Start now
There are basically two schools of thought regarding giving money away. One says that you should wait until you are rich/comfortable, at which point you will be able to give away more money. The other says that if you don’t give money away when you only have a little, you won’t do so when you have more either.
I tend to agree with the latter. I’ve been giving small amounts of money to specific charities for a couple of years now. You can see last year’s update here.
Sitting down to write this post, I noticed my regular donations have not increased this year. Here are the charities I give money to regularly:
Severn Hospice (10 pounds a month plus one-off donation of 500 pounds)
My mum spent her last few weeks here, and they treated her and me extremely well. Supporting their future work really is the least that I can do.
Charity: water ($30 a month)
I can’t think of anything more basic than having clean drinking water. Charity: water seem to spend their money well and send a lot of information about the end users.
Amnesty International (2.50 pounds a month -should increase this one)
Drawing attention to human rights abuses supports and encourages the victims and puts pressure on the abusers.
Courageous Kitchen ($25 a month)
I went to Bangkok a few years back to meet Dwight (the founder of In Search of Sanuk which later became Courageous Kitchen) and was so impressed with what he was doing that I’ve been proud to support their work ever since.
Time to change that. I am going to increase my donations to the four charities above and also add a new one.
This year I really became worried about climate change and environmental destruction so I would like to support an organization that works towards ameliorating both of those.
So who should I give my money to? Please post your suggestions in the comments, and I will choose one over the winter break.