How Much I Donate to Charity

I’ve updated my personal budget since the last time I shared it. One of my goals in tweaking how I allocate money was to donate more to charity. My specific intent was to financially support causes that I care about deeply. Now I’m sharing the organizations I picked, and my rationale for each, because I think my choices might be interesting to other people. Despite Thanksgiving’s brutal colonialist origins, it’s a time when we reflect on our own good fortune, which is a great prompt to redistribute some personal economic luck.

Charitable giving is a hard thing to write about without coming across as self-congratulatory, but rest assured that I don’t think that I’m ~saving the world~ or even doing enough. I’m still only donating $110 total per month, which is roughly 3.6% of my after-tax income. [Edit: I did the math wrong — it actually added up to $135.] The church traditionally reaped a tithe of 10%, so I can at least double my contributions. I may choose to add other nonprofits to my roster, or I may increase the amounts I give to the organizations I’ve already chosen.

So here’s the lineup of monthly donations:

• $25 for the American Civil Liberties Union. I’m not especially patriotic, but I do care about constitutional rights, and the ACLU fights the big, tricky, important cases in court.
• $15 for Bay Area Legal Aid. If you’re forced to navigate the courts without money — or the education and cultural capital necessary to fight successfully — it’s the same as having no opportunity to seek justice at all.
• $25 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Being able to share information without structural or systemic fetters is crucial, and the EFF advocates for things like encryption that governments seem incapable of understanding.
• $50 for Planned Parenthood. Medical agency is important! I’ve always had access to birth control and the like through my health insurance, but not everyone does.
• $10 for the Saint James Infirmary. This is definitely an amount I should increase, especially since they just got booted from their space in San Francisco. Healthcare and harm-reduction led by sex workers for other sex workers = yes.
• $10 for The Marshall Project. The prison-industrial complex is abominable and we need vigorous reporting to keep the industry in check and inform the public of the heinous treatment prisoners endure.

Considering these additions:

• Compass Family Services doesn’t provide an option for donating monthly, which is my preferred format, but I might give them a lump sum in the future.
• The Southern Poverty Law Center carries out potent anti-hate activism and has a long history of enraging racists.

Any suggestions? I’m particular interested in helping homeless people and prisoners, since those are the most resource- and power-deprived demographics. Comment below, hit me up on Twitter, or email me.

Update: I now also give $23 to the Tor Project every month, for the same reason that I support the EFF.