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Education The Almighty Buck News

Ask Slashdot: Where Should a Geek's Charitable Donations Go? 263

An anonymous reader writes "I'm in the position to direct (or at least suggest the direction of) a fairly large amount of charitable donation on behalf of a foundation interested in promoting education. As a lifelong geek, I'd like to see some of this money directed toward organizations involved in things geeks-like (e.g. spreading technology in education to those without it, improving the use of technology for those who have it, etc.). If it was up to you, what charitable organizations would you support and why?"
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Ask Slashdot: Where Should a Geek's Charitable Donations Go?

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  • Altruism... (Score:5, Informative)

    by wermske ( 1781984 ) * on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:15AM (#41383655) Homepage

    Education is a broad category... geek-ish is equally broad depending on application.

    Prime Directive... LOCAL...LOCAL...LOCAL. Your operative or key word is impact. You want to insure that as much as your dollar achieves its intended objective and that you have the ability to (if you choose) to verify the impact. Avoid a national or international blunderbuss -- such an approach scatters your money, creates too much dilution and generally includes excessive overhead.

    Out-of-the-Box Brainstorm Suggestions:

    Crisis Hotline, Woman's Center (or an similar support system for domestic abuse), Big Brothers Big Sisters, Homeless Shelters, Addiction and Rehabilitation Groups

    You can also use Charity Navigator [charitynavigator.org] to assist you in researching specific organizations.

    Each of these can be geeked-up to provide uplift and outreach were normal "geek enablement" or "geek opportunity" might otherwise simply be unavailable due to lack of funding. KEEP IN MIND -- Educational opportunities and technical services are very low priority when safety, food, and shelter are priority one!

    Just a thought...

    • Re:Altruism... (Score:4, Informative)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:44AM (#41383773)

      You want to insure that as much as your dollar achieves its intended objective and that you have the ability to (if you choose) to verify the impact. Avoid a national or international blunderbuss -- such an approach scatters your money, creates too much dilution and generally includes excessive overhead.

      I'd just like to second that, and stress an important point. Many of these Big Charities spend about half their money on their own administration activities, like expensive lawyer fees. There was an article in The Economist a couple years ago about this. Even reputable charities like the United Way and a Lady Diana Foundation have run afoul of this.

      Donating to something where you know the people spending the money personally, will avoid this. And you will have the personal satisfaction of seeing the money put to good use.

      • Re:Altruism... (Score:5, Informative)

        by sapphire wyvern ( 1153271 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @06:37AM (#41384881)

        There's a website that focuses on exactly this point:

        Give Well [givewell.org]

        They analyse charities for cost/benefit of their activities and what percentage of the charity's funding goes on ancillaries vs the charity's stated purpose.

        Also, they look for evidence that the charity actually does what they say they do.

        Another resource for evaluating charities is the BBB [bbb.org], apparently.

      • I'd just like to second that, and stress an important point. Many of these Big Charities spend about half their money on their own administration activities, like expensive lawyer fees.

        That's true. So you might as well donate to institutions that have those expensive lawyer fees as their main focus, like the EFF or, depending on your moral leanings, even The Piratebay. You can, by the way, donate to the EFF via the Humble Bundle VI, right now, and still get a few cool games in the process.

      • Oh no! Large organizations that do charity work have overhead, just like any real organization!

        Overhead costs are a very bad measure of charity effectiveness - especially for large, long-term charities that offer services like high-quality legal aid, which is where a lot of the "expensive lawyer fees" come from.

        I do think effectiveness is an important thing to determine, and a hard one - but "low admin costs" aren't actually a way to determine it, and it's not actually shameful to have your donation to the

        • I'm not talking about expenses used to run the charity. And a childcare provider at a woman's shelter isn't really overhead, but part of the charitable work if they're watching the children of the women being helped.

          As far as admin expenses, I'm not talking regular admin, or even a CEO making a million a year. It can cost that much to hire someone competent enough to run a large multi-national charity.

