The Charity Thread

[HJ Hornbeck]

Woo hoo, my laundromat has WiFi! In celebration, I'm posting a
thread I've been meaning to for a loooooong time.

So as I've mentioned previously, atheists get slammed for being far
worse at charity. The money quote:

It's bollocks. These studies inflate the numbers by lumping together
religious donations with charitable donations. When they trumpet the
massive volunteer hours put in by the religious, they somehow fail to
mention that 80% of it goes to maintaining the local church instead of
helping the community. Filter out those effects, and there's no
difference between believers and Nones.
http://yashwata.info/2010/07/15/charity1/

In the interests of helping out those who want to help, I decided
to start up a sticky thread pointing people to various charities. To
keep this thread from getting ridiculous, I'm only going to approve
comments that follow one of the following two patterns:

[brief description of charity]
[why you think people should donate]
[link to further info]
[link to donation page]

or

[brief description of charity]
[why they're NOT worth donating to]
[link to further evidence backing your claim]

Anything else will be deleted without mercy. If you'd like to add
meta-commentary, I'll start up a CHAT thread devoted specifically to
chatter over this thread, be it praise or jeers.

And of course, I'll get the ball rolling.

Kiva is a microloan middle-manager, which helps connect lenders to
borrowers in developing countries. They hand out small loans in the
$10-$100 range, and focus primarily on women, with the goal of
providing just that little nudge to help lift people out of poverty.
They come highly rated from Charity Watch, are a favorite of Ian
Cromwell, allow you to join a group to signify where the loan is
coming from (and hey, the atheist team is leading the Christian one
$7,770,950 to $4,635,350!)... but I have my reservations about them,
based on their Wiki page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_%28organization%29
http://www.kiva.org/team/atheists

Zidisha is also a microloan middle-manager. They do much the same
thing as Kiva, only they've worked very hard to cut down on overhead;
as a result, their borrowers pay a fraction of the interest rate that
Kiva charges. They're much younger and haven't lent out nearly as
much, but sound extremely promising.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zidisha
https://www.zidisha.org/index.php?p=2

Camp Quest is a summer camp which offers an alternative to the vast
number of Christian ones out there. Besides the usual camping and
Smores, they also teach science and critical thinking in an atmosphere
that's friendly to non-believing kids. Currently they're having their
second annual blogger contest: it's PZ Myers vs. Everyone Else, with
all donations matched by Todd Stiefel.
http://www.campquest.org/bloggercontest
http://campquest.chipin.com/camp-quest-pzs-revenge

HJ Hornbeck