Each year I like to ask what charities people are donating to. There’s still a couple days left in 2010, so I wanted to ask readers about their charity or non-profit giving.
I’ll mention the main organizations on my giving list this year:
- charity: water brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations.
- The Poynter Institute is a school that trains journalists and would-be journalists, both in person and online.
- The Committee to Protect Journalists defends press freedom and the rights of journalists to report the news world-wide without fear of harm.
- MAPLight.org provides tools and data to investigate the influence of money and politics.
- The Sunlight Foundation focuses on using technology to make government more transparent and accountable.
- I don’t think I’ve mentioned my Mom’s charity on my blog before, but I did donate money this year to it, so it seems appropriate to mention it. Blessing Hands provides scholarships and other help to students in China. Side-note: in the same way that I don’t accept gifts or free things, if you ever decide to donate any money to Blessing Hands, please don’t tell me; I wouldn’t want a donation to create the appearance of any conflict of interest with my job.
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) defends everyone’s digital and online rights. The EFF has stopped more bad ideas online than I can even count.
Those were the organizations that I ended up giving some money to. Now itβs your turn. What charities would you like to mention, support, or call out?
By the way, I’d still like to find 501(c)(3) organizations with low overhead costs that support open-source software. And I’d still like to find an organization that teaches the basics of journalism online for free. The training could cover the history of journalism, research and fact checking, ethics, legal principles, rights, how to investigate, libel and slander, off the record vs. on background, and so on. Sort of like The Khan Academy, but teaching journalism. If anyone knows of such organizations or non-profits, please leave a comment!