          However, there are charities around that basically look like money funnels. Small charities where the admin

    • Re:Altruism... (Score:5, Informative)

      by sapphire wyvern ( 1153271 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @06:41AM (#41384895)

      If you're trying to maximise the impact of your donation, you might be interested to know that a bunch of eggheads have already considered this exact point and written a report on their conclusions. It gets updated every few years.

      On the upside, a fair bit of thought and research has gone into their publication. On the downside, most of the experts are economists, and I'm not actually sure if one should take an economist's word on whether the sky is blue.

      Here's the website, anyway: The Copenhagen Consensus [copenhagenconsensus.com].

  • by symbolset ( 646467 ) * on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:16AM (#41383657) Journal
    He's trying to teach typing to 500 students in India. [slashdot.org] I think he could use some help with some tablets, keyboards and solar panels.
  • The EFF and TIA (Score:5, Informative)

    by subreality ( 157447 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:20AM (#41383671)

    https://eff.org/ [eff.org] - Doesn't need an explanation really.
    https://archive.org/ [archive.org] - The librarians of the internet

    • I second EFF, but you may want to give some money to The Pirate Bay as well. They're another front of the war against MAFIAA.

      • by TapeCutter ( 624760 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @05:50AM (#41384703) Journal
        Copyright may be a "crime against humanity" in your world, but I think the technological gift of a functioning water pump/bore for a dry village would have far more impact on people lives. It's not that these people don't have, or are not allowed to use, modern drilling techniques for fear of trespassing on someone's intellectual property, it's that they don't have the cash to make use of it. In a similar vein I have a good idea of how to build a Saturn V rocket, however it's almost a certainty I will never have the means to do so.

        As for TFA, I won't offer a suggestion since the thread is full of charities far more worthy than the pirate bay. Instead I will offer a rough algorithm by which to compare the many excellent suggestions you will receive.
        Rate 1 - 5 the following.
        1. The "fit" of the charity's work to your charitable aims. Obviously the hard part is defining your aims and separating charitable talk from charitable work.
        2. The transparency of the charity's accounts.
        3. The charity's track record, which of their past projects worked, which one's failed and why.

        Speaking of charity, I recently watched John Stewart interviewing Bill Clinton [youtube.com] on his charitable organization, which among other things is supporting clever technology such as bamboo bicycles. I'm not suggesting you do or don't donate to Clinton's organization, but I did find it interesting from the POV of how large charities operate and the problems they face. Regardless of your politics, listening to people who have "been there and done that" is always a wise move.
        • Drilling techniques typically not, but drugs to cure widespread diseases tend to massively suffer from "intellectual property".

          Also, while saving a life is good in the short term, the war on culture causes damage that will last for thousands of years.

  • Mitt Romney (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:22AM (#41383679)

    Help the numerically challenged, give Mitt your money.

  • Thinking as a global option consider tropical worms, water quality and simple drugs that can change a community.
    The drugs are cheap, no patent anymore and dont need fancy electrical power for cooling or vast amounts of cash.
    A health worker can get a community back to school or work and keep tracking the needs over years.
    If your thinking locally:
    Vast amounts of nearly new or less new quality hardware is donated by people doing good, wanting to be seen to be doing good or for tax reasons.
    The problem is t
  • by pecosdave ( 536896 ) * on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:24AM (#41383693) Homepage Journal

    You walk away with some good games to boot.

    Hey what do you know? A new one just started! [humblebundle.com]

    • You walk away with some good games to boot.

      Hey what do you know? A new one just started! [humblebundle.com]

      Yes, what the world needs more than anything is for people to finance computer hobbyists making games that wouldn't sell otherwise.

      It's lucky we've found a cure for cancer, solved world poverty and disease so on.

      • You do know you can choose not to give *any* money to the developers and make it all go to the charities if you desire?

        also, Lol @ "wouldn't sell anyway" considering Torchlight's one of them.

