Year-End Fund Raising & Fund-Giving
As many of you know, I’m currently running a fundraiser for the Anne Braden Anti-Racist Training Program right now, doing 20 push-ups a day for the month, sometimes with help from my friends! I’m at 601 total now, and you can watch videos of me doing athletics in heels and donate to me/to Anne Braden on my blog.
But HELLO – there are about a thousand other worthy causes out there right now. Did you know that year-end fundraising gets so buck wild because folks with lots of money need to donate before the end of the year for tax purposes, and the rest of us get caught up in the whirlwind.
In this post I’ve collected ten organizations I believe in fiercely enough to give time or money to, and tell you a bit about them. They are categorized into Media Justice, Movement Building, and Progressive Leadership Development.
Our Resources, Our Disbursements*
Now that I can regularly afford groceries and postage and rent AND going to the doctor occasionally, I budget in** a little bit of redistribution of wealth to my holiday season. Because come early Jan, I will probably feel broke again even though I might not technically be [ps. please don’t run around saying “I’m broke!” unless you truly are, ya hear?] and thus I know I need to disburse some of these resources now.
So whether you got a cute check from your family, or an unexpected gig, or a year-end bonus that you don’t have to throw directly onto the interest on your student loans [sigh] — this is a great time to find an organization or cause that it would be actually useful to put money towards, money that might otherwise go to taxis, boxing day sales, or into the void of banking fees. Plus perhaps you have friends who are fund raising for programs, surgeries, travel, etc. If everyone who had it threw $10 at a project, we’d move mountains of money a little bit at a time.
MEDIA JUSTICE
It is sad that $pread Magazine can not be on this list, so please, a moment of silence for an all-volunteer, sex-worker-and-ally-run indie magazine that made it over FIVE years before closing shop. [ ]. If you want to donate and get a magazine subscription in exchange, let me suggest instead the solid and smart Left Turn.
Democracy Now — “Dear Amy Goodman, Thank you for making going to my often-boring temp jobs more bearable by sending your authoritative voice over the radio, tv and internet waves five days a week all year long. Thank you for creating Left/Progressive Talking Points and resisting the I really fucking appreciate everything. Here’s $25.”
Also the online news source, The Electronic Infantida, who “publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective.”
FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six is a “firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans in the years before and after Katrina”. Order it. It also happens to be written by Jordan Flaherty, a writer/editor of Left Turn and also one of the most fierce media justice activists and POC allies I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.
MOVEMENT BUILDING
The U S Social Forum — perhaps you made it there this June or perhaps you are wishing you did. Supporting events and orgs AFTER their big event is one of the kindest things you can do, because followup and cleanup sucks, yet it must be done, *especially* if we want to see another one of these Convergences [we do]. PLUS for $25 you get a tshirt! win!
Critical Resistance — This is one of the only [*the* only?] activist org in the country who works full-time to dismantle the Prison/Industrial Complex, and they just lost a major source of funding. Every bit will in fact help them.
The Femme Collective — it’s never too early to donate to the Femme Conference for 2012. Oh – and don’t forget to fill out the survey if you went to the Conference!
PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
You can go LOTS of places to learn how to bank and shop quietly and never acknowledge your priviledge or get tools to fight oppression. That’s called Leaving The House. These next few orgs empower individuals to do more with themselves, in many awesome ways.
FIERCE “is proud to be one of the few organizations that empowers LGBTQ youth of color to take action and create the better world we yearn for and imagine.” and they’ve been doing so for TEN years!
Also amazing, also working to empower youth of color include Safe Outside the System, a “an anti-violence Collective led by and for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Trans, and Gender Non Conforming people of color. We are devoted to challenging hate and police violence by using community based strategies rather than relying on the police” working through the Audre Lorde Project.
Streetwise & Safe works with queer youth of color who are criminalized for association with sex trade work. *Note there’s a $50 minimum donation.
The Catalyst Program — focuses on movement-building specifically across race and on teaching White people how to wield all that unearned privilege. This is who runs the Anne Braden Program, too.
OTHERWISE
You don’t have to have or use money to give to or be involved with social change, as you know. Your time, spreading the word about a project or organization, and adding your voice are all also critical.
*I don’t know about you, but I get a weird feeling in the back of my windpipe when I want to talk about money in any way whatsoever, which is exactly the feeling that tells me I need to not be quiet.
**I think from growing up poor I became a manically excellent budgeter. Is anyone else like that? I hear it can go several ways but I’m too busy with my spreadsheets and tiny notepapers covered in calculations to really check in with Other People’s Banking. I like to budget one pro-bono client a month as a donation to Social Justice Work, and the income from one client at the end of the year towards economic redistribution. It’s kind of tidy that way for me but again no one else ever need be that anal.
