Entries tagged 'charity'

the only thing I knew about pepsi’s refresh promotion is that the charitable foundation wing of a trade organization of which we are a member was bombarding us with emails about it. it comes as little surprise to read that the online voting is being gamed by shady organizations. so thanks to pepsi, various non-profits have been fueling a contest that is probably just a couple of steps removed from the folks operating botnets and doing all sorts of ugly stuff.

the goodwill in downtown los angeles, on broadway between 2nd and 3rd, closed yesterday as explained by the los angeles times the day before it closed. we were planning to bring by a donation last week, but got rained out. now we’ll have to trek to the next-closest drop-off location when we finally get our act together.

when i first started with mysql, i also started giving about 10% of my pre-tax earnings to charity. first it was three charities a month (local, national, and international) and then one charity a month (cycling between local, national, and international) and now i’m stepping back to quarterly donations — all local. i’m also a little behind schedule. between planning a wedding, moving, and everything else going on, it’s been too easy to put this off.

this first quarterly donation would have gone to the laura esguerra adams foundation, but it’s still not quite up-and-running. so i’ve given it to the library foundation of los angeles as a memorial to laura, directed towards the adult literacy program that she was involved with.

as laist covered and i said i’d mention earlier, there is a benefit concert this sunday at mr. t’s bowl in highland park, featuring the reunion of emm’t swank and performances by other great bands.

and tonight (and tomorrow), you can see the lyric opera of los angeles perform manon lescaut at the los angeles theatre on broadway. you can get free tickets through brady westwater.

fyn stec is an almost-five-year-old who was recently diagnosed with liver cancer (hepatoblastoma), and there will be a silent auction at the cartoon networks studios to help his parents with medical expenses (and any additional funds will go to the childrens hospital los angeles). you can preview the art on the website, and submit bids online, but the final auction happens this thursday. there will also be a benefit concert in a couple of weeks — i’ll fill in the details when we’re closer to that.

it’s back to the library foundation of los angeles again, where i’m actually paying off part of a multi-year pledge.

i ♥ the library.

i’m on autopilot for a few months (if not the whole year), so my monthly charity contribution this month has gone to the los angeles conservancy to renew my membership.

last year, i gave to médecins sans frontières (doctors without borders) at this time of year because of the tsunami in south asia. thankfully, there’s no tragedy motivating me this month, just the belief that it is a great organization that deserves support.

i had a vague idea of being more clever this december, but as i see the time on the month tick away, the obvious choice of the marine toys for tots foundation has become the easiest way out.

childrens hospital los angeles was the charity i made reference to back in october. they were supposed to send me some information about their donor programs, but never did, and yet i’m giving them money anyway. i’m so easy.

this is the fourth year in a row that i’ve been able to give money to the childrens hospital.

they also handle platelet donations, which you may have heard some people go on about.

a week or so ago i finally sent off a check to harvey mudd college that represented the other donation from my blo.gs spoils.

and today i got bled again. this time they told me not to drink or work out for 24 hours. i may even pay attention to at least half of that.

10 over 100 is a new website from james hong (of hot or not infamy) and josh blumenstock, an employee at hot or not, where people are encouraged to pledge 10% of their income over $100,000 to charity. the new york times had an article about what inspired it (via evhead).

i signed up, but i’m not sure that it is entirely meaningful. i already donate 10% of what i make to charity, and i make less than $100,000. i guess that makes me part of the “10 over 0” club.

someone asked me recently what i spend money on (after i said something about me being cheap), and the obvious answer of “give it away” didn’t occur to me. oops.

there will be a screening of the new film version of the producers at the orpheum theatre in downtown los angeles on december 14, 2005. you can buy tickets online ($50/person for non-reserved seating, or $150/person for reserved seats and a vip reception), and the proceeds benefit la’s best after school arts program.

i actually had another charity in mind for this month, but will be postponing to that until next month while i wait for some information from them. instead, i’m bumping up what would have been next month’s contribution to the los angeles regional foodbank.

