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Blog /// Clothing Donations Done Right
September 3, 2010 by Constance Casey for Slate.com
Dear My Goodness, I have a bunch of old clothes I'd like to get rid of, but I'm wary of just dumping them off in one of those yellow bins by the side of the road. I'm not terribly confident that those clothes will end up in the hands of people who need them. I'd donate them to the Salvation Army, but they resell the clothing. Are there any charities that give clothing directly to those in need? -
Blog /// Reading List: “Cognitive Surplus”
August 25, 2010 by Andrea Bennett
Author Clay Shirky, a professor in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, has written a book that should provide a vote of confidence to those who fear that technology is making us dumber and more insular. In “Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age,” he proposes treating the free time of the world’s educated people as an aggregate, a “cognitive surplus.”Tags: community, charity, cell phones, computers
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Blog /// My Goodness: Don’t Label Me
August 2, 2010 by Constance Casey for Slate.com
Dear My Goodness, I've donated in the past to various charities, and I must be on a shared mailing list, because I constantly receive mail asking for donations from organizations I've never heard of. Some of these letters include a sheet of labels printed with my return address. Since I am not interested in some of these groups' causes, I toss the letter and donation envelope but use the return labels for my mail. My boyfriend pokes fun at me because of this. He'd rather have me not use the labels and just throw them away. The labels have the name or symbol of the organization on them, so I worry that I'm perpetuating a lie since the recipient may assume I support the charity. What should I do?Tags: slate.com, charity, mail, fundraising
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Blog /// A Soccer Ball for Good
July 27, 2010 by Andrea Bennett
It’s a good day when you can say you’re helping the world by playing a game of soccer. A new business, the One World Futbol Project, has just released a soccer ball made of closed cell foam—similar to the material in Croc sandals—that the company says will last generations. It won’t deflate, even if you puncture it with a knife, and it’s been tested in many environments…including a lion’s den. The best news is that for every new ball the company sells on its website, it gives a second ball to an NGO, including refugee camps, UN hot spots and inner cities. -
Blog /// Crowdsource Your Cause
July 27, 2010 by Andrea Bennett
Remember the old method of passing a sign-up sheet around the office cubicles and asking your colleagues to pledge a few dollars to your Walk for [insert cause here]? Now there’s a way to turbo-charge that. It’s called Crowdrise, a new online platform that allows volunteers to seek sponsorships for their volunteering by leveraging the power of the Web. Crowdrise’s founder, actor Ed Norton, should know: he helped the Maasai Conservation Wilderness Trust raise more than $1 million in two months by running the New York City Marathon and crowdsourcing donations. He based the model on his success.Tags: charity, internet, volunteering
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Blog /// Success for the Honor System
July 21, 2010 by Andrea Bennett
This just in: People are basically good. At least according to an experiment conducted by Panera, which operates 1,400 franchised and corporate-owned bakery-cafes across the country. Since we called attention to a New York Times article on June 4th about the first pay-what-you-wish Panera – in suburban St. Louis – the company has decided to expand the honor bar concept to locations around the country based on results from the vanguard café.Tags: goodwill, food, charity, restaurants
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Blog /// My Goodness | Trying to Volunteer
July 15, 2010 by Constance Casey for Slate.com
Dear My Goodness, I'm a twentysomething legal assistant who was very involved in charity organizations in college. I'd like to volunteer one evening a week, but I'm getting discouraged because some version of the following keeps happening. The organization gets back to me and asks whether I'll send my available dates and times to set up an interview. I do so immediately but don't hear back from them for weeks. Then someone from the charity e-mails with "thanks for your patience." We set up a time for a phone interview, and they don't call.Tags: slate.com, volunteering, charity, goodwill
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Blog /// Homeless on a Billboard
June 12, 2010 by Kathy McManus
When an Austin charity called Mobile Loaves and Fishes wanted to raise awareness about homelessness, they hoisted a homeless man named Danny 50 feet in the air to live for two days on the catwalk of a billboard towering over a Texas interstate.
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