Help Us Pick Worthwhile Charities to Donate To

The Foundation Beyond Belief (which I am on the board of) is an organization that encourages non-religious people to give to charity. In fact, we support a variety of charity categories:

Health
Poverty
Environment
Education
Peace
Child Welfare
Human Rights
Freedom of Expression
Animal Protection
A featured small charity

One of the most difficult (yet worthwhile) tasks for members is choosing which charities should receive funding during each quarter.

To accomplish this, we’re looking for volunteers to help us out in the different areas:

Though the Board chooses the final slate of beneficiaries each quarter, member input is among the most important considerations. If you are a registered member of the Foundation with a special interest in one or more of the cause areas we support, consider joining one of our Charity Research Teams to help assess nominated charities. No experience is necessary, and no specific time commitment is expected.

You do have to be a FBB member to be part of this group — but that’s not a bad thing. You should already be contributing! I do it each month and it’s a good feeling to know you’re giving to such worthy causes.

If you’re interested in helping out, just fill out this form, visit the forums to find the causes you care about, and start working with us!

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OneSTDV

Why does a supposedly politically unbiased organization seem to support so many liberal-leaning initiatives (i.e. environment, poverty, animal protection, human rights which is generally a euphemism for feminism…).

If we’re attempting to spread atheism to a wider potential audience, then surely the promoters of this shouldn’t naively presume all atheists subscribe to the edicts of liberalism (well, at least not the modern incarnation).

I’d say give to a health-based organization. Everyone hates disease and only science can find a cure.
Autumnal Harvest

OneSTDV, it’s interesting to see such a frank admission that conservatives don’t actually care about the environment or about poverty, and that those are things that only liberals care about. Usually conservatives pretend that they do care about these things, but that non-profits can deal better with them than the government. Thanks for being so frank about the reality that conservatives don’t actually give a shit about poverty.
OneSTDV

Well, since Climategate, my incredulity regarding global warming has increased.

As for poverty, it’s a reflection of the natural order of man: the notion that different human aptitudes create an economic hierarchy. Not everyone is able to procure midle and upper class employment primarily as a result of their decreased intellectual capability. Same applies to a great number of individuals being movie stars, singers, or NFL football players.

Unless you want to engage in a wealth redistribution plan, our capitalistic economy which values intellectual ability (i.e. doctors make more than schoolteachers who make more than janitors) essentially ensures some will be impoverished.

Though your view of “poverty” is surely biased considering you probably live in the West. Blacks, generally considered the most destitute American cohorts, have accrued wealth equal to something like the 9th richest nation-state.

As for poverty on a global scale, America should worry about fixing its own problems before it sees fit to export democracy and well being to the rest of the world. Atheists, of whom most accept the notion that morality is subjective, would have trouble countenancing profligate aid spending on moral grounds. And in a pragmatic context, surely our money is best spent on our own problems.
The Godless Monster

@OneSTDV,
I’m a fellow conservative, but I don’t see human rights as necessarily being a euphemism for feminism. Sometimes, maybe, but the last time I checked, women are human beings.
Climategate notwithstanding, global climate change is a fact. Whether we are responsible and whether the US should unilaterally destroy it’s economy to “fix” the problem is another issue. I feel it is better to err on the side of caution, but to take care to not cut our own throats in the process. I take a more centrist approach to the subject.
As far as poverty being a natural condition, (and it is), that’s just an excuse to say “fuck ’em, I’ve got mine”. Not a practical attitude to have for the long term as that is what feeds revolutions. The solution to the problem of poverty, however, is not a forced redistribution of wealth. One solution is charitable giving, which you should be in favor of as a conservative. These folks work hard to put these organizations together. Instead of sniping at their current choices, perhaps you have some alternative charities you can suggest for other atheists (like myself) who happen to be conservative as well.
Joe Zamecki

Okay, enough with politics, now onto helping.
OneSTDV

Poverty will always exist. No amount of charitable giving will help (how much money have we given to Haiti over the years).

I do wholeheartedly support giving charity to individuals who lack the means to advance themselves, such as poor kids who can’t afford college. Of course, the scholarships for “poor kids” never go to kids who actually deserve them. So most of those programs constitute a waste of money.

As for anthropogenic global warming, the data is highly subjective:

http://onestdv.blogspot.com/2010/02/global-warming-romance-of-great-idea.html

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/

As for feminism, I’m all for second wave feminism, the notion that competent women should be afforded equality in the workplace. But third wave feminism is basically (and I can’t take credit for this) “communism with tits”. They want to impose equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity, amongst many other culturally destructive initiatives.
OneSTDV

But as I said previously, please give to health related charities or freedom of expression groups. Oh and I like child welfare charity too.
Revyloution

OneSTDV you said this
“our capitalistic economy which values intellectual ability (i.e. doctors make more than schoolteachers who make more than janitors) essentially ensures some will be impoverished.”

What do you think of the fact that Britney Spears makes more than Brian Cox? Why did Babe Ruth make more than Albert Einstein? Our current market economy fails to value certain kinds of ability, and over values others.