i like the payoff of the little dust-up between penny arcade and an anti-games moralizer who had his bluff called.

oh, i’m not doing the tax-refund-charity thing this year. instead, i decided back in february to just increase the amount i gave each month. i do still have another donation to make from the yahoo money.

continuing an annual tradition:

• george w. and laura bush: 9.9%
• richard and lynne cheney: 17.5%
• jim winstead jr.: 15.6% (or 17.7% if you include donated property)

the amount that the cheneys gave comes from the press release, since the filing at the tax history project doesn’t include their schedule a.

i can’t say enough good things about my accountant. it’s fun to sit there as he plays with numbers and my refund grows.

1% for the planet is an organization that is getting companies to donate 1% of their net sales to environmental causes. it was founded by yvon chouinard, the founder of patagonia. i may quibble with it only being 1%, and net instead of gross, but it is a start.

chouinard spoke at the library last night about his book, let my people go surfing: the education of a reluctant businessman. it sounds like a great book, and i’m on the hold list for it at the library now.

• solicitation from america’s second harvest
• invitation to a cocktail reception at grace home furnishings where a portion of the benefits will go to the los angeles conservancy
• invitation to viva vibiana: the resurrection of a historic landmark, a conservancy event at st. vibiana’s cathedral in november — tickets start at $350/person

the different levels of sponsorship for the event at st. vibiana’s is kind of humorous in that it becomes more expensive per-person at each level. (but those different levels also include different perks other than additional admissions — presumably you can just buy a block of individual tickets, too.)

also, yesterday i got a newsletter from amnesty international.

i think i forgot to check my mail on wednesday. so this may be two day’s worth:

• invitation and reservation form for the literary odyssey dinners benefitting the los angeles public library (starting at $350/seat)
• solicitation from the carter center
• invitation and reservation form for “a season for sharing dinner” benefitting the los angeles regional foodbank (starting at $500/seat)
• solicitation from acción international
• newsletter from la’s best
• thank you letter and receipt from la’s best

the literary odyssey dinners sound kind of cool — it is a bunch of 16-40 person dinners with various authors in different sponsor’s homes. a few authors that caught me eye: michael eisner, gil garcetti, larry gelbart, thomas keller, and stan lee. each of the dinners has a different dress code. here’s the varieties:

• business casual
• cocktail attire
• casual elegant
• relaxed cocktail
• business attire
• rumble seat attire
• informal attire
• california evening casual
• comfortably festive
• casual
• napa casual
• black tie (this is for stan lee!)
• coat and tie
• festive attire
• dressy casual
• sports attire
• jeans and jewels

i want to host one of these just so i can specify “pants optional.”

oh, and my regrowth charity t-shirt arrived, too.

i think i need to just pick a month and write up what charity-related mail i get every day. today it was habitat for humanity and project angel food wanting money, and an invite for the next installment of the gregory peck reading series with sharon stone and james woods.

i shouldn’t complain too much — if it weren’t for charity-related mails and mail for the previous tenants, i wouldn’t get mail on most days.

and as far as charity events go, the stay home & read a book ball is more my speed. (and i’ve got the wardrobe for it.)

the red-cross-in-the-corner thing was taken from the brian alvey weblog. (with a few tweaks. i’m not using javascript to add it to the page, and i fixed it to the corner of the window instead of the page.)

the volunteering at dodger stadium on labor day was pretty uneventful. three of us volunteers and someone from the community relations department of the dodgers organization basically just sat around out in the pavilion (under the cheap seats) and shot the breeze while watching over a water bottle that people dropped money into. everything from change to twenty dollar bills — and most of the latter came from the maintenance and vending staff.

the dodgers lost, but we couldn’t see the game from where we were. leaving the stadium, i made the mistake of going out the wrong entrance and ended up with quite a hike back to where i needed to catch my bus. other than that, catching the bus to the stadium was very convenient.

