Charities

Anarchy Rules!

Basically I've realised that the past year I've been able to save a significant amount of my salary. I'm now moving into a property where the rent is approx £100 cheaper per month as well so I feel that I should be more generous with my money.

I'd like to start donating more - I only donate to Coeliac UK at the moment (and that is kind of self-interested I guess!)

I'd quite like recommendations for charities in perhaps two areas:
-The Environment
-Medical research/immunisation campaigns (preferably in infectious disease/diseases with limited research focus)

Casual

I donate to McMillan cancer care, I like it because they don't send me heaps of junk.

They just take my money and spend it on nurses.

Richy

Rotary International is currently hard at work wiping out polio in the last few regions where it is still active and virulent. We are this close to completely wiping out one of the worst diseases humanity has ever faced, to taking it out of our medical textbooks and transferring it to our history books. Unfortunately, the last regions Rotary medical volunteers need to visit are also some of the worst on Earth: rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, and some of the worst parts of Africa. And it absolutely needs to be done now, before the virus has a chance to evolve and adapt to the immunization, and re-emerges in a form we cannot fight.

You will also be interested to know that the Rotary Foundation, the charity branch of Rotary International, is one of the best-managed charities in the world. Your money will go to purchase immunization medication and to supporting volunteers, not to executive salaries.

If you PM me your location, I can help you find one of your local Rotary Clubs if you want to get in contact with them personally. I'm sure they'll be happy to invite you to a club meeting and show you what they're all about.

Xandar

charitynavigator.org/ does a very good job of evaluating the effectiveness of charities. I think it is US centric, but there are definitely international charities listed as well. Good on you for trying to make the world a better place and recognizing how rich many of us really are!

TychoCelchuuu

Giving What We Can is an organization devoted to finding the most effective charity to donate to. If you think it about it, it can be really important to choose a good charity, because their research shows that, dollar for dollar, a more effective charity can be 10 to 100 times more effective in terms of lives saved. Unlike charitynavigator.org it is not US centric and it also narrows things down much more effectively.

Jam Warrior

I always figure you can't go wrong with Oxfam or the Disasters Emergency Committee.

Just don't let your environment money go to those Greenpeace luddite zealots. The more I hear about their campaigns these days the clearer it is that they have abandoned scientific evidence as an evaluation criteria entirely and replaced it with nothing but reactionary fear of change.

captaink

http://www.givewell.org/ Is pretty great, they do extensive research and have narrowed down their recommendations to just 3 charities. Their top pick is Against Malaria Foundation, providing mosquito nets to those who need them.

zepherin

I can't believe nobody here mentioned child's play. Seriously.

Links at the bottum of your screen.

Jam Warrior

zepherin wrote: »

I can't believe nobody here mentioned child's play. Seriously.

Links at the bottum of your screen.

Not saying Child's Play isn't a worthy cause, but:

I'd quite like recommendations for charities in perhaps two areas:
-The Environment
-Medical research/immunisation campaigns (preferably in infectious disease/diseases with limited research focus)

does not in any way fit it as a description.

zepherin

Jam Warrior wrote: »

zepherin wrote: »

I can't believe nobody here mentioned child's play. Seriously.

Links at the bottum of your screen.

Not saying Child's Play isn't a worthy cause, but:

I'd quite like recommendations for charities in perhaps two areas:
-The Environment
-Medical research/immunisation campaigns (preferably in infectious disease/diseases with limited research focus)

does not in any way fit it as a description.

I know, but I was making a scene to try to get more money for Child's play.

Also I like doing Charity poker tournements. Order some pizzas charge 20 bucks a person, and get a cheap statue. An awesome time for all.

zerzhul

zepherin wrote: »

I can't believe nobody here mentioned child's play. Seriously.

Links at the bottum of your screen.

I don't think Child's Play fits the goals that the OP requested.

Invictus

A friend of mine just started the Maximin Project, the point of which is to research in detail causes and charities so people can easily and efficiently distribute charity money to the people who need it the most.

Unfortunately it is sufficiently early in the project (they just secured funding very recently) that the central functionality isn't there yet, but it's a thing to keep an eye on for later.

Until then, there's http://www.nothingbutnets.net/ which supplies the same kind of mosquito nets discussed above.

ceres

I don't have an organization for you, but whichever one you choose, try to make sure they aren't doing stupid shit like, say, mailing people nickels. I got one of those once and was pretty angry.

Mayabird

Seconding @Richy.

Also, you may want to consider family planning and birth control services. If done properly it gets the most bang for your buck in a multitude of issues, from environmental alleviating poverty - turns out, it helps a lot when a poor farmer woman has, say, two kids, rather than sixteen kids. Fourteen less kids that need but probably won't be properly fed, who need but probably won't get education, who will have fourteen kids of each of their own and will have to cut down the remaining forests for charcoal to survive, all that sort of thing.