      • Lack of money is not the most important reasons of why we haven't accomplished those things.

  • by psergiu ( 67614 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:30AM (#41383707)

    Give-it to The Raspberry Pi foundation [raspberrypi.org].
    In a world that is becoming increasely dependent on computers, they strive so today's and tomorrow's children won't become mindless consumers, regarding any electronic device as magic.

    • by Trogre ( 513942 )

      I would, if their hardware didn't rely on closed third-party drivers which, to all intents and purposes, may as well be magic.

      I agree with your second sentence entirely, and applaud you for its elegance. You just failed to name a foundation to which that principle applies.

      • by psergiu ( 67614 )

        Had the Foundation received a generous donation at the planing stage, a year or two ago, maybe they could have done better in regard to the GPU (the only closed-source item on that board).

        For the current price and given that the only major investment was a mortage on Eben & Liz's house, the Raspberry Pi is the only device fitting the bill right now, as i haven't seen anyone else trying to bring to the masses a simmilar hardware platform at a simmilar price point that is 100% Open Source.

  • by FrankSchwab ( 675585 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:30AM (#41383709) Journal

    As someone who's kids are currently in Elementary school -
    Find someone who's writing public domain textbooks for elementary education, especially those aimed at technological implementations (tablet based, etc). Why in god's name does my school district have to pay $60 for a fifth-grade math textbook - revised last year? What has changed in "3x=24" in the last, oh, 1000 years that requires a new revision of a textbook?

    There's so much that could be done with technology and education that hasn't been. Why can't learning Multiplication tables be phrased as a game - come up with the answers to jump and capture a coin; take too long and you miss it? Why can't Spelling, and Grammar, be a game; Why can't the broad sweep of history be presented as a graph, with hyperlinks from points on the graph to an overview and details of that point in time? Why can't the out-of-copyright classics be available in a learning-reader format, with hyperlinks for all difficult words to pronunciation and definition?

    Hell, give me the money and I'll get started!

    • This. There are open source textbook projects that float around somewhere, but the one I've seen seem to focus on collegiate level general education texts. Writing for younger learners isn't as simple as putting the information together. There's a big component in using information from studies of childhood development and learning theory that shapes the presentation in quality elementary school texts. This is something that takes resources, but if a group can be found it would probably be one of the causes
    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @08:41AM (#41385609)

      What has changed in "3x=24" in the last, oh, 1000 years that requires a new revision of a textbook?

      The introduction of Arabic Numerals (replacing Roman Numerals), around the year 1200, definitely required new textbooks.

  • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:31AM (#41383717) Homepage Journal
    The textbook publishers have managed to emasculate most of the "open textbook" projects so far. We need truly open textbooks that anyone can republish, and modify as time goes on and the art changes. These will be a gift to society that continues for decades.
  • Technology is cool and all but life is more than that, i think some children's, women or homeless program, even animal shelters could use that money, maybe there's no tablets, linux or solar panels involved but you might help save lifes.
  • The Ada Initiative (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rusty ( 3244 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:36AM (#41383735)

    One of my favourite geek charities is the Ada Initiative [adainitiative.org] which provides resources and training for women in open source and open culture.

    Needless to say, you should speak directly to any charity you're seriously considering; they'll often have good suggestions for how they money could be used.

    Good luck!
    Rusty.

  • by loimprevisto ( 910035 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:40AM (#41383755)
    The National Science Olympiad [soinc.org] gets a good chunk of my charitable donations. They do a lot to promote science education and I had a great time competing when I was in high school.
  • by SydShamino ( 547793 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:44AM (#41383771)

    I participated in high school back in 1995. It and its younger cousins are still going strong, introducing hundreds of thousands of elementary, junior high, and high school students to robotics and by extension programming, engineering, and science.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Robotics_Competition [wikipedia.org]

  • The ACLU has done a lot for various freedoms, including internet freedoms. One instance, where the ACLU represented an ISP that was served with National Security Letters [wikipedia.org], serves to illustrate the kinds of high profile and essential litigation they perform.
    • ACLU does some good work, but it's tied in a ridiculous degree to the populist branch of the neocon party.

