Tag: charity

Charitable Giving in 2024 (Part 2)

Posted on by Scott

This will wrap up my annual charitable giving post that I began on Christmas Eve with a Part 1.

Other Charitable Giving (continued)

Additional charitable giving recipients not listed previously include the following:

Other Giving

In addition to giving for charitable purpose that are tax-deductible, I’ll highlight a few tip jars, Patreon memberships, and other avenues I’ve taken to support people and causes that I find worthwhile.

  • The Contraband Wagon
    I initially met him through Twitter, and he’s taken on the exceedingly difficult challenge of creating constructive conversations on the issue of race. I had the honor of being a panelist for one of the live conversations he moderated on the issue of race in the tech industry. You can find clips of his conversations on YouTube and join his Patreon to get the full-length conversations.
  • Mastodon
    I began supporting the Mastodon project through Patreon in November 2022 after Elon Musk took over Twitter. As we’ve watched Musk turn Twitter into a propaganda and disinformation platform to (unfortunately successfully) elect Donald Trump, those of us with the means putting money behind efforts to help decentralized social media networks succeed will only grow more important. They recently began selling merchandise which also helps support their operations, which gave me an excuse to buy a stuffed version of their mascot.
  • Hachyderm
    Hachyderm.io is the Mastodon server I moved to in 2023 after initially joining the much larger mastodon.cloud. I began sponsoring them this year with a small monthly contribution via GitHub.
  • emptywheel
    The blog of independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, she’s effectively become the ombudsman of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other mainstream media outlets. She doesn’t just call out shortcomings and failings in their coverage, she clarifies issues that might otherwise be confusing. She’s one of just two journalists I value enough to support directly.
  • Blacksky
    Created and maintained by Rudy Fraser, it is effectively its own social media network for black folks on Bluesky that leverages the AT Protocol. I began contributing to his work this month via Open Source Collective, a fiscal host for numerous open source projects I used back when I was still writing software full time including webpack, vue, ESLint, and thousands of others.

Giving Plans for 2025

I don’t anticipate any changes in my financial giving plans next year beyond possibly giving a bit more to charities I already donate to, and to my church. Once I’ve completed a leadership training program I’m currently taking (in June 2025), I will look for an opportunity to regularly donate my time and expertise to a cause that needs them.

Charitable Giving in 2024 (Part 1)

Posted on by Scott

My final post of last year talked about charitable giving, but this I’m starting a bit earlier. This annual post is as much of a self-reminder to donate to worthy causes as it is to encourage those who read them to do the same.

Religiously-Motivated Charitable Giving

In addition to donating to my home church and my high school alma mater, I gave a bit to the Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington. If you’re in the DC/Metro area and are looking for a cause that helps families in need, consider them as a recipient for your year-end giving.

Other Charitable Giving

Last year’s merger between CIR/Reveal and Mother Jones didn’t change how they accepted donations. Researching this post gave me the opportunity to restart monthly donations to them which had lapsed. 2024 turned out to be a year of mainstream media taking a step backward in quality and/or being acquired by right-wing ideologues. January brought the purchase of The Baltimore Sun by the owner of Sinclair Broadcasting. So the advice I gave last year to find and consider supporting a local non-profit newsroom was advice I had to follow quite quickly myself. The Baltimore Banner covers what happens at Maryland’s state capitol quite well. It’s now my only written local news source since I dropped my Washington Post subscription after they got scooped on Justice Alito’s insurrectionist flag-flying despite having a multi-year head start.

HBO/Max opted to cancel their deal with Sesame Workshop for new episodes so they’re seeking a new partner. Since then, Sesame Workshop has become very active online seeking donations, and I responded. Sesame Street was a substantial part of the TV programming I consumed as a kid (because it was on PBS), and my children have too.

Another new recipient of charitable giving this year was the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. I visited in-person during the week of Thanksgiving to see the Code Switch exhibit before it closed, and bought a bunch of books in their bookstore before I left (all purchase proceeds support the center itself). You can also give directly to the New York Public Library system.

Other charitable giving recipients so far this year included the following (in no particular order):

A follow-up post after Christmas will cover the rest of my charitable giving for the year and plans for 2025.

Charitable Giving in 2023

Posted on by Scott

The number of hours left in 2023 is down to single digits as I write this. This year as in past years, the majority of my charitable giving is to churches within my denomination (Seventh-Day Adventist), with additional giving to non-profit journalism and other non-religious causes.

