Charity
lborkowski | June 3, 2013I linked last week to Matthew Yglesias's Slate piece "The Best and Simplest Way to Fight Global Poverty," which reports on a study that gave unconditional cash grants to poor young adults in Uganda and found that four years later, recipients of the grants had more business capital and higher earnings than those in a control group. I thought about the study again over the weekend as I listened to a Planet Money podcast about a charitable school-building project in Haiti that exemplifies how hard -- and potentially less effective -- it can be to give poor communities assets like schools rather…
drorzel | February 25, 2012Once again, Kate is running an auction to benefit the Con or Bust project providing financial support for fans of color(*) to attend science fiction/ fantasy conventions. The auction is run via LiveJournal, with a variety of cool items on offer in individual posts to that community, with an overall index here.
Among the items on offer are signed copies of How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog and How to Teach Physics to Your Dog (in your choice of several languages). You can also bid on some of our excess books.
Bidding ends at midnight Sunday, so you've got a little time left. Check out the…
omnibrain | May 2, 2011And you can too! All you have to do is win this gorilla costume. This is guaranteed to work in a women's locker room*. I can't vouch for its success rate in men's locker rooms since.. well... I don't really have to sneak in there. Anyway, all you have to do to have a chance of winning this amazing gorilla suit is to pre-order the new paper back version of Dan Simons' and Chris Chabris' book The Invisible Gorilla.
If you're not into sick horrible ideas like sneaking into locker rooms (because clearly, that is the only thing you could possibly do with that costume) you could also pre-order…
drorzel | February 28, 2011Every year, Kate runs a fundraiser to help support SF fans who want to attend Wiscon, which takes the form of an auction of various cool items, such as a signed book about quantum physics. You can find a big listing of everything at the Con or Bust community on LiveJournal, but some items of possible interest to readers of this blog include:
A sixpack of books from Small Beer Press
Homemade cookies
Math and/or science tutoring from an EE PhD student
Hand-spun yarn
Homeade truffles
A slightly used Sony Reader
One photo a week for a year
John M. Ford books
A signed set of Rosemary Kirstein's…
drorzel | January 22, 2011Last year, Kate was one of the people who helped organize a fundraising auction to send a few people to Wiscon. It's that time again, and she's seeking donations for the auction:
Last year, Con or Bust raised $6,183.89 and helped thirteen people of color attend WisCon. We weren't able to meet all the requests for assistance, however, so I'm tentatively setting this year's auction goal at $7,000. Bidding on the auction will start Monday, February 21, 2011, at 12:01 a.m. EST (GMT -5) and end Sunday, March 6, 2011, at 11:59 p.m. EST. You may post auction offers and make donations now.
If you're…
drorzel | September 14, 2010Via Tom, the folks pushing for a Stephen Colbert rally on the Mall in DC (because if a clown like Glen Beck can do it, why not an actual comedian?) have found a uniquely useful way to try to boost their signal: encouraging charitable donations:
See, anyone can join a reddit or Facebook group or sign a petition. It takes, like, one minute and doesn't demonstrate much effort. So the rally movement has been looking for ways to show that they're serious, that they're willing to lift a finger to make this happen. And an idea has just been hatched: pony up some cash to one of Stephen's favorite…
drorzel | March 10, 2010Several items in the general category of charitable activity:
Kate is running the Con or Bust auction again this year, with proceeds going to support people of color interested in attending SFF cons, principally Wiscon. Bidding is open through Saturday at 11:59pm ET, and items up for bid include many things that may be of interest to readers of this blog, including a certain book, plus a bunch of other stuff I will put below the fold.
I got email from the Nobel Prize committee the other day. Well, OK, the webmaster for Nobelprize.org. They have an "Ask a Nobel laureate" feature going on their…
razib | December 31, 2009If you're getting in at the last second, please see GiveWell's top charities.
sastyk | December 17, 2009The second night of Chanukah, my sons got clothes from their great aunt, which they received politely but unenthusiastically. As we were heading to bed that night, after a late night at our synagogue's annual Chanukah party, six year old Isaiah asked me "Mommy, will tomorrow night be another clothes present night?" When I told him I suspected not, since the next night's gift would come from Grandma, who likes to give toys, he sighed and said "It is ok if there's clothes, but I just needed to be ready for them." It can be tough to have good manners when you are little. We expect the kids…
razib | December 2, 2009For the past few months I've been following The Givewell Blog. Here's a recent post, Why are we always criticizing charities?:
Recently, we've criticized (in one way or another) many well-known, presumably well-intentioned charities (Smile Train, Acumen Fund, UNICEF, Kiva), which might lead to some to ask: should GiveWell focus on the bad (which may discourage donors from giving) as opposed to the good (which would encourage them to give more)? Why so much negativity and not more optimism?