here’s another way to help: buy this $10 shirt from threadless and they’ll donate $20 for hurricane relief.

this should be no shock: this month i’ve sent my usual monthly charitable donation to the red cross for the hurricane katrina relief efforts.

i got my renewed drivers license yesterday (less than a week after renewing it online!) and besides putting the donor sticker on my card, i also registered with the donate life california site. it’s cool that they’ve made it so painless to register for organ donation.

since i registered online, my new license has my old picture. it also has my old weight — fifteen pounds too high, and that gap is growing. i thought i remembered reading once that you should get a new license if the weight on your card is off by more than ten pounds, but i couldn’t find anything about that on the renewal site. and given the choice between renewing online and having to go in, it was an easy call.

last night, i see hawks in l.a. mentioned that all the proceeds from sales of their albums on cd baby would be going to the red cross for hurricane katrina relief. a great cause and great music, how can you go wrong?

the blood drive is still happening, so if for some reason you happen to read this in the next few hours, you can hustle on down there to give blood and enjoy the view.

and you get a hello kitty moon pie. they totally should have advertised that.

celia introduced herself to me as i was standing around not passing out. i’m losing my ability to go incognito.

the after party starts at 8pm. but i think i’ll head over to one of the last grand performances this year first. (but unless the cole’s web site lies, it closes at 10pm, so i guess i won’t be staying for much of the grand performance.)

right before the school year starts seems like an opportune time to give money to la’s best, which is an after-school enrichment program in the city of los angeles.

a long time ago, i wrote about the apparent dearth of places in los angeles willing to take computer donations, but here’s one: l.a. shares. they do appear to be more geared towards companies donating multiple computers.

meanwhile, i found a corner of my apartment to stack a few boxes, and the extra computers are mainly an out-of-sight, out-of-mind sort of thing.

man donates blood for 350th time.

i’m a little short of that mark.

by 350 times.

happy independence day! it seems like a very appropriate time to make a contribution to the institute for justice, which litigates to protect various freedoms.

and once again, i’m contributing to a recent supreme court loser: the institute was involved in kelo v. new london, which has cleared the way for government to use its eminent domain powers to take property from its owner (paying “just compensation”) and give it to another private developer.

they suffered what could be a setback in the mgm v. grokster case today, but i still support the electronic frontier foundation. in fact, the check is in the mail.

(this is part one of tithing away some of the blo.gs spoils.)

the national institute of mental health (the ones with the rats) put out a study that says a quarter of all americans met the criteria for having a mental illness in the last twelve months.

recently i filled up the very large (three liter?) wine bottle in which i’ve been collecting pennies, nickels, and dimes. so i’ve dumped it all out, sorted it out by type, and am putting it into piles of ten.

dimes are pretty amazingly space-efficient. there was over $90 in dimes in the bottle.

but all this counting is for naught, really. i will probably take the coins with me to a coinstar location tomorrow and donate it all to the world wildlife fund.

and i’ve already started refilling the bottle with new coins.

the los angeles times covered, barely, yesterday’s l.a. works day projects. i was part of the largest group, which painted and did some landscaping at hollenbeck middle school in boyle heights.

considering this is the 13th annual l.a. works day, i was disappointed at how unorganized the on-site effort was. i was part of the group doing landscaping, and it was amazingly disorganized. we ended up planting and digging up some of the plants twice, broke a water pipe digging a hole for one tree, hit but did not break another (or maybe the same) water pipe digging another hole for another tree, dug a hole for a tree in the wrong place, and just stood around while the volunteer leaders tried to get their act together. from what i could see of the paint job on the school, it doesn’t appear that they were any more organized.

the problems with the landscaping wouldn’t have been hard to fix — the missing step that would really help is to place all of the potted plants and trees before anyone starts digging holes for them.

but all that aside, we certainly left the school in better shape than it was when our huge crowd descended upon it, and i think that’s a great thing. i hope the landscaping survives.

