So it’s almost the end of the year, which means that I’m sure you’re all receiving all sorts of e-mails and letters from various charities, hoping you will choose to give to them this holiday season and increase your tax deductions.
I’m big on giving to charity, and I know a lot of other PF bloggers are as well. I know how lucky I am to be where I am and have what I have, and I like to give back on some level.
It’s always hard to choose a charity. There are so many great ones out there. I use Charity Navigator to help me narrow down the field, but that doesn’t always help much. I give to both local groups and to major international groups, but I’m always interested to hear more about charitable works.
What are your favorite charities? I would like to put together a list to be posted sometime during Christmas week. Let’s hear who you support (or who you would support if you could). Why do you like that charity?
Thanks in advance for all your contributions. I can’t wait to see what we come up with!
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
Other than my Alma Mater and my study abroad program, my favorite charity is Direct Relief International. It is rated very highly on CharityNavigator. And the best part? 100% of all donations go DIRECTLY to the programs because all administrative costs have been covered by a large bequest!
I am an avid traveler and this charity is focused on international (as well as local) relief. I can give to a general fund or to a specific program, and in the past I have given to Cyclone Relief in SE Asia, etc. 🙂
Smile Train
I’ve been a big fan of Smile Train for quite some time. They are a group that fixes the cleft lips and pallets of children through out the world. In many cases throughout the world, kids are ostracized and abandoned because of their cleft pallets. They also can’t eat properly with a malformed pallete, so they become malnourished.
They have repaired over 100,000 cleft lips and pallets and have changed many lives. The surgery in many cases takes only 45 minutes to do. They have doctors that donate their services and Smile train applies for grants to help cover their administrative costs. From what I understand, very little of the money that is donated goes toward administrative costs and nearly all of it is used to help perform these surgeries.
They also won an Oscar last year (documentary category) for their film “Smile Pinki” about a little girl from India that had her cleft pallet repaired by Smile Train.
In my experience they seem to be a very well organized and well run group and very worthy of your charitable dollars.
My favorite charity is the local food bank. Many years ago, I was fortunate enough to be helped by the food bank at a time when I was brokity-broke-broke. Life is good now, but I’ve never forgotten the kindness of these people, and I’ve donated monthly ever since.
It’s so hard to be without the basics, and food is definitely a basic need.