Philanthropy
oracknows | October 27, 2015I'm a clinician, but I'm actually also a translational scientist. It's not uncommon for those of us in medicine involved in some combination of basic and clinical research to argue about exactly what that means. The idea is translational science is supposed to be the process of "translating" basic science discoveries into the laboratory into medicine, be it in the form of drugs, treatments, surgical procedures, laboratory tests, diagnostic tests, or anything else that physicians use to diagnose and treat human disease. Trying to straddle the two worlds, to turn discoveries in basic science…
jtoney | July 18, 2011
FILE - In this July 7, 2011 photo, Casey Anthony sits in the courtroom before a sentencing hearing in Orlando, Fla. Anthony was acquitted on charges of killing her 2-year-old daughter Caylee in 2008, and was found guilty on four charges of lying to law enforcement officers. She is to be released from jail Sunday, July 17, 2011. (AP Photo/Joe Burbank, Pool)
Who would you choose as a lunch partner? Your decision could benefit some very important charities.
Charitybuzz, whose motto is "Do Good, Live Well," has developed an innovative model for fundraising for non-profit organizations. The…
jtoney | March 10, 2011
Forbes magazine announced yesterday their list of the world's billionaires - a record number at 1,210 individuals.
The top ten are....
A billion, or 1,000,000,000 is such a large number that it is difficult to comprehend its scale relative to amounts that we mortals deal with on a daily basis. Achieving billionaire status offers the individual opportunities to do great good. Here are a couple of suggestions:
Establish your own Foundation to support microlending, the inspiration of Muhammad Yunus, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for developing a banking system for seed funding to the…
jstemwedel | December 30, 2009In the last few days, I've gotten a bunch of emails reminding me that the window for tax-deductible charitable giving for the year is closing. So, as 2009 winds down, I want to make an appeal to those readers lucky enough to have a bit of money for discretionary spending. Last year I wrote:
[T]o the extent that we can, we can shake our tiny checkbooks and try to bring a bit more light to the darkness.
Especially since doing it before the last minute of 2008 (at least in the U.S.) may give you a tax-deduction on your 2008 taxes.
(Minor sidebar here: As the tax code stands in the U.S., rich…
jstemwedel | November 3, 2009Hey ScienceBlogs readers: you rock!
In a year where lots of folks are waiting for the signs of economic recovery to be manifest in their daily lives, and where public school budgets have been even more hard hit than they were a year ago, your generosity helped us significantly surpass the impact of our October 2008 drive.
Let's break it down:
In 2008, ScienceBlogs bloggers mounted 21 challenges. 270 donors to those challenges helped raise about $38,000 to fund classroom projects.
This year, ScienceBlogs bloggers mounted 13 challenges. The 266 donors who stepped up and gave to those…
jstemwedel | October 31, 2009Happy Hallowe'en and welcome to the last day of the 2009 Social Media Challenge. With your help, ScienceBlogs bloggers have raised more than $56,000 to help public school teachers pay for classroom supplies, fund field trips, and support activities to help their students learn.
Today is the end of the drive, so if you've been hanging back -- or if you've found some money in the pocket of that winter coat you've just dug out of the closet -- this is a great time to help make a difference. And, if you make a donation through my challenge page, you can still get in on some fabulous prizes,…
jstemwedel | October 30, 2009No, I'm not going to be able to get away with claiming that truth is beauty, and beauty, truth.
The first issue in understanding truth is recognizing that truth is a property of a proposition. (What's a proposition? A proposition is a claim.) A proposition that is true has a certain kind of correspondence with the world about which it is making a claim. A proposition that is false does not have this correspondence.
At the most basic level, what we want from this correspondence seems pretty obvious: what the propositions says about the world matches up with how the world actually is.
So,…
sciencewoman | October 29, 2009There's a few days left in our October DonorsChoose challenge, and even after that there are many more great projects out there waiting for our help.
A few weeks ago, wonderful educator-science-historian-cultural-studies-expert-mother-blogger Leslie Madden-Brooks responded to a plea to help fund some projects, and I was deeply moved by what she wrote to the classroom, so I wanted to share it with you...
I gave to this project because I had such a tough time learning math, and I wish I had been able to develop this kind of mathematical and critical thinking through reading interesting authors…
skookumchick | October 26, 2009Folks, we are heading into the home stretch for Donors Choose, and you've helped 1084 kids get access to books they wouldn't have had without your help. That's great. But we can do better.
So.... 24 Sciencewomen blog readers have already donated $1517 to needy projects, and if you can help us make it a little farther, I will donate 10% of our final tally on top.
The criteria:
1) That we make it to $1750 before the challenge closes on Oct 31; OR (that's right, OR!)
2) That 10 more people make donations, no matter how small.
So either a generous person can give ~$230 on their own, or a…
jstemwedel | October 23, 2009As I noted earlier this week, Hewlett-Packard is going to be distributing another $200,000 in the DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge. They're dividing up that pool of money according to how much each challenge has raised as a proportion of the total funds raised by this Sunday. In other words, if my challenge were to raise an amount equivalent to 1% of the total take by Sunday, HP would add another $2000 to fund the projects in my challenge.