i actually remembered to make it to the hope for firefighters event in downtown los angeles last week, unlike last year. i got there late, so i missed the competitions and my food choices were limited, but i still got some great food from one of the booths that hadn’t run out.

so in honor of that event, i’ve sent my monthly charity contribution to the los angeles firemen’s relief organization for the widows, orphans, and disabled firemen’s fund.

this weekend i’ll be participating in l.a. works day, and if you hurry, you can register. you can even get the registration fee covered by following the link on the front page there about joining the los angeles downtown news team.

i’ve gone local again, with inner-city arts, an arts center for kids in downtown los angeles.

one thing that focusing on local charities gets me is various invitations to events by these charities, sometimes for events that require buying tickets (at steep prices, usually) and sometimes for free. maybe some day i’ll start taking advantage of this.

for example, through the library foundation of los angeles i got an invite for a reception, “author program,” book signing, and dinner with michael eisner in the middle of june. it’s for his book, camp. the dinner is at the california club, jacket and tie required.

i don’t even own a jacket. at least not the kind they’re talking about. i don’t think they’d count my ffem windbreaker.

i’m on a roll with local charities, so i’ve continued the streak with a donation to the midnight mission, which just last week opened their new facility a few blocks from their old one (which i can see out my window).

a few weeks ago one of the alôud sessions at the central library was with sam davis, author of designing for the homeless: architecture that works, who has steadily worked his way down the economic ladder in his architecture — his previous book was the architecture of affordable housing. it was an interesting perspective on the homeless problem, and i was sitting amidst a number of people from dome village who had a fairly negative take on the larger missions in los angeles. but i guess one important bit of knowledge i took away from that is that it is going to require a range of solutions to tackle the homeless problem, and it is good to see it being attacked by considerate and considered people.

keeping it local for another month, i’ve renewed (and upgraded) my membership in the library foundation of los angeles.

going to events at the central library is a pretty regular occurrence for me now. last week i went to both alôud events: talks by jordan fisher smith, a former park ranger whose book nature noir: a park ranger’s patrol in the sierra must be amazing, and by james b. stewart, author of disneywar, another book that sounds fascinating. i’ve got holds on both books (although there’s a long queue for disneywar).

one of the dumb things i did on the initial page about the blo.gs sale is just put the overall expense and income figures for the site, without listing the monthly net income (which is there now). i know better than to throw out numbers like that, and it has certainly influenced the numbers that people have thrown back at me. (one somewhat remarkable thing is how many people have picked the same number.)

i have a hard time writing and talking about this because the notion of not talking about money is so deeply ingrained in me. this came up in conversation with my parents last weekend, when my mom was talking about a neighbor who was very free with how much their kids made. i’m pretty sure my parents haven’t known how much i make since i graduated from college.

in any case, it should be pretty apparent that “losing” money is not a big deal for me. there are people in the world who put the accumulation of money at or near the center of their life’s agenda. i’m not one of those people. (and somehow i keep falling ass-backwards into it. go figure.)

i forgot to mention this back when i did it, but i joined the los angeles conservancy earlier in the month. (last month, now.) so this was the form of my monthly charitable contribution (most of it is tax-deductible).

i have to remember to sign up for the downtown walking tour docent program at the end of the year.

this puts me on the mailing list of another organization that occassionally hosts various events. maybe some day i’ll actually go to one. (but not the $750-a-head library foundation thing. yikes!)

with large tragedies like the indian ocean tsunami, charities can get so deluged with donations that are earmarked for disaster relief for that incident that they say they’ve had enough. if you recall, the american red cross got in a bit of trouble after they said they were going to to put excess donations targeted for 9/11 relief towards their general disaster-relief fund. just to throw the number out there, the american red cross eventually raised over $1 billion for their 9/11 fund. they plan to raise no more than $400 million for tsunami victims, and have currently gotten $150 million pledged.

