Help Me Pick A Charity

Summary

• I will donate $100 CAD to charity.
• $50 CAD will go to charity that resonates with me the most.
• $50 CAD will go to charity with the most upvotes.
• Winners will be decided at midnight of March 1st 2018, EST.

To Nominate A Charity

Simply reply to this post with your charity, try to follow the format shown below.

Name: Name of Charity
Website: URL of Website
Summary: Brief write-up on why you care about this charity

The Big Picture

There are people out there that are in need of help, and there are problems in the world that would be worth solving for everyone, even though no specific person would benefit economically for solving said problem. While a few people pursue careers that allow them to help those in need or tackle these problems, many more of us try to pitch in by funding that smaller group so they can have the resources they need to help others.

There are a handful of well known charitable organizations that have a global reach and have admirable causes such as fighting poverty, curing and preventing illnesses, research, and education.

However, large charitable organizations can become inefficient, as the staffing costs tend to increase which means fewer available resources for the people that staff is helping. Conversely, smaller organizations are usually less well known, which means they could be underfunded due to lack of exposure.

Governments try to incentivize donating to charities by making certain donations tax deductible. You could receive more than a 20% rebate on your donations, assuming that the donation is going to a pre-approved whitelist of charities. This also indirectly incentivizes donating to white-listed charities, which can dry out funding for the others.

Certain organizations come up with social media campaigns, where likes and shares get matched in donations by the company running the campaign. It ends up being a win win marketing promotion, where users spread awareness about the company but also the cause, and the company can spend part of its marketing budget on charity since the marketing comes bundled with the awareness campaign.

In listening to podcasts I discovered the Effective Altruism movement, where people dedicate some percentage of their income to go towards an incredibly efficient organization such as the Against Malaria Foundation, and by doing this you're technically impacting the most number of lives with your donation. This aspect of the movement really appealed to me. I had read stories about charities being extremely wasteful or even fraudulent, and I didn't like the idea about feeling good about giving money that wasn't actually used to help anyone. While social media campaigns are extremely valuable, I felt like I needed to do more than simply play along with the 'Like & Share' game. I also didn't necessarily want to give to the most well known charities, since I imagine they have sufficient funding relative to more obscure ones.

Plan of Action

Putting all this together, I want to discover and donate to a charity that isn't too well known or well funded, but that is still doing meaningful work to help society. I realize that I will probably pay a penalty in terms of how efficient that charity is, but I'm willing to make that trade since I imagine plenty of effective altruists are giving ample resources to the more efficient charities.

I thought I could use this opportunity to hear from the community, learn about charities that you all care about, and to eventually donate to one or two. If this post and process inspires some of you to donate yourselves, all the better :)

So I'll let all of you nominate charities that you're passionate about, and also share a little bit about why you care about said charity. I'll be making the donation using VISA, but I could also use the main crypto coins (BTC/ETH/LTC) if the charity supports it. I will donate to the charity that gets the most votes, as well as the charity that resonates with me the most. I will decide on the winners at midnight of March 1, 2018, eastern time, and will be donating a total of $100 CAD.

Looking forward to hearing from all of you.
Here's a cat picture for making it to the end of this post :)