Religiously-Motivated Charitable Giving

Unlike previous years, where I only donated to my home church, I also donated to every church that I attended either in-person or online at least once this calendar year. This included Boston Temple, which I attended in-person when I visited my cousin there in October, as well as Oakwood University Church (online), Revision Church Atlanta SDA (online), along with the churches in my local area I visit most often in-person.

As I did last year, I donated to Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington (ACSGW). I also donated to my high school alma mater again this year.

Other Charitable Giving

Other destinations for my charitable giving this year included the following organizations (in no particular order):

Charitable Giving Plans for 2024

Having finally added back to the roster of charitable donation recipients I missed in past years, one change I anticipate making in 2024 is donating to whatever the organization resulting from the merger between CIR/Reveal and Mother Jones is ultimately called.

Non-profit journalists did great work this year in exposing the depths of Clarence Thomas’ corruption, methods used by the Mormon church to keep child sex abuse cases secret, a healthcare company trying to deny coverage to a chronically ill patient, and more. Especially in a presidential election year, where for-profit newsrooms like The New York Times appear to be using their coverage to weigh in in favor of the powerful, non-profit newsrooms will be more important than ever. If you haven’t already donated to a non-profit newsroom this year, I encourage you to get that donation in before the new year.

In 2024, consider supporting a non-profit newsroom in your local area. The Institute for Nonprofit News (INN) has a tool that will match you with such organizations so you can donate to them directly and follow their coverage. I might be adding some Maryland non-profit newsrooms to my charitable giving plans before this time next year.

Charitable Giving in 2022

Posted on by Scott

As the end of this year gets closer, and more non-profits reach out for charitable donations, I thought it would be a good time to look at the organizations I’ve donated to throughout the year and share some of the reasoning behind my giving.  The majority of my giving is religiously-motivated, while the rest isn’t.  When it comes to other giving, an increasing amount of that non-religious charitable giving is focused on non-profit journalism.

Religiously-Motivated Charitable Giving

I’ve been a baptized member of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church since elementary school.  My parents sent my younger sister and I to the same SDA elementary school and high school.  My sister earned her undergraduate education degree from an SDA university as well.  We grew up returning tithe and giving offerings to our church, and I’ve tried to be faithful with that practice, even through the pandemic.  This year, as in previous years, my denomination and my home church will be the largest recipients of my charitable giving.

Another charity I donated financially to this year, and to which I’ve donated my time in the past (through assisting with ESL courses and teaching technology courses to seniors) is Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington (ACSGW).  This charity was founded in 1983 by 3 SDA churches located in Takoma Park, MD and Silver Spring, MD.  

The most recent change to my giving is the addition of my high school alma mater to the list of recipients.  A fellow alum reached out regarding donations to projects at our high school and I chipped in a bit of money for one of the projects.  Giving to my high school is something I plan to do more regularly in 2023 and years to come.

Other Charitable Giving

I’ve donated regularly to my local public radio and TV stations, WAMU and WETA respectively, for many years. I grew up listening to and watching them both, and I make sure that my children get at least of bit of PBS kids programming in their media diet regularly.

ProPublica received my earliest donation specifically for non-profit news back in 2010. Since then, my non-profit news donations have expanded to include Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting, and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. ICIJ and ProPublica get monthly automatic donations and I need to put Reveal back on that list as well .

This year included a bit of giving to tech-focused non-profits:

One of my longer-running monthly automatic donations has been to RAINN. I first learned about the charity through the experience and music of Tori Amos (specifically the track Me and a Gun, from her Little Earthquakes album). Over the decades she’s continued to speak out as a survivor of rape and do other work fighting on behalf of sexual assault victims.

Edit: After I published this post, I discovered the software I use to track my expenses mischaracterized one of my charitable donations. Friends of the Library Montgomery County is a charity that supports the public libraries in Montgomery County, MD. Given how the culture wars have begun to negatively impact both public libraries and school libraries, putting additional funds (beyond tax dollars) toward libraries is more important than ever.

Charitable Giving Plans for 2023

I hope to give more, and more consistently to the causes I’ve written about above. I’ll also look to resume giving to charities I missed this past year. Capital Area Food Bank is one such charity. Kiva is a non-profit microlending platform through which I’ve made loans to borrowers in 13 different countries over the years. I’ve also donated funds from time-to-time, but not as often or consistently as the sort of work they’re doing probably needs. I donated to The Bail Project and the Equal Justice Initiative in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police officers in 2020 but unfortunately haven’t done so in subsequent years.

I feel very fortunate to have the means and opportunity to give, and hope to encourage whoever may read this to give as well.