so although it is motivated by world events, my donation this month to médecins sans frontières (doctors without borders) is done just as a general donation, and not earmarked for anything specific. it’s an organization that does great stuff all over the world, and i’m happy to see them put my money towards the place they think needs it most. they certainly know far more about providing medical care all over the world than i do.

i’m also kicking in the daily-journal money that would have gone to reading is fundamental, a hefty $150. i really slacked off during the holidays.

this is a break from the local/national/international cycle, and coming rather late in the month, but my charitable donation for this month is going to the marine toys for tots foundation.

also, i paid out $50 to reading is fundamental for days i failed to add to my daily journal/sketchbook. yes, i missed five of the thirteen days i was doing this last month. i'm doing about the same this month, but getting better as the month goes on. a lot of the entries recently have simply been me freeze-framing something on television, usually a cartoon character, and copying it. none of it is very good, but that was never the point. i’ve drawn more in the last few weeks than i had since grade school.

the u.s. fund for unicef has a dumb linking policy. i also don’t see a way to tell them to stop sending postal solicitations.

the rules for charitable deductions on donated cars, boats, and planes are changing, in case you were thinking of doing that. better do it this year!

this is coming very late in the year, because i filed very late in the year and only just today received my federal tax refund, but i have the portion of my refund from the 2003 tax year that i’ll be giving away in an envelope ready to be mailed.

harvey mudd college, which i somehow escaped from with a degree, is the beneficiary this year (again). the donation is earmarked for student scholarships.

as foretold last month, america’s second harvest was this month’s charity of choice.

i suppose i’ve never written why it is that i give so much and so often to charity. what was interesting when getting my taxes done is that the accountant nailed it — it is tithing. but being a non-religious person, i obviously don’t tithe to a church.

it’s the sort of thing that i think is important when people are tithing to churches that preach fear and hatred, and do not have good works as an essential part of their mission — the sort of churches that drove massive turnout and resulted in 11 states preventing gay couples from having the same rights as married couples. (i’m not saying that all churches preach fear and hatred, or that there aren’t churches that have good works as an essential part of what they do. but keep in mind i’m working from a non-secular definition of good works: faith and evangelism aren’t included. obviously i don’t agree with luther here.)

i think this is a self-explanatory one, with thanksgiving and the other holidays right around the corner: los angeles regional foodbank.

unless i forget, i’ll make a similar donation next month to a similar national charity.

• george w. and laura bush: 8.3%
• richard and lynne cheney: 25.3%
• john kerry (married filing separately): 11.1%
• john and elizabeth edwards: ? (schedule a not available, they claim 8.6% over the last decade)
• jim winstead jr.: 23.9%

the cheneys beat me out by donating almost all of the royalties from mrs. cheney’s books to charity. (data for everyone who is not me comes from tax history project.)

and yes, that 23.9% is pretty absurdly high. that’s the result of turning around and donating most of last year’s tax refund to charity, and donating my used car to the eff. i suspect i’ll be back below the teens again for 2004.

there’s something funny about getting a solicitation from the bbb wise giving alliance.

i don’t even remember the context in which it came up, but one thing that came up briefly in a conversation at foo camp was people who have way too much time on their hands for being a nuisance, like the folks who jump all over anything jeremy says.

writing about the amount of charity solicitations i got seems to have delayed my september charity giving. not any longer, with my donation to acción international just made. they make microloans throughout the world.

i’m thinking of scaling back my giving to just be quarterly (but not in scale). that would mean giving more money to fewer charities. probably: electronic frontier foundation, library foundation of los angeles, harvey mudd college, and something else. but there’s too many to choose from. maybe i’ll go bimonthly.

interesting: del.icio.us “charity” tagged items.

