october 2020 donation

this month I chose Dress for Success Miami because one of my best friends works there as their COO! very fancy, yes.

it's interesting because I've been thinking about my next year's donation drive. and, probably because I've been thinking about Dress for Success, I thought to donate nice professional clothing for interviews. Dress for Success's closest office to me is in DTLA, so I thought a similar nonprofit in Long Beach would be better since DfS only takes women's clothes. plus, I don't have a lot of storage space here before I can make a drop off so having a closer location will help in that I can do multiple drop offs. in doing some research I found Clothes the Deal, which sounded perfect!

of course I looked up them up on a few charity rating websites and saw that on Charity Navigator they have a 50 out of 100. ... that's no good. especially because they're only rated for finance and accountability. they're not yet rated on impact and results, leadership and adaptability, or culture and community (their budget is too small to have gotten an in-depth rating). but they even have poor ratings on yelp! eek. anyway, so I'm NOT donating to them next year.

I think I may probably just "cheat" and do the menstrual products drive in conjunction with work. julie of BYO already approved it for 2020 but we didn't find a receiving organization in time, cause I had wanted to tie it in with women's month (march) and incorporate a discount on buying a plastic-smart menstrual product at the store. she reached out to one org, I reached out to four, and only heard back from one (WomenShelter of Long Beach) ...not great. but they had someone do a drive for them earlier so they were full up. hopefully next year tho, we can try again.