Each year around Christmas I make a set of donations to causes and organisations that I want to support. I do this all at once, because I find I'm a lot more deliberate about what causes I support and the amount I want to donate than I am donating on impulse throughout the year.
I adopted this approach couple of years back after I read a tweet from Simon Lyall. Following his lead I've decided to blog my donations this year on the theory that it may encourage others in a similarly privileged position to do likewise.
I'm always rather uncomfortable discussing financial matters, so I'm going to avoid dollar amounts and just talk about groups of charities. Everyone's situation is different anyway so I don't believe dollar amounts really help the goal anyway.
Category 1: "Humanitarian Causes"
I use humanitarian loosely, my general preference is to support organisations working locally. I use GiveWell for supporting work overseas.
I split about 75% of my overall donation equally between these organisations:
Category 2: "Agenda I want to advance"
Tech has been very good to me, so I like to somehow support making that an option for more of the next generation, particularly those for whom it's not an easy / obvious option. Basically this comes down to three things:
- Ensuring that kids have the basics covered so they can pursue a passion
- Encouraging a passion for S.T.E.M
- Making sure there's still a tech sector for the next generation
This leads me to split another 20% across the following:
- Kids Can
- Nano Girl Live Pay it Forward tickets
- EFF
- Foster Hope
Category 3: "Tech projects I use / want to continue existing"
Finally I spread the last 5% of my donations between some projects that I use:
- Wikipedia
- Mozilla
- GPG
- Lets Encrypt
- Tor
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