• world wildlife fund
• amnesty international
• america’s second harvest
• southern poverty law center
• medecins sans frontieres (doctors without borders)

apparently i’ve tripped the level of donating enough to several charities that i get the handwritten solicitations for money instead of just the standard bulk-mailed ones. i don’t believe that charles lyons of unicef or bill noce of childrens hospital los angeles actually hand-wrote either note, but it is interesting to see how different organizations react to different levels of contribution. (as another data point, i have never once been solicited by the electronic frontier foundation, although it is the charity to which i have contributed the most.)

if you’re getting a sense of déjà vu, it is because i also gave money to the southern poverty law center in august 2003. (and if you’re really keeping track, august 2002, too.)

i think one reason i’ve been a faithful supporter of the splc is that they send what i consider to be a reasonable amount of fundraising literature, but also the really great intelligence report magazine. they are guilty of doing the silly ploy of having the forms with the donation levels that are based on your previous contribution. (so the smallest one is the same as your previous contribution, the middle one is 1.5× that, and the high amount is double.)

recently the world wildlife fund has been getting on my nerves by sending what seem to be weekly brochures for their travel program.

another month, another charity. in this case, the same charity i donated to this month last year: childrens hospital los angeles.

another charity worth checking out (i’ll get to it in september): accion international.

it’s almost hard to believe that i’ve gone this long without donating to an organization like the international primate protection league. but i’ve rectified that this month. the check is, as they say, in the mail.

this check actually went in the mail yesterday, so i made it just under the wire. the donation was for the children’s museum of los angeles which is pushing towards breaking ground on their new facility by next year.

i may as well go ahead and get may out of way now, too. i can finally complete my circuit of the service-related charities by contributing to army emergency relief. it’s probably as timely a contribution as ever, given the ongoing events in iraq and afghanistan.

i almost let it slip out of the month again, but this month i’ve contributed to the solar electric light fund.

i have to say i was inspired by the beautiful spring weather — it seemed like an appropriate time to give to a environment-related charity. i originally was looking for a good international land conservation charity, but the best ones i found (world land trust and fauna & flora international) are both uk-based, and contributions wouldn’t have been tax-deductible.

speaking of deductions, i completely missed doing my charitable contribution for last month. so here’s two at one time:

• library foundation of los angeles (a membership renewal, too)
• the air force aid society (the third of four relief united states military relief societies to get a donation from me; army emergency relief is still to come. it will be may, with the current rotation.)

i got a jump on things this month: my monthly charitable contribution is in the mail to operation give. the organization actually started from the blog of a member of the army national guard who is stationed in iraq. the spokesman for operation give is gail halverson, better known as the “candybomber” for dropping candy to german children during the berlin airlift.

since this is november, america’s second harvest was a rather obvious choice. here’s the what’s what from their site:

America’s Second Harvest is the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization with a national network of more than 200 regional food banks and food-rescue programs, serving all 50 states and Puerto Rico. It distributes 1.4 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually. America’s Second Harvest’s network supports approximately 50,000 local charitable agencies, operating more than 94,000 food programs, including food pantries, soup kitchens, women’s shelters, Kids Cafes, Community Kitchens. These local organizations provide emergency food assistance to 23 million hungry Americans, including more than nine million children and almost three million seniors each year.  For more information, visit the web site at www.secondharvest.org.

i’m very tardy due to the travel and moving, but this month’s benificiary is the widows, orphans & disabled firemen's fund of the los angeles firemen's relief association.

<img align="right" src="//trainedmonkey.com/pix/charity/amnesty_blue_banner.gif" width="203" height="41" border="0" alt="Amnesty International"> i don't think that amnesty international needs much explanation. are there people who don’t know who they are and what they do?

they label their news site as “the latest information for journalists,” but it is basically a weblog about human rights issues worldwide. no rss feed, though.

this month's charity is the first charity someone suggested i donate to after i started this monthly routine: the southern poverty law center.

the center combats hate, intolerance, and discrimination through education and litigation. the two programs that i find the most interesting are the intelligence project and tolerance.org.