Also, what specifically was it about Climate Gate that increased your incredulity? I read all the emails that were involved in that debacle, and I failed to see any incriminating evidence.
Revyloution

Sorry Hemant, I forgot to answer your question.

Education should be our primary focus. It’s the old ‘Give a man a fish, he eats for a day’ parable. Once people have enough education, all of the problems of the world become much easier.
Vatra86

You should have another category – Scientific / Medical Research, as they can produce far better results in the long run than just throwing money at the current situation eg Food production in extreme environments is better than constantly shipping large amounts of food to those areas.
Hemant Mehta

I think some of you have the wrong idea… we’re not looking for additional categories or any specific ones.

All the categories listed are ones we will be donating to.

What we are looking for are specific charities *within* each category that we can donate to… and to choose which charities, we are putting together Charity Research Teams to pick them. If you have a preference to pick charities within a particular category only, you can say that when you sign up.
BoomerChick

I would suggest donating to organizations that train service dogs/animals.

The cost of training a service dog is $20,000 to $30,000 per dog! Most of these organizations are nonprofits with volunteer workers and are always looking for people or organizations to sponsor a dog.

The dogs are then donated to disabled persons at low or no cost.

Donating to these types of organizations often cover more than one of your categories.
For example service dogs can:
• improve the health of the recipient,
• raise the recipient out of poverty by enabling return to work,
• enable recipients to go back to school for education,
• provide education for the children who volunteer to be puppy trainers,
• provide education for the puppy trainers in prisons programs,
• provide animal protection when they select shelter dogs for training,
• and most are small charities

I’m not yet a member of FBB but as a future member I would recommend FidosforFreedom.org in Laurel, MD.
Blotz

I’ve recommended them at the foundation’s site, but especially as we head into the springtime here in the northern hemisphere and the kids need places to play, I wanna pimp the folks at KaBOOM ( http://kaboom.org/blog/all ). They build playgrounds with the goal of every child having access to a safe place to play.
Ron in Houston

Dude –

You’re on the board? Must be that “friendliness.”
ecorona

I would also urge secularists not to forget local human rights groups which we know have everyone’s interests in mind – NCSE, FFRF, HRC, ACLU etc.
Ian Kendall

Revyloution you said
“OneSTDV you said this
“our capitalistic economy which values intellectual ability (i.e. doctors make more than schoolteachers who make more than janitors) essentially ensures some will be impoverished.”
What do you think of the fact that Britney Spears makes more than Brian Cox? Why did Babe Ruth make more than Albert Einstein? Our current market economy fails to value certain kinds of ability, and over values others.
Also, what specifically was it about Climate Gate that increased your incredulity? I read all the emails that were involved in that debacle, and I failed to see any incriminating evidence.”

I agree on both you points. We live in a system that is based on property rights. Such things can be maintained by force but it is more easily maintained by creating some illusion of justice. However, this illusion breaks down quite easily under close examination, as you example illustrates.
The value system of capitalism is not one of worthiness or even usefulness: it is uniqueness. Thus capitalism encourages the withholding of resources to achieve this uniqueness. Worse than that, pollution of water creates opportunities to sell bottled water and from a certain point of view, carbon tax is a way of charging for the air that we breathe: we all exhale carbon dioxide.
I agree that the climategate is a bit of nonsense. However, the carbon warming crises has been a media driven farce from the start. Having no clear peer-reviewed evidence a committee was set up with very specific goals and decided what it was going to prove before examining the evidence. There is nothing scientific about that. As more and more reliable scientific minds examine the evidence more and more are disgusted at what passes for scientific enquiry with this group. The fact that it is an ‘end of days’ scenario should immediately make one suspicious. The notion that trading credits to get others to grow trees, instead of examining all the possibilities by statistical analysis to discover the most likely cause of global warming is downright irresponsible.
If this whole affair had been driven by good science then the movement would not be so vulnerable to media hype. However, it is a house of cards, built on media hype. Worse than that, it is an opportunity for the capitalist system to generate scarcity in one more area, the oxygen we use for industrial processes and, by extension, the air we breathe.
This is not obvious, in the media, because the case is made by charismatic politicians and journalists but science cannot be ignored forever, because ultimately, it’s right. This has done appalling damage to science and science education. This whole issue has been successfully hijacked by politicians, and milked for all its worth. It is a sad day for science. Politicians, will have their usual way out: bad advice. The media will move on to the next manufactured crises, sorry news item. Science will have lost the opportunity to learn and teach something fascinating to the next generation of potential scientists.
The carbon warming is not a product of science but of capitalism. Capitalism was useful where item were both rare and indispensible. However, our current technology can substitute for almost anything and manufactured scarcity leads to hunger. It is time to adopt a scientific system not one bases on faith in the wisdom of the marked. That is just a disguised version on Mannon worship. Lets try this instead. It can’t possibly be worse. http://www.thevenusproject.com./
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