Paul's Web Space 2.1

Kids' Philanthropy, Evaluating Charities

As the 2007 charitable contribution season draws to a close, I heard Katie Couric's Notebook: Giving Wisely on CBS Radio (video version is linked). Couric discussed the importance of knowing the charities to which you donate, and highlighted Charity Navigator as one resource that can help evaluate the effectiveness of particular charities.

Continuing on a theme from my last entry, I read in today's Washington Post that For Modern Kids, 'Philanthropy' Is No Grown-Up Word. The article mentioned Club Penguin's Coins for Change program and Global Giving as resources used by area students to become more involved in philanthropy. For my part, I gave my nieces and a nephew charitable contribution gift cards from MarkMakers, a cool site that provides a fun and safe giving environment for children, and includes some of my favorite charities.

Finally, I come to my own giving for the year. I plan to donate to my standard mix of local and international social services (including cyclone victims in Bangladesh), plus organizations pursuing my personal interest in promoting freedom of expression and access to the media, and fighting government and corporate infringements of our rights. I will likely donate via Global Giving and Network for Good — which also provides numerous resources to help you evaluate charities, including listings from Guidestar.org database of IRS 990 forms, links to resources like Charity Navigator, and other helpful tips. ¶ 12:44 AM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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Charitable Holiday Giving - Continued

UPDATE: I've received good feedback and discovered more resources and opportunities related to giving to charity for the holidays, often in someone else's name, sometimes including their input.

Monday's Yi-Tan Community Call #163 featured its 2007 Gift Guide. The call included a discussion of charitable gift options. Changing the Present offers more gift ideas for helping those in need (and was also promoted by Oprah). Yi-Tan call host Jerry Michalski also introduced us to the Handmade Gift Pledge to give only gifts made by hand, and also discussed resources to help the handy make their own gifts, or to give those handy types.

Then Andy Carvin tweeted that he was being interviewed on the NPR show Hearsay, about privacy in social networks; when I tuned it in, it was still streaming last Friday's show on Christmas Shopping, which discussed this topic extensively.

One of the guests was Sharon Tannenbaum, from the magazine Real Simple, who discussed the current issue's Holiday Gift Guide, particularly the popular feature Gifts that Give Back. This guide mentions several notable opportunities to do just that, including (once again) ChangingthePresent.org; DonorsChoose.org, which enables the recipient to help a school or classroom in various ways; and MarkMakers, which makes donating fun, giving kids the opportunity to direct a donation to the cause of their choice.

Later in the program, she interviewed Devon Hermanson, from WorldVision Gift Catalog, which offers more than 100 poverty-fighting gifts. He cited sharply-rising trends in holiday giving, figuring that donors "are really hungry for a way to bring meaning back into Christmas."

Finally, one of the editors at Education Week responded by suggesting Heifer International, a charity that fights hunger through livestock donations in Third World countries - "which is especially appealing to kids."

This suggestion brings us back to the beginning, because Heifer is one of the three partners behind A Better Present for a Better Future, the very first site I mentioned on Friday, and a very elegant offering, so I might as well mention the other two sponsors - Share our Strength and Conservation International. (Disclosure - the drummer in my band the Oxymorons works at CI.)

Happy (last minute) shopping! ¶ 1:18 AM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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The Story of Stuff (and holiday giving)

Please watch "The Story of Stuff" with Annie Leonard. I knew Annie when she was in DC, and a mutual friend and colleague, Andre Carothers of the Rockwood Leadership Program, provided one of the testimonials. This is a great time to think about consuming less, giving or requesting gifts that are easy on the environment, or simply give to people or causes that need it in lieu of some of your standard holiday giving. I've offered this option on my holiday list for a few years, but went a little further with my research this year. Spread this around if you know anyone who can use this information.

A Better Present For a Better Future is a campaign to spread the word about such alternative giving ideas. Network for Good and Global Giving are two organizations that enable contributions to many organizations in the US or NGOs and entrepreneurs in third world countries.

Gifts in my name to those in need can be made to:
Save the Children Holiday Gifts
Oxfam America Unwrapped
Seva Foundation: Gifts of Service

Gifts that also support cool organizations:
OneWorld Gift Guide
The Progressives Guide to Holiday Gift-Giving
Shop Amnesty

Change.org and Razoo are social networks that help you find organizations and causes to support. My Facebook profile has a box promoting my Change.org changes/organizations/etc; I have another application on my profile called Causes (that is pretty much just on Facebook). I support numerous causes here, including the Give One Get One Program (G1G1) from the to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative.