      EFF doesn't have that problem.

  • http://www.rockitscience.com/ [rockitscience.com]
    Watch the videos.

    OK, we're small. And local. But we're trying to change that. We have 200+ lessons that we are trying to document with teacher training materials and materials lists so that these lessons can be used in elementary schools everywhere. But it costs money: for video taping, transcription, documentation. Basically all the work it takes to turn a tested lesson that has been run many times into enough documentation that it can be replicated by a teacher anywhere.

    O

  • by FoolishOwl ( 1698506 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @02:56AM (#41383831) Journal

    MIT Open Courseware [mit.edu] is a good project.

    And everyone knows the Wikimedia Foundation [wikimediafoundation.org], but they can use more help.

  • One DVM per child (Score:5, Informative)

    by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @03:02AM (#41383861) Homepage Journal

    How about giving away a free voltmeter [ebay.com] to any student from a 3rd world nation who passes the edX [edx.org] course "Circuits and Electronics"?

    6002x "Circuits and Electronics" [mit.edu], an online version of the MIT introductory electronics course. This was an exact copy of the MIT course, taught by an MIT professor, and was just as hard as the original course. Same material, same difficulty, online format.

    Some of the 7,000 graduates were from 3rd world nations [wordpress.com]. For example, this article [mit.edu] talks about a class of high-school students in Mongolia:

    I'm reminded of William Kamkwamba [bbc.co.uk], who built a wind-powered generator and was able to bring electricity to his village. His Ted talk [ted.com] is pretty interesting.

    Mr. Kamkwamba had nothing. He built his windmill from scratch after learning the principles of electricity from books in the local library. He built his own circuit breaker by winding wire onto nails driven into wood.

    His task would have been so much easier if he could have measured continuity, or the output voltage of his generator.

    Most of the modern world is based on electronics - measurements, actions, communications, and so on. Having the tools and understanding would allow people to repair broken equipment and machinery, to take pieces from ewaste and hook them together in new ways, and generally have better life opportunities.

    Supplying 5,000 students (a generous estimate) would cost only $10,000.

    Here [edx.org] is the contact page for edX.

  • CHILDS PLAY (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Childs Play, and also really any charity you agree with. Just because your a geek doesn't mean your going to revoke your geek card if you donate blood and donate to something like the Red Cross instead of something more "geeky".

  • First off. Congrats to you and the larger slashdot community that we are asking such questions. Man have we come a long way in a decade or so.

    Beyond that, I strongly echo EFF. Really important. Another that I've recently seen is A World in Motion which is supported by the society of automotive engineers among others. Great way to introduce engineering to school kids.

    Beyond that - good luck, and thanks for making a difference.

  • by Jimmy_B ( 129296 ) <<gro.hmodnarmij> <ta> <mij>> on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @03:18AM (#41383981) Homepage

    Consider giving it to the Center For Applied Rationality [appliedrationality.org]. Their goal is to make people more rational, by teaching about cognitive biases and scientific decision making, and studying how to do so effectively. They're doing great things, on relatively little resources; your marginal dollars would go a long way.

  • by chub_mackerel ( 911522 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @03:44AM (#41384125)

    Consider your local community college when deciding where to put your money. You can probably connect with someone in the college's foundation and get a great tour. Community colleges provide cheap education for geeks and non-geeks alike. They've seen enrollment skyrocket as the economy (and state funding) has tanked.

