Help me pick some charities

[dreamshark]

When I got my totally unnecessary and undeserved Federal Tax Rebate check earlier in the year I said I was going to give it to charity. I still intend to, but haven't gotten around to it yet. I have some ideas, but wonder what other people would suggest. I would much prefer to give to organizations that offer a convenient, online option to opt out of junk mail and that will promise not to sell my name to other organizations.

I'm leaning towards the following:

Food Shelf: maybe Second Harvest, maybe the Minnesota Emergency Foodshelf Network.
Homeless shelters: Sharing and Caring Hands
Arts Organzations: HOTB, Intermedia Arts
Miscellaneous: Meals on Wheels, Toys for Tots, one of the Jewish charities that got shafted by Bernie Madoff.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Intermedia Arts is in desperate shape. HOBT is going to survive, according to what I know now, but we are limping through having to lay-off the entire staff for 7 weeks. We are in full blown hunker-down mode, and our end-of-year appeal is way behind, with the dollars down, but we are thankful that the number of individual givers is up. The Cedar Cultural Center is having a capital campaign right now.

Any food shelf you give to will help people a lot. (Maybe it's time to write our "Eating Cheap" cook book?)

K.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"Maybe it's time to write our "Eating Cheap" cook book?"

Wow, I'd forgotten about that. Y'know, maybe we should. Both of us have gotten in the habit of being able to buy whatever we want in terms of food, haven't we? But it would be good for me to revive me old skills for eating cheap, just in case. (Recessions are not kind to people in my industry).

Can I make a contribution to HOBT through you?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'll do whatever needs to be done to facilitate donations to HOBT. You can also use the website if you have paypal.

K.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to avoid getting on mailing lists. Does HOBT have some way to opt out of getting monthly mailings? And of course I don't want to be sold to other organizations' mailing lists.

As it is, I think the junk mail we get from Worthy Causes is eating up at least a couple of hundred dollars' worth of somebody's donations (maybe ours, maybe other people's). Seems pointless.