The coolest alternative giving resource yet is on Twitter. I follow the santacause account on Twitter, which suggests alternative giving options. Some ideas I found this way include Better World Books - Buy Used Books, Fund Literacy and GiveStream - The Easy Giving Community.

Don't forget the programs by Goodsearch , or The Hunger Site, which enable charitable contributions simply by searching or clicking, not hard.

One of my favorite gifts in support of organizations this year is the Causes 1: Darfur CD from Waxploitation. This compilation features lots of great artists, doing new music, obscure or cool covers, or live versions, and 100% of the proceeds are going to three of my very favorite international relief charities: Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam America. I've bought two and plan to give one away this Christmas, my own form of G1G1.

I hope this article prompts you to think about alternatives to traditional holiday giving, or provides some resources that help you pursue those alternatives. Please share. Thank you.    Link: http://www.storyofstuff.com/

¶ 2:12 AM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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Oxymorons Gig Tonight - Quarry House, Silver Spring MD

Hey everyone - if you're near DC tonight, come out and see my band, the Oxymorons! We're playing at the
Quarry House Tavern in beautiful downtown Silver Spring, Maryland, courtesy of our good friends at the Deej.

A legend since 1934, the Quarry House has the longest beer list in Montgomery County, the best burgers around, tater tots, and a great back room for live music. So come out before the shopping and holiday parties get too intense, and catch a soulful dose of our New Orleans funk, Chicago blues, Americana roots, and old-school jam-out rock.

Details:

Oxymorons at Quarry House Tavern
Thursday, December 6
8:30 to 11:00 pm

Quarry House Tavern
8401 Georgia Ave.
Silver Spring, MD
301-587-9406

At Georgia and Bonifant in Downtown Silver Spring.
Just blocks from Silver Spring Metro Stop (Red Line).
Street and lot parking available.    Link: http://www.oxymorons.com/

¶ 12:25 PM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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Social Media Club DC meets New Media Jim

On Thursday evening, I attended a very enjoyable meeting of the Social Media Club of DC. Speaking at this event was New Media Jim, cameraman for NBC News, on the benefits and utility of Twitter, and its place in the social media landscape. He had a lot of interesting tips and stories to share. Especially fascinating was a description of tweeting and video blogging around the world with the Secretary of Defense, including stops in Hawaii, Singapore, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He also told a tale of sneaking out of the country with the President for a surprise visit to Iraq, and how some twitter buddies figured out where he was because he hadn't tweeted in over 24 hours (they take away all your comm gear when you travel with the Prez on a secret trip).

One topic that came up in Q&A was the extent to which he was required to submit his vlog posts for editing, and he was matter-of-fact regarding the requirement that he vet all footage with the editorial desk that covers DoD; I'm sure there are even security reasons. This is interesting to me, because at edweek.org we are constantly struggling with how to treat blogs from an editorial perspective. We have editorial blogs that may get a light read from an editor (but nothing like the editorial process undergone by our regular reporting for Edweek the newspaper, web-only same as print). We also host blogs written by outsiders (until recently including Alexander Russo), who have extremely wide discretion to write almost anything with no pre-screening whatsoever. For a complete line-up, see our edweek.org blogs widget in my blog/siteroll to the right —> .

Then again, what can I say in my non-work blog about work, or about politics? We don't have many of these extracurricular blogs at Edweek (that I know of), but this is a policy issue too — said blog policies being more-or-less under my purview, and in need of updating. Our needs may also be very different than those of NBC News, because our beat is limited and they cover everything. Jim also related an interesting bit of controversy generated by the fact that he posted his vlog to MSNBC.com without offering it to the pool first.

I unfortunately had to leave the meeting right after it broke up, so I didn't get to make these comments to anyone in person, but I hope to be able to attend more of these events - good speaker, good crowd, too much traffic to get there on time from Maryland. Oh well. I had to go to an Oxymorons band practice — whole band including great substitute bass player, with only one practice before next week's gig at the Quarry House in Silver Spring (on Thursday 12/6 @ 8:30 - you should come!) Afterwards, some of us were talking about trying to get a USO gig in Iraq (which seemed even cooler after hearing Jim's talk — great way to support the troops while opposing the war, if that's your viewpoint). At the same time others of us were watching talking cats on YouTube. (I prefer the translation.)    Link: http://yale.facebook.com/event.php?eid=18508278808&ref=sharehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

¶ 1:47 PM | Permalink | | | Links to this post
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