april & may 2024 donation

a bestie of mine set up a gofundme to "Help the Bolbol family evacuate Gaza escape hell" so i've donated $50 to the cause.

feburary & march 2024 donation

i was late with my feburary donation, so i combined it with march to donate $50 to GNO Caring Collective. when g was here, we visited the bar at columns for happy hour. while there, g struck up a conversation with our server, who, turns out, is the founder of a great local non-profit called GNO Caring Collective. he started it early pandemic to help with covid assistance. since then, they have expanded efforts to hurricane resources, school lunch delivery, rent assistance, and more. it feels really good to help a local org and I'm thankful to have met him. and of course, i'm also thankful to g for starting that conversation with him!

january 2024 donation

this month i donated to grounds krewe, who's mission is "to promote waste prevention, recycling and sustainable products at new orleans special events."

being in louisiana has been a bit of an eye opener. j came first and said that we didn't have a recycling bin, only a trash bin. i arrived and saw, actually, we only had a recycling bin? i figured this because it's blue. but in looking around, all our neighbors had green and black bins only, no blue? then i noticed that many of our bins had different waste collection agencies printed on them, so i think they're just... randomly distributed? i haven't been able to google anything solid on when trash pickup day is, or what they collect either; it's a mess.

speaking of mess, i've been going out to some mardi gras parades and they amount of waste is astonishing! float people throw stuff out at the crowd and, since it's free stuff, it's poorly made stuff. most times, people to catch the stuff, but often times, it hits the ground first which means that it breaks. and since there's constantly free stuff being thrown out, no one really cares for the broken stuff. here in slidell, parades are fridays, saturdays, and sundays. with one or two parades a day. for the regular parades, they city does NOT supply extra trash cans (or even port-o--potties), and neither is the stuff cleaned up after each parade. it is mostly picked up by monday morning though. storm drains are generally blocked, so stuff is mostly prevented from getting in there, but for the BOAT PARADES, people also just throw stuff up at people on land so A LOT of it ends up in the water! I did not see a boat with a pool net picking stuff up either...

so they don't seem to recycle here (tho there are drop off locations for recycling, which, let's face it, very few people will do), aren't particularly mindful of litter, and i don't think i've seen a single person use a reusable bag (I have not noticed about water bottles or reusable cups). ugh. nola DOES have a refill store tho, which we visited earlier this week, and I did pick up a few non-plastic sponges and a brush. (I messed up and didn't buy the dish soap, bah).

anyway, so i donated to grounds krewe because they're trying to do something about the incredible waste that comes with mardi gras.

2023 donation list

I think it's so interesting to do these donations because at the end of the year, when i put together this list, i can see what my giving priorities are. when i first started i was sure it would be towards food insecurity but i've barely donated to that, or even environmentalism, at all! of course, current events and such affects my giving but i've actually not given much towards natural disasters or anything like that. i think mostly because the orgs that are dealing with that issue get a lot of publicity for a bit so they get a flood of donations in, so i choose to donate towards my more fundamental priorities, which is the last couple years seems to be public and independent journalism and media.

january - nature conservancy
february - nature conservancy
march - npr
april - vice
may - border kindness
june - LAist
july - pbs
august - norfside long beach
september - algalita and moore institute thru long beach gives
october - radiotopia
november - give directly
december - open secrets

2022 donation list

2021 donation list

2020 donation list

possible orgs for next year (because some of these have been on my list for years, lol): solarbuddy.org, RIP medical debt, Food Finders, Harvest Partners, Food Forward, Seed Savers, safe toddles, Anti Recidivism Coalition (i found out about them thru their ride home program).

december 2023 donation

 

this month I donated to OpenSecrets, which I learned about from npr podcast civics 101. "Nonpartisan, independent and nonprofit, OpenSecrets is the nation's premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy. Our mission is to track the flow of money in American politics and provide the data and analysis to strengthen democracy."

unrelatedly, the civics 101 podcast is actually from new hampshire public radio, which also produces Outside/In, which I sometimes listen to. I know i've said this before, but I really can't believe that I didn't listen to podcasts until only like 4 years ago and now i have it on all the time. often in place of a tv (cause sometimes you just want a little noise on in the backgroud), and I very rarely listen to music anymore either. anyway, all hail podcasts and public radio! i also listen to podcasts from kcrw, wnyc, west virginia public broadcasting, michigan public, north carolina public radio, and others!

november 2023 donation

 

this month i gave to GiveDirectly which is kind like kiva in that you give directly to those in need, not to third parties that provide services or whatever to those in need. it's sort of like privately funded ubi, which i'm very much behind. 

thanks to econtalk, which is how i heard about this org early last year.

speaking of kiva: mit technology review - What happened to the microfinance organization Kiva?
i too was turned off kiva a couple years ago. it was mostly due to my mistake but why is it so much easier to donate to kiva itself rather than to the people they're trying to help?