Day 32: Lessons learned, and a bonus donation

How is it that a month went by and no one pointed out to me that January does, in fact, have 31 days, so this should have been $31 in 31 days?  I find it hilarious, and humbling, that it took me until about Day 25 to realize this.

Here are some of the things I learned over this last month:

1.  Charity Navigator and Network for Good are excellent charity research sites.  Many of the charities on those websites only take donations of no less than $5, $10 or $15.

2.  Microdonating was harder than I thought.  I knew that some non-profits would have a minimum donation amount, but I didn't expect it to be so high.  I didn't keep a list (I wish I had!) but I would guess that 50-75% of organizations I researched did not take microdonations.  I found that, generally (there were exceptions, like NRDC) the larger the organization, the more likely it was to NOT accept microdonations.  I also found that sites that allow Paypal as a payment form were much more likely to accept a $1 donation than sites which only took credit cards.  The most frustrating thing for me is that about 95% of the organizations that did not accept the $1 donation had no notice that there was a minimum.  Usually I had to enter all of your financial information and click "submit", at which point I would get an error notifying me that I didn't meet the minimum.  The two most frustrating types of websites were the ones that just said I didn't meet the minimum (but didn't tell me what the minimum was) and the ones that instead of telling me there was a minimum, told me there was a problem with my credit card info (there wasn't.)  This made me realize how non-transparent both website design and fundraising can be.  Which brings me to...

3.  There is such a large variation in how much of every dollar organizations spend on programs (versus fundraising or overhead).  I was really disheartened to see that organizations I really liked and respected spent 12-15% on fundraising.  That's crazy to me.  (No wonder we get so many unsolictied requests for donations in the mail,)  I really appreciated the organizations where 90-100% goes to programming.  I also really liked websites that either asked if you wanted to pay extra to cover the fee for the transaction or if you wanted your donation to go to programming only or if you were OK with it also covering overhead.

4.  Some websites (I think 2 out of 35) asked explicitly if the organization could reduce fundraising costs by sharing my information with other non-profits.  I said no because we have a common issue with making a donation to one organization and then getting spam from 10 others, or getting a dozen kinds of address labels, or envelopes with nickels attached (I'll never understand that one.)  I am no looking forward to all the spam that will come out of this project... if I had thought about it I would have changed my first name each time to the organization's name so if they sold or shared my info, I'd know where it came from.  The sharing/selling of information is one of my least favorite parts of the charity world.  (It's actually the bane of my existence in general, when Zoobooks of all places sold my 3 year old's information [they knew she was a minor] and now I get spam mail for her.)


This challenge was born out of a question of whether spending a few minutes a day on charity, rather than gratitude, would have more of an impact on someone's life.  In fact this month has actually made me feel alternately frustrated, sad, happy and actually, thankful.  I'm thankful that there are organizations targeting human trafficking and rescuing dogs and supporting people with disabilities.  I'm thankful that I can set aside a little bit of money every month to make donations.  (Most of our family donations come from goods - we do lots of purging and donate to Goodwill, Salvation Army and United Way, as well as volunteer in different capacities.)

I started out planning to donate to 30 organizations (I actually did 34 that were featured plus 2 that I donated to and then, in doing research, chose not to feature) and then do a $30 donation to my favorite.  I decided to make the final donation of $30 to Environmental Working Group, for two reasons: 1) They make the best green guides or so many things I use, like sunscreen, cosmetics and pet products.  2) The post got no love!  And I wanted them to get more attention. (I had a third reason, but when I double checked Charity Navigator and EWG actually uses 12% of donations for fundraising, yikes!  So, I still love their outcome/impact but don't love that.  I think in the future maybe I'll just support them via Amazon Smile, which was another great find for me that I didn't know about before.)

Thank you so much for following me on this journey, or joining me now.  Should I continue this blog?  I was thinking of maybe doing one per month, but I'm interested to see if there is anyone who'd like to see that (maybe my 8% international visitors?!).  I've had almost 1,000 visitors to the blog which is frankly awesome.  (I would have been super happy with 300, so this was great.)  I was especially happy that this post on charity and kids got a decent amount of traffic.

Thanks again for reading, and please let me know if you made any donations in response to this series, or made your own challenge, or would like to see this continue.

Happy February, go forth and make your impact!

Day 4: National Public Radio and local public radio

About the organization

National Public Radio (NPR) is a great resources for news, in-depth stories, and humor.  I'm always impressed especially on their in-depth pieces about issues around the world, especially the recent political upheavals in the Middle East, which, I'll admit, is not a topic I'm super familiar with.  I don't know if I've ever turned on NPR and not learned something new.


Why does it appeal to me?

I love that it's news and opinions without being "talk radio", by which I mean, I don't feel assaulted by the newscaster's opinions or biases.  I like that they cover a wide range of news issues and don't shy away from covering controversial or complicated issues.  I'm a big fan of Morning Edition and my sister loves Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me.  I also have a cousin who works there and it seems like a supportive, exciting workplace (not to mention they built their headquarters in a previously industrial, developing corridor in DC, bringing new life to the area.)


Want to learn more?

I was surprised to find that when I clicked the donate button on NPR's website, it directed me to a donation page for my local public radio.  While I had intended to donate to NPR, it was cool that they were directing the money to local radio (who, I think, have to pay to get the NPR programming on air.)  My local radio station is KPLU Seattle but you can find yours here.

Want to make a donation?  Click here.


A note about microdonations

One of the reasons I started this challenge was to highlight organizations that take donations of any size, to show that anyone can donate, even if it's just $1, one time.  I have found at least 50% of the organizations I research do not take donations this small.  What's frustrating is you often have to input all of your information, including your credit card, before the website tells you that there is a minimum donation amount (and often doesn't even tell you what that is, it just says "invalid amount.")  I have found that organizations that accept Paypal for donations are far more likely to accept microdonations than organizations that only take credit cards.  Also, Network for Good, which allows you to donate to multiple organizations (as well as Charity Navigator which routes you to Network for Good) do not allow donations of less than $10.  


Follow along with my challenge here on the blog or on Twitter with the hash tag #30daysofcharity.

Want me to see if your favorite organization accepts microdonations, or want me to feature it?  Post a comment below.