    Connect up with the college's foundation for options. Depending on how much you're talking about, you can do endowments or 1-time gifts, etc. You can set it up to go to one or more departments if you like what the faculty members are doing (CS, math, science, applied tech programs of different kinds), or to student clubs if you like what they're up to, or just set up scholarships for students in technical fields. You could target basic skills (math literacy), specific sciences, computing, even the library.

  • by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @03:45AM (#41384133) Journal
  • Pirate Party (Score:4, Informative)

    by ArsenneLupin ( 766289 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @03:49AM (#41384155)
    The pirate parties of all countries need lots of donations to organize the upcoming elections...
    • by durdur ( 252098 )

      Most charitable organizations such as foundations cannot donate to political parties. (That's essential to retain their status as charities).

      • But the questions was "Where Should a Geek's Charitable Donations Go?" rather than "Where Should a Foundation's Charitable Donations Go?"

        So, there are plenty of entities that cannot give to political parties (businesses too are restricted to give to political parties in many countries, and for a good reason!), but that doesn't mean that as a private citizen (natural person) you can't give to parties.

  • Education isn't just for children.
  • by randomsearch ( 1207102 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @03:58AM (#41384201) Journal

    I just happened to mention this to my Mum, who works with several charities in the UK.

    She says - "Don't just give money. Most local charities are in dire need of help with their IT."

    RS

    • A good point. Far too high a proportion of charity money goes on running (any) charity, rather than bringing benefits to it's intended recipients. Anything that can streamline a charity, reduce the number of people it employs and improve efficiency will do more good than simply adding to their income.
  • by Bob9113 ( 14996 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @04:02AM (#41384219) Homepage

    Find out if there's a hackerspace near you. The one I go to (not nearly often enough) has worked with schools before -- you might be able to get some community involvement going on. Ask if they'd be interested in hosting a class field trip, or developing extracurricular activities or class projects. Think Stirling engines, robots, 3D printers, arduino gadgets, laser cutters, all kinds of cool hands-on stuff. Obviously YMMV pretty significantly from one space to the next, and they're not all charities, but it could be really cool if there's a good one near you.

    You can look for a hackerspace near you at hackerspaces.org [hackerspaces.org] or just use your favorite search engine with your region and "hackerspace". If not, maybe look for other local clubs that are into hands-on activities; rocketry, halloween, stagecraft, burners, whatever.

  • by OnePumpChump ( 1560417 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @04:14AM (#41384261)
    Friends of the Library. Your local library probably has one. You might become active with them if you want to promote technology access for those without...your local library is probably the only internet access for a substantial portion of the people who use it.
  • It's a bit of work because of the nature of their model (lots of small projects around the US); but you could fund a number of science / math / technology needs for classrooms across the US.
  • by Rastloser ( 1364593 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @04:26AM (#41384323)

    As a volunteer for the club that restored Germany's first radio telescope (see http://astropeiler.de/ [astropeiler.de] ), I am certainly quite biased, but I think that technical, hands-on museums would also be a good target. Check your area for volunteer-run astronomical observatories, open electronics labs, private physics labs... essentially places that are open to everyone interested in science, give people a hands-on experience with old (or current) technology and where everyone can repeat important experiments that shape our world-view. For example, we offer everyone the chance to repeat the measurements by Oort et al. from 1958 that show that the Milky Way has a spiral structure, and hope to support and promote an evidence-based world view by doing so. (And, besides, it's just great fun to operate your own radio telescope!)

  • by AchilleTalon ( 540925 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @04:48AM (#41384409) Homepage
    Donate to MOOC like Coursera and edX and request the money be spend on technology to facilitate access to disabled students. It is well proven education spent on disabled people is having a great ROI and enable them to avoid living in poverty.
  • by fantomas ( 94850 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @04:56AM (#41384443)

    Help fund local after school clubs: activities run in your local schools that further education local kids in a more informal environment. Get in contact with a local school and ask them what would help them run a technology / computing after school club. Perhaps they could do with some electronics tools (soldering irons etc) or some raspberry pi's, or basic robot kits.