As many of you know, I’m currently running a fundraiser for the Anne Braden Anti-Racist Training Program right now, doing 20 push-ups a day for the month, sometimes with help from my friends! I’m at 601 total now, and you can watch videos of me doing athletics in heels and donate to me/to Anne Braden on my blog.
But HELLO – there are about a thousand other worthy causes out there right now. Did you know that year-end fundraising gets so buck wild because folks with lots of money need to donate before the end of the year for tax purposes, and the rest of us get caught up in the whirlwind.
In this post I’ve collected ten organizations I believe in fiercely enough to give time or money to, and tell you a bit about them. They are categorized into Media Justice, Movement Building, and Progressive Leadership Development.
Our Resources, Our Disbursements*
Now that I can regularly afford groceries and postage and rent AND going to the doctor occasionally, I budget in** a little bit of redistribution of wealth to my holiday season. Because come early Jan, I will probably feel broke again even though I might not technically be [ps. please don’t run around saying “I’m broke!” unless you truly are, ya hear?] and thus I know I need to disburse some of these resources now.
So whether you got a cute check from your family, or an unexpected gig, or a year-end bonus that you don’t have to throw directly onto the interest on your student loans [sigh] — this is a great time to find an organization or cause that it would be actually useful to put money towards, money that might otherwise go to taxis, boxing day sales, or into the void of banking fees. Plus perhaps you have friends who are fund raising for programs, surgeries, travel, etc. If everyone who had it threw $10 at a project, we’d move mountains of money a little bit at a time.
MEDIA JUSTICE
It is sad that $pread Magazine can not be on this list, so please, a moment of silence for an all-volunteer, sex-worker-and-ally-run indie magazine that made it over FIVE years before closing shop. [ ]. If you want to donate and get a magazine subscription in exchange, let me suggest instead the solid and smart Left Turn.
Democracy Now — “Dear Amy Goodman, Thank you for making going to my often-boring temp jobs more bearable by sending your authoritative voice over the radio, tv and internet waves five days a week all year long. Thank you for creating Left/Progressive Talking Points and resisting the I really fucking appreciate everything. Here’s $25.”
Also the online news source, The Electronic Infantida, who “publishes news, commentary, analysis, and reference materials about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict from a Palestinian perspective.”
FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six is a “firsthand account of community, culture, and resistance in New Orleans in the years before and after Katrina”. Order it. It also happens to be written by Jordan Flaherty, a writer/editor of Left Turn and also one of the most fierce media justice activists and POC allies I’ve had the pleasure of knowing.
MOVEMENT BUILDING
The U S Social Forum — perhaps you made it there this June or perhaps you are wishing you did. Supporting events and orgs AFTER their big event is one of the kindest things you can do, because followup and cleanup sucks, yet it must be done, *especially* if we want to see another one of these Convergences [we do]. PLUS for $25 you get a tshirt! win!
Critical Resistance — This is one of the only [*the* only?] activist org in the country who works full-time to dismantle the Prison/Industrial Complex, and they just lost a major source of funding. Every bit will in fact help them.
The Femme Collective — it’s never too early to donate to the Femme Conference for 2012. Oh – and don’t forget to fill out the survey if you went to the Conference!
PROGRESSIVE LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
You can go LOTS of places to learn how to bank and shop quietly and never acknowledge your priviledge or get tools to fight oppression. That’s called Leaving The House. These next few orgs empower individuals to do more with themselves, in many awesome ways.
FIERCE “is proud to be one of the few organizations that empowers LGBTQ youth of color to take action and create the better world we yearn for and imagine.” and they’ve been doing so for TEN years!
Also amazing, also working to empower youth of color include Safe Outside the System, a “an anti-violence Collective led by and for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Trans, and Gender Non Conforming people of color. We are devoted to challenging hate and police violence by using community based strategies rather than relying on the police” working through the Audre Lorde Project.
Streetwise & Safe works with queer youth of color who are criminalized for association with sex trade work. *Note there’s a $50 minimum donation.
The Catalyst Program — focuses on movement-building specifically across race and on teaching White people how to wield all that unearned privilege. This is who runs the Anne Braden Program, too.
OTHERWISE
You don’t have to have or use money to give to or be involved with social change, as you know. Your time, spreading the word about a project or organization, and adding your voice are all also critical.
*I don’t know about you, but I get a weird feeling in the back of my windpipe when I want to talk about money in any way whatsoever, which is exactly the feeling that tells me I need to not be quiet.
**I think from growing up poor I became a manically excellent budgeter. Is anyone else like that? I hear it can go several ways but I’m too busy with my spreadsheets and tiny notepapers covered in calculations to really check in with Other People’s Banking. I like to budget one pro-bono client a month as a donation to Social Justice Work, and the income from one client at the end of the year towards economic redistribution. It’s kind of tidy that way for me but again no one else ever need be that anal.