If we were to get enough of an extra kick from HP to break $3000, I would gladly deliver the "big reward" I promised to you (and the internets)…
sciencewoman | October 23, 2009Don't worry, SciWo's storytime is coming later today. But first a word about our on-going DonorsChoose challenge. Along with 22 others, DonorsChoose has already given $50 to our challenge, and now they want to give more...based on how much we raise by Sunday. Here's the scoop:
Next week, we will distribute $200,000, the rest of HP's contribution, to all Social Media Challenge Giving Pages. But this time, your share will be calculated on a pro-rata basis based on the amount you've raised by Sunday. What does that mean? Now is the time to motivate your readers, followers, friends, fam and…
jstemwedel | October 20, 2009It's day 20 of the 2009 Social Media Challenge in which generous ScienceBlogs readers (among others) help raise funds through DonorsChoose for books, supplies, field trips, and other classroom projects in cash-strapped U.S. public schools.
So far, we've made impressive progress, with 13 challenges mounted by ScienceBlogs bloggers raising a total of $19,462. You may recall that $650 of that total was donated by Hewlett-Packard, which gave $50 to each of our challenges. I've just gotten word from the folks at DonorsChoose that HP wants to kick in even more -- with a twist:
HP has been…
jstemwedel | October 13, 2009Our month-long drive with DonorsChoose to raise funds for public school classroom projects has been under way for almost two weeks now. At the moment, the ScienceBlogs leaderboard show a total of $15,890 from 121 generous donors, benefiting 6,971 public school students.
That's pretty good work so far!
Of course, there's also the matter of how the ScienceBlogs bloggers who have mounted challenges are doing in their competition to demonstrate that their readers are the most generous. So let's check in on the horse race.
Most money donated:
DrPal's First Aid for Michigan Classrooms ($2,054)…
jstemwedel | October 8, 2009About 5 hours ago, "HP from Palo Alto, California" just rocked our world (and helped a bunch of public school classrooms) by plunking down $50 on each of the 13 challenges mounted by ScienceBlogs bloggers in the DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge. That's a total of $650!
I'm thinking there's a good chance that the "HP" here is Hewlett-Packard, in which case "Yay!" for the historic high-tech firm finding the ScienceBlogs challenges and supporting them unprompted. But if "HP from Palo Alto, California" is an individual donor, here's a big "Yay!" for that awesome act of individual…
jstemwedel | October 7, 2009Today is the one week mark in our month-long drive with DonorsChoose to raise funds for public school classroom projects, and it is no surprise that ScienceBlogs readers have been generous in their support. As I write this post, the ScienceBlogs leaderboard indicates:
Thirteen challenges mounted by Sb blogs or coalitions of Sb blogs, including a newly-added challenge from Abel Pharmboy.
In the lead for most money raised so far, with $1,807, the Uncertain Principles Challenge.
In the lead for most donors so far, with 35, Dr. Isis's challenge.
The challenge that got the most recent donation…
sciencewoman | October 7, 2009We're a week into our 2009 DonorsChoose challenge, and as of 11 am EDT, we've raised $250 for science education of high poverty students around the country. In 2007, we raised $1104, and last year: "Forty-two Sciencewomen readers contributed a total of $1863 to help 917 needy kids learn about science and engineering." If we're going to get anywhere near that number this year, we need to pick up the pace a bit. I understand that money is tight for all of us, this year more than ever, but money is tighter than ever for public school teachers, who spend an average of $500 to $700 per year out of…
jstemwedel | October 4, 2009Here's a quick update on how the ScienceBlogs contingent is doing in the DonorsChoose 2009 Social Media Challenge.
Since we kicked off the challenge on Thursday, three more blogs have mounted challenges:
A Blog Around the Clock (challenge here)
Christina's LIS Rant (challenge here)
Thus Spake Zuska (challenge here)
And, as I type this, 61 ScienceBlogs readers have donated a grand total of $4,784, funding projects that will reach 1,329 students.
Of course, there are more students to be reached. If you're the kind of person who likes to give a project the last chunk of change it needs, here…
jstemwedel | October 1, 2009I don't usually go looking for a fight, but there are some cases where I'll make an exception.
You know, of course that I'm a big fan of DonorsChoose. And you'll recall that PETA's tactics make them a problematic organization as far as I'm concerned regardless of what your views on animal welfare or animal rights might be.
So, when PETA takes a swing at DonorsChoose, of course I want to jump in off the ropes and swing back. What's PETA's issue with DonorsChoose?
DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit organization with a noble mission - to help teachers purchase materials for classroom lessons.…
jstemwedel | October 1, 2009At Uncertain Principles, Chad is motivating his readers to donate to his DonorsChoose challenge by offering a big reward:
Last year, I famously got $6,000 in contributions by offering to dance like a monkey, but I'm not sure what would follow that. So,
What should I offer to do if I manage to reach the overall challenge goal of several thousand dollars in total contributions?
I'm obviously not going to do anything illegal or immoral, but I'm willing to sacrifice a little dignity for a good cause, as you can see at the link above. So, what can I offer to do that would get you to donate…
jstemwedel | October 1, 2009You already know that we're working with DonorsChoose to raise some money for public school teachers who are trying to give their students the engaging educational experiences they deserve (and who, owing to dismal state and local budgets, need our help more than ever). You also know that our benevolent overlords at Seed will be randomly selecting some donors to receive nifty prizes (details about this to be posted as soon as I get them).
Of course, helping public school teachers deliver the education their students deserve is it's own reward, but that doesn't mean you might not want a little…