The fact is, we are very optimistic about what a donor can accomplish with their charity. Donor's can…
razib | October 15, 2009What's different about Kiva:
Contrast Kiva with, for example, UNICEF. Kiva makes it possible to trace the path of your donation, to the extent that such tracing is realistic (and it largely turns out to be more along the lines of "you funded a certain MFI" rather than "you funded a certain person"). UNICEF doesn't even seem to have a breakdown of how much money is going to each continent. We definitely can't find information on questions like (a) What specific projects are you funding? (b) What is your role in each? (c) What new projects are planned, and where? (d) How is each project going,…
sciencewoman | July 20, 2009Have you seen Ethan Siegel? He's the blogger behind Starts with a Bang. The guy has got a lot of hair!
And he's offering to shave his head if 100 unique commenters each give at least $10 dollars or 4 hours of their time to the charity of their choice. What a great way to give people a little kick in the butt to do something good.
Ethan's post reminded me that I still hadn't completed our promised giving for the Silence is the Enemy project. Alice and I promised to double the amount we were paid for clicks in the month of June. We gave half of that money to Doctors without Borders (MSF) and…
bioephemera | June 10, 2009One of the challenges we faced with our new blogosphere initiative, Silence is the Enemy, was how to mobilize people to do something about the plight of rape victims. It's not that people don't have empathy for rape victims; it's that the experience of living in a war-torn nation where rape and murder are routine facts of life is so foreign and horrifying to us, we tend to tune it out. Part of the way to deal with this is to give people a clear mission - something simple they can do; in our case, donating to Doctors without Borders (as I am for the month of June), or writing to Congress, or…
sciencepunk | March 31, 2009
What is a charity? Ostensibly, it's an organisation dedicated to the public benefit, one that does not seek to make profits, and that does not have political goals. So how the heck does something like the Catholic Church qualify as a charity?
In England and Wales, all charitable organisations with an income of more than £5,000 must be registered with the Charities Commission, which acts as a supervisory power. The core rule is that all charities must exist "for the public benefit". There exists a list of 13 purposes that a charity can subscribe to, including advancements of animal…
grrlscientist | May 31, 2008tags: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, charities, prequel
From the prequel I am not working on -- but that was fun! JK Rowling 2008
At the request of UK bookseller, Waterstone's, JK Rowling recently wrote an 800-word outline for a Harry Potter prequel, all to benefit the British charity Dyslexia Action and English PEN. Dyslexia Action is the UK's leading provider of services and support for people with dyslexia and literacy difficulties, and PEN is an international fellowship of writers who are working to promote literature and defend the freedom to write.
Rowling's prequel, hand-written on both…
sb admin | October 24, 2007 Omni Brain met its fundraising goal of $1000 for music education programs through DonorsChoose. Thank you to everyone who's donated. You rock! Now 30 kids will too.
But it'd be okay, you know, permissible (haha) to exceed our goal if you'd still like to help a Lisa Simpson. A few of the programs Omni Brain earmarked are still seeking fulfillment. Here, an Indianapolis music teacher describes his/her wish to teach kids science and music together:
I want to set up a program for fourth through sixth grade having students work on the scientific method of experimenting with sound. The resources I…
sb admin | October 23, 2007You're seeing other ScienceBlogs readers donate, now join the love train*.
A rare serious post from Steve explains The Real Mozart Effect and why we should support music education with DonorsChoose. Playing an instrument has cognitive and developmental benefits.
That reason formed an episode of The Simpsons, too: Lisa's Sax. Homer wants to buy an air conditioner but Lisa needs help to nurture her brain with more than Springfield Elementary has to offer. Unsure what to do, he walks out of Moe's toward It Blows, with $200 in his pocket. He sees a music store and says, "Musical instrument?…