Hi There, It's Your Check Please Secret Santa!! It's Not The Greatest Time In The World Right Now, So

Hi there, it's your check please secret santa!! It's not the greatest time in the world right now, so I thought I might try and brighten things up by asking who your fave character from CP is! Full explanations welcome

Aw this is incredibly lovely to receive today, thank you! I hope you’re doing OK. *sends love* So yeah, Bitty’s probably my fave because he’s this bright, excited, earnest, loving Southern kid whose world is expanding and who’s finally getting the experiences he hoped for. I just want him to be happy. I also like Ransom a lot because he’s handsome and kinda weird and a character of color (and Holster and Ransom’s friendship or romance is beautiful, as are their totally accepting attitudes toward Bitty). And Georgia; I feel like we don’t get enough of her, but she’s a powerful woman and has a sense of humor, and accepts Jack. I’m from Virginia, love the South for all its flaws, and express affection through baking, so I identify with Bitty, but I’m obsessive, scholarly, and anxious, so I identify with Ransom too. :) 

Aw, this was so nice - thank you! You seriously brightened my day (like Bitty!). I hope you have as good an evening as possible!

positive things…

Hi Sam! I've been a lurker since back in the LJ days, and first off, I just wanted to thank you for all that you do. Second, in the wake of the election, I want to set up recurring donations to a few nonprofits that are doing work that I want to support and that may soon be in serious jeopardy. This is the first time in my life I'm really financially solvent enough to do much donating, though -- do you have any tips for how to evaluate which organizations are most effective?

Aw, hello longtime lurker! 

This is an ongoing debate in the NFP world, Anon, because it really is very difficult to evaluate charities even when they are transparent, and “effective” has different meanings for different people. CharityNavigator.org scores charities based on a number of factors, and these scores have been alternately praised and vilified, but they’re really the only game in town that I’m aware of (being clear: this is not actually my specialty, so there maybe others that people will want to recommend). 

I don’t recommend using CharityNavigator to find a charity, necessarily, though you can. I recommend finding a charity via other methods and then if you’re still uncertain, going to CN to vet it – to have a look at how it spends its money and how transparent it is. For example, the Salvation Army for many years has refused to provide its tax documents for evaluation. As a religious organization, they’re within their rights to do so, but the fact that they don’t is highly suspect because it means they don’t want you seeing where their money goes. Any religious charitable organization that doesn’t make its financials available is automatically super suspect in my book. 

Conversely, if you do go to CharityNavigator, please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that because a charity spends a significant amount on administrative or operational costs, it’s a bad charity – people who work in not for profit have to eat, and attracting talented fundraisers is not cheap. Obviously if that’s where 90% of the money goes it’s no good, but a decent slice of the pie chart should be paying the salary of the people who work there. 

So to find a good charity to support, I would start by asking friends and family, people you trust who share your ideals, where they give; vet their charities and see if there are any you like. (Given your motivations for offering support, I will put in a bid here for Planned Parenthood and Black Lives Matter.) You can also make a list of what your philanthropic priorities are: do you want to focus on queer youth, on rights for people of color, on support for the elderly, on political activism? Are you okay supporting religious organizations, or would you prefer secular? National or international? Think about where in specific you want your money to go.  

And you can start with Google, if you want to. You can find a lot of charities on Google by searching your interest keywords, and most of the good ones will have websites that explain clearly what they’re doing and where the money goes, who their leadership is, whether they’re religious, what projects they’re working on. If you google a specific charity you can find news articles that might talk about whether they’re effective at what they do. Be careful where the news is coming from, of course, but you’re on the internet, you probably have a decent bullshit detector. And if your alarm bells go off but you’re not sure why, listen to them – they’re warning you to dig deeper, or to move on. 

It takes work, for sure. It’s not easy. But once you’ve been to a couple of websites you start to get the hang of what to look for, and you figure out where to look to get what you want. 

And of course, make sure you save your receipts (which are sometimes in the form of thank-you letters that list the specific amount you gave) – they are tax-deductible come tax time! 

If others have helpful input, by all means comment or reblog – please don’t send an ask, I don’t repost asks sent in response to other asks. :) Thanks!