Need to Hide Money From Government…
That sounds like I’m smuggling drugs into the country and laundering money. Not quite. I just hate taxes. Due to my inability to invest properly, and the fact that I live at home with my parents with very little personal costs, I need to get rid of some money. I want to donate some money to a charity. It helps out for a greater cause, and it keeps the money out the government’s hands. The only dilemma for myself is that there are so many great charities out there. I don’t know where to begin.
I started digging around the client directory of my brother’s company. He works for a company that develops web tools for non profit organizations. Some of them have more altruistic goals. Dean For America Campaign is one that will not be getting any money from me. American Red Cross seems to be the default donation spot for a lot of people.
I’ve talked about this before. You can now buy a laptop for a child in a developing country, and you will get one yourself as well as one year of T-Mobile HotSpot access. That sounds cool, but it doesn’t count as a donation if you get the freebies. You can get the donation if you don’t take any of the goodies, but not taking the freebies and donating $400 for a single laptop doesn’t seem like it the best way to use funds. If you’re looking for a toy for yourself and helping develop third world countries with technology, it’s not a bad idea though.
If anyone has any ideas or recommendations for a good use for a donation, please let me know.
November 13th, 2007 at 10:37 am
Try Kiva.org or ashoka.org Kiva is a mircofinance organization, although i’m not sure if it will really count as a donation since the money you donate is considered a loan. Both organizations main purpose is to finance social entrepreneurs(companies either for-profit or non-profit, whose products benefit society as well as make money). If you want to get involved with pumps and pipes try Kickstart.org. They build low tech water pumps for irrigation in 3rd world countries.
tangent: if you like word games, check out freerice.com every definition you get right the partner companies will donate a grain of rice. I donated 1 k of rice in 30 min yesterday.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Hi Matt!
You don’t know me but I’m an old friend of Michelle’s…heard of your site thru her a while back and have been reading it ever since.
Anyway, I volunteer with a non-profit called Be the Cause (www.bethecause.org). This Thanksgiving we’re preparing a meal for 200 people at a homeless shelter in Long Beach…we’ve been trying to solicit $20 gift certificate donations from grocery stores to buy ingredients, but haven’t had much luck.
I don’t know if this is something you’d want to donate to, but if it is, i have the tax identification number.
I know its kinda weird to be getting random solicitation messages from creepy internet strangers. I feel dirty doing it but its kind of urgent.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:42 am
Doctors without borders
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/aboutus/
November 15th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Thanks, everyone, for your replies. I will look into these. Kit, I think I am not ready to donate until more towards the end of the year and probably one lump sum, so unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to go that route.
November 24th, 2007 at 8:49 pm
haha, that’s funny how on average, you get 0 or 1 comments, but now that youre offering up money, 3 people pop up!
I want some money too!