent more money sending you shit than you even donating. Good times. I remember one time, someone linked me to one of those "click here and we donate a dollar" sites. It was for the Christopher Reeve foundation. Anyway, I did it and it and filled out the full questionnaire. A couple weeks later, they sent me a whole envelope full of shit. Like a pin and a bunch of cards and like a fancy engraved thank you card. And the shipping was like 60 cents.
Good to know that my dollar went to the wonderful cause of sending me a bunch of shit.
Whenever someone panhandles me directly, if they're not some outright despicable white-supremacist movement or something, I'll toss some pocket change their way -- ditto charity functions where it's just a coffee-can-collection. I drop in what I have without paying much heed as long as it's not something that I know, just by virtue of its name, is working against my ethos.
I don't discriminate much then, but I also don't give a lot to any one organization.
I support Child's Play, St. Jude's, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
Aside from that, the only charities I really have an interest in right now are things like no-kill shelters. The amount of corruption in your average charity these days just horrifies me, and where there isn't corruption, there's preaching, which may be worse in the long run.
Though that's not nearly as charitable as I make it sound, given that I don't actually have any financial responsibilities.
Does this make me a Scrooge? I just feel I'd rather know exactly where my money's going rather than donate to some charity where I might end up paying admin costs.
I hardly think it's scroogelike to give presents to Rwandan children
One thing I learned though, is they kinda punish you for giving after years of just tossing out the mailings. Ever since I first started giving to charity about a year ago the amount of requests for money I get from all sorts of charities has gone up three or four fold. I get a pile of junk mail every week now. It's kinda frustrating.
I've also been conned into supporting the ACLU, but I'll be putting a stop to that soon.
I donate to organisations like Amnesty/Liberty curently. In the past I've been involved with World Vision and a cancer research trust and I'll usually give someone money if they make a good case for it.
I'm trying to sort out some volunteering work for Christmas but you'd be surprised at how many shelters or the like are already full on volunteers. I didn't think this was the kind of thing I would have needed to organise well in advance!
I donate a lot of my time each summer to various activities in the Territories in the Levant.
I give my friend money when she does the biking for cancer thing, pan mass challenge or whatever.
Oh I count my time as money when I talk about local charities. Money's great, but I think actually going out to help them do what they do can be better in some cases.
http://www.cbldf.org/
It's kinda sickening when you realize that people are being put in jail, in the 21st century, in this country, for creating and selling art. (because everyone knows it somehow stops being art if you combine illustration and writing at the same time!)
Pfft, neither is mine.
I give to Oxfam.
I do, however, always buy a poppy come November, and will gladly put change in a donation box.
What? Can you explain this?
If I get into an area college, though, I'll probably be putting in quite a few hours at a place that trains monkeys for people with debilitative neuro-muscular disorders.
That's not charity work, that's just plain awesome. You should train one of them to wear a tiny red fez.
Plus, it would be for credit, as my area of interest is ethology (my hoped for job is split between researcher and video game consultant/adviser [so even the animals have good AI]).
I've also been given to Child's Play, Invisible Children, and I'd like to start helping out Habitat for Humanity.