slowly i drift back towards the beginning of the month.

apparently cutting back to one charity a month hasn’t made me get around to doing it any earlier in the month.

this month’s charity is also one of the first charities i gave money to when i started doing this a little over a year ago: childrens hospital los angeles.

i also renewed my membership to the surfrider foundation.

i recently got a receipt for a donation to habitat for humanity that i never made. very odd.

this marks my twelfth month of regular charitable donations. and the last month i’ll be doing three charities—it’s just too much of a headache to do that much research each month. instead, i'll just be doing a triple-sized donation to one charity a month, and i’ll rotate between local, national, and international charities.

• international: netaid (site is kind of broken—try here)
• national: navy-marine corps relief society
• local: east valley community action group

late in the month again.

• international: world wildlife fund
• national: coast guard mutual assistance
• local: los angeles firemen's relief association widows, orphans & disabled firemen's fund

the event put on in downtown los angeles by the los angeles fire department that i wrote about a couple of years ago is coming up. the annual hope for firefighters takes place on thursday, june 5.

i’ll be making some more donations on tax day, in celebration of my refund. i’m still deciding what they’ll be.

• international: médecins sans frontières (doctors without borders)
• national: immigration and refugee services of america
• local: library foundation of los angeles

• george w. and laura bush: 8.2%
• richard and lynne cheney: 10.2%
• jim winstead jr.: 12.5%

figures for bush and cheney via associated press. we’re all way above and beyond the national average of around 2%. (and those figures are just for those that itemize. as the report from the urban institute suggests, the actual average may be much lower.)

• international: international federation of red cross and red crescent societies
• national: uso
• local: volunteers of america - greater los angeles

(good resource for finding local charities: local independent charities of america.)

very late this month. c'est la vie. once i've hit the one year mark (this is month eight), i'll probably cut it back to one charity a month instead of splitting the donation three ways. finding three worthy charities i want to donate to each month (with the international/national/local distinction) has been tough.

• international: save the rhino (inspired by douglas adams)
• national: national disaster search dog foundation (with the donation matched by small dog electronics)
• local: children's museum of los angeles

i got the newsletter from the california wildlife center, with it's honor roll of donors. i was in the same category as ed begley, jr. and cathy guisewite, but drew barrymore kicked our asses. and kelsey grammar put us all to shame.

• international: the jhai foundation: remote it village project (thanks to various bloggers, all traceable back to danny o’brien)
• national: computer professionals for social responsibility (an international organization, strictly speaking, but us-based)
• local: the los angeles free clinic

no, i did not skip a month. i used to make my donations at the beginning of the month for the preceding month, but i decided that it makes more sense to label things for the month the donation happens.

this is another theme month: kids.

• international: unicef
• national: marine toys for tots foundation
• local: LA's BEST

with my travelling around the end of october, i slacked off in my monthly charitable giving. because we're coming up on thanksgiving, this will be my first theme month: food. (and my first repeat: the los angeles regional food bank.)

• international: oxfam international (via oxfam america)
• national: america's second harvest
• local: los angeles regional food bank

and a bonus (off-theme) contribution, owing to the cashing in on some stock market gains and my speaking fee from phpcon: the electronic frontier foundation (a membership renewal, actually).

even though we’re moving to a biweekly pay system at work, i’ll likely stick with doing the charity thing just once a month.

• international: amnesty international
• national: national trust for public education
• local: the california wildlife center

payday! charitable donations:

• international: world wildlife fund
• national: southern poverty law center (thanks to the tip from mr. cook)
• local: la youth supportive services

finding local charities has been tougher than i would have expected.

a little late, my july charitable donations:

• local: los angeles regional foodbank
• national: surfrider foundation usa
• international: médecins sans frontières (doctors without borders)

last friday of the month means payday, which also means bill paying, but best of all means writing checks to charities. this month:

• local: children's hospital los angeles
• national: reading is fundamental
• international: the international campaign for tibet