      These activities really help both academically struggling kids to find something they enjoy and catch up with their peers, reduces the chances of them dropping out, and also give gifted pupils the opportunity to push on further. The teachers can be more laid back as these activities are outside the core curriculum and not strictly evaluated so they often encourage the children to try out more experimental activities and emphasise fun and individual learning more than exam passing. And it's a good place for kids to be after school, they also learn a lot of positive social skills.

    To be totally selfish, helping local kids to become inspired and enjoy education is better for your neighbourhood as well, and builds future social capacity as well as economic capacity in the area!

  • You must be one lucky individual to have never had a health
    care, scare or had a friend or family member that has had one.

    Breast Cancer
    Alzheimer's
    Cystic Fibrosis

    the list goes on, but gets more depressing.

    I have Alzheimer's in my family. 95% my donations go to that,
    5% goes to dog specific non-profits.

    And on top of that, I run a non-profit for disadvantaged families.

    -AI

  • Petter Reinholdtsen of Debian Edu/Skolelinux fame will have a lot of useful no-nonsense suggestions. Contact information at http://www.hungry.com/~pere/ [hungry.com] .

  • I don't agree with a lot of the suggestions posted here, particularly those supporting the provision of funds to larger internet-based organizations. Many of these organizations won't put the money to effective use and there's a good chance that it will simply be gobbled up by operating costs or other miscellaneous expenditures. Ideally you want a lasting return on your investment, so considering education is definitely a priority. Many families who live on either low or no income are not able to afford
  • Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @06:21AM (#41384813) Homepage

    What's more important:

    People eating? People having access to the Internet?
    People not being shot? People having a laptop each?
    People not dying from diarrhoea? People offering lessons on the Internet?
    People going to school? People going to a school which has Wifi tablets or OLPC's?

    I work in education. Computers, and technology, do not make that much of a difference over plain, ordinary education. In fact, in some cases it's quite plainly DETRIMENTAL to the quality of education given (the kids know how to google an image, paste it into word, and print it out but can't do simple sums without a calculator).

    Sure, in a good school, with decent funding, and teachers who know how to use it effectively and do so all the time (the last of which is very rare and the only people you ever see demonstrating their results improvements!), IT can make a difference. But it's not that much.

    But out in the African deserts, Indian slums or wherever you wish to focus your efforts, it's not going to make a jot of difference. For the price of such junk you could just train a decent teacher who doesn't NEED instant, fingertip access to the works of Shakespeare to teach any subject you want them to. All you're doing is putting a technology burden on charities and people who can't afford to eat.

    I don't "get" tech charities at all. In any country. If you want to make a difference, give a kid some manky horrible porridge that will keep him alive this month, or work to get them out of the slums through basic, normal education (i.e. funding a school building and a teacher is MORE than enough to get him going and any IT crap is just getting in the way after that), or give them an injection to make them immune to some killer disease, or support efforts to make their home countries safer from rebels killing and raping them.

    Don't give them a hand-me-down gadget that you think is "cool". Just don't. Give them a life, instead.

    And, take it from someone who works in schools: Don't donate your old crap to your local school. Hell, don't even encourage them to have "one PC per child" or whatever. It hurts basic education in your average school compared to just employing a slightly better teacher.

    • by fatphil ( 181876 )
      +1 Insightful

      I have a particular dislike for some IT-related charities. I remember when I left the UK I decided to ditch several of the computers I was using (I was dabbling with different OSes, and networking, so needed several rather than multi-booting). And by "ditch" I meant "find a charity that would take them to more needy places than fancy English suburbia". The local internet cafe had a poster requesting just this - computers for an orphanage in Romania. One drawback - the minimum requirements for t
    • by Radak ( 126696 )

      The original poster made is clear in a response near the beginning of the thread that he/she's only talking about a small portion of the funds to be allocated, and that the more "traditional" bases are already covered and he/she's looking to present something a little different.

