What’s your “strategy” on giving to charity?  What percentage of income do you donate?

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I just made my donations to Unicef for the Myanmar cyclone relief and to Red Cross China via Tsinghua Foundation for the China earthquake relief:

http://www.google.com/myanmarcyclone/
http://www.google.com/chinaearthquake/

I was perusing the Tsinghua Foundation list of all donations made via Google Checkout and PayPal.  Interesting that there are donations as small as $0.01 and $1.00 and as large as $25,000.  The average is around $200.

I saw in the news that total donations to China have been over $1 billion USD already!

Now I only give to large aid organizations with a proven track record.

Stuff like United Way, International Red Cross, World Food Relief, Doctors Without Borders.

Not sure if this is considered charity:

http://www.kiva.org

I know all the money goes to the person, albeit I don’t know if the recepient needs to pay interest or they just pay back the principal amount of the loan.  I’ve funded one loan thus far, but will try to fund more in the future.

I think Kiva is interest-free.  So it is partly charity.  E-Bay has a similar business, MicroPlace, that is actual loans with interest.  I read that the percent of loans that get fully paid back is really high, like high 90s percentage.  In contrast to non-charity P2P loan businesses such as Prosper.com.

I give to the Canadian Red Cross on at least an annual basis but often more than that.  The amount has really varied depending on what other things were going on in my life (ie. being in school) etc.

I’m thinking of ideas to submit to Google’s Project Google.  But there’s only a week left.  Anyone else have any ideas for saving the world?  Here are the links:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/project-10100.html

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/09/24/google.project/index.html

http://www.project10tothe100.com/

currently i’m unemployed, so i cant contribute much $.  However, I try to make time to support local organizations by volunteering.

I was trying to think of an idea to submit to the Knight News Challenge
http://www.newschallenge.org/

This is a cool video.

The Girl Effect

I like to donate to friends in need, b/c not everybody I know is affluent.  That way I know my money’s (hopefully) going somewhere, but it does rely on trust.

CurryChicken - 12 October 2008 09:59 PM

currently i’m unemployed, so i cant contribute much $.  However, I try to make time to support local organizations by volunteering.

Ditto.  What I did was volunteer with the Taproot Foundation.  They do pro-bono business work with other non-profits.  The project I worked on was a salesforce.com solution for a donor database for a health clinic.  Definitely a project worth working on and I would do one again if the opportunity presented itself.

Anyone know of any interesting charities aside from the usual big name ones?  I am still looking for a Christmas gift donation type of thing.  Maybe environmental or social entrepreneur type of organization.

heifer.org

you can donate cash for a live animal or a stock in a live animal that goes to a poor country.

Heh, that is a good one, but I can’t use that one because that’s the one my friend gives me for a charity donation gift.  I guess it’s pretty well known since Oprah promotes it.

I have a friend in Tanzania right now doing missions (for the next 10 month or more) if anyone is interested in contributing to his cause please let me know and I will forward you some information.

Does anyone use FaceBook Causes or other social donation/fundraising site?  I mean actually use it and donate money not just “friend” it or be a “supporter.”

Causes seems to have a low donation rate.  I like the social aspect and being able to browse my friends and acquaintances interests but the inability to make anonymous donations or hide the amount is a deterrent for me, as with the activity being announced to all FaceBook friends.