    • What the parent said. Also, this: http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/category/heifer-international/ [patrickrothfuss.com]

      Pat's a big geek, and he's an author with a big geeky fan base. So giving to Worldbuilders is a geeky pursuit.

      --AC

  • by Darth Muffin ( 781947 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @06:49AM (#41384933) Homepage
    Geeks Without Borders is one I like (geekswithoutborders.org) which sounds like it may be a good match for your wants. I know many of the people involved in it and it's legit. However, usually we (the organizations I'm in) go for local children's literacy programs instead. If you can't find one then buy and donate a pile of geeky books to the city or school library. We have also supported a local group that goes out and fixes up/repairs schools.
  • Wikipedia (Score:4, Informative)

    by Fished ( 574624 ) <amphigory@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @06:57AM (#41384967)

    I would seriously consider the Wikimedia Foundation, publishers of wikipedia. Particularly in the third world, this sort of freely available information is vital.

  • Survival Research Laboratories, or S.R.L., have been operating for a couple decades on little more than obtainium.
    These Robo-Geeks have been part of the Robotics, Research, Art scene worldwide, providing demonstrations for the public wherever they are allowed to. This takes money, which they don't usually have. In order to keep them out of jail, won't you please fund them so as to keep them from a life of crime? They really aren't above it and SRL should continue for the sake of humanity. http://srl.org/ [srl.org]

  • Becoming an associate member of the Free Software Foundation is probably worthwhile, and not very expensive. It's true that RMS is an unlikely spokesman, but the GPL has had a profound effect on software freedom.

  • by Freed ( 2178 ) on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @08:13AM (#41385363)
    See a reminder [gnu.org] of the role of free software in education. You can focus your donation on a particular concern [fsf.org], too.
  • Currently, there is a war on science, scientific method, evolution and facts in general. As a geek, I'd like to contribute to charities that work to counter this very disturbing effort.

    We are wasting way too much time fighting battles that in reality have already been decided in the factual world. So, to counter those whose battle cry is (insert fingers in ears) 'LA LA LA LA LA LA LA', we need to back those who believe that scientific method works (because it does). We need well funded advocates for

  • I'm definitely partial to this one, since I'm one of the founders. However, I strongly believe in our goals and our projects are very interesting. Almost all of us are teachers and we are hoping to grow to a point where we can provide internships for kids that take professional courses instead of college degrees. Also, all of us that work there are purely volunteers.

  • Education does need any [more] technology. It needs good teachers. Find ways for your money to supplement worthy teachers' incomes, or increase all teachers' incomes. Make news geeks through proper education, not by shoveling technology at kids.
  • The institute of momentum [tiom.co.nz]. As you probably know, current legislation [wikipedia.org] requires momentum to be carefully preserved. Your money will help achieving this goal.
  • This is a charity which is definitely geeky: Sugar Labs http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Main_Page [sugarlabs.org]

    It is a software project, a spin-off of the "One Laptop per Child" XO computer project, but they develop not just for the special-purpose green XO laptops but also Asus EEE, Intel Classmate, and your PC: USB memory stick ("Sugar on a Stick"). I think it's basically a Linux distro derived from Fedora, with oodles of child friendly software: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Activities [sugarlabs.org]

    IANATeacher, but they seem to f
  • .....only problem is there is not an official tax deductible organization yet existing.
    But its be to change the foundation on which software programming is done.
    In analogy, the roman numeral system of mathematics was limited in in mathematical ability. Then came along the hindu-arabic decimal system with its nothing can have value placeholder, the zero. Everything changed an today we have much that would not have been possible without the change in our numbering system.
    Todays software development process is

  • Humanity has grown so large that nature is now endangered.

    My solution? Buy local-ish land in the country, and preserve it from development.

    It's all for the lizards, birds, snakes, bats, bugs, turtles, rodents, deer and fish now.

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user!

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