On Tuesday I posted a request for DUers to suggest charities. For those of you who missed it, here is the text of
my post:
As you may know, next week is the Democratic Underground fourth quarter 2009 fund drive. With Thanksgiving coming up soon, we have decided to do something different for the DU fund drive this year -- in the spirit of giving thanks and giving back.
During next week's fund drive Democratic Underground is going to donate 10% of the funds we receive to a selected group of charities. Here's how it's going to work:
This week, with the help of the DU membership, we are going to select six charities to support. Each of the charities will be assigned a day: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday/Sunday. Each day of the fund drive, 10% of funds donated to Democratic Underground will be donated to that day's assigned charity. A list of charities will be made available to DU members who wish to donate so you can plan your donation to benefit the charity of your choice.
The process to select the six charities is going to be fairly casual. If you are interested in suggesting a charity, you should do so in this thread. If you like someone else's suggestion in this thread, please feel free to reply to their post to say so. If necessary, we will open additional threads throughout the week in order to solicit more suggestions and narrow down the choices to the final six.
Our intent is to come up with a list of six charities that, taken together, broadly represent this community and its values. Obviously, we will not be able to accommodate everyone's favorite charity. But we hope that everyone will find at least one charity that you want to help support (while you support DU). With this in mind, we intend to select the charities so their missions do not overlap. In other words: We're not going to select multiple charities that do basically the same thing. So, for example, if we have an environmental charity on the list, we're not going to select two or three of them -- there will just be one.
One more thing: The charity CANNOT be political. No political parties or candidates or PACs or other organizations intended to influence campaigns. It is against the law for Democratic Underground (a corporation) to donate money to political organizations.
So, let's get started... Tell us your favorite charities!
DUers suggested a number of very interesting and deserving charities. It is going to be difficult to narrow the list down to only six. I think we probably need to decide whether we should go with large, well-known, national charities so everyone is familiar with their work, or if we should go with smaller, more local charities so our (admittedly small) contribution will have a larger impact.
In case it was not clear in my earlier post: This is being done in conjunction with the Fourth Quarter Fund Drive to raise money for Democratic Underground. The DU admins put our heads together about a month ago to try to come up with a fun idea that ties in with Thanksgiving. We thought the idea of donating a percentage to charity fit with the spirit of Thanksgiving. A number of our members have suggested this in the past. So the 10% donation is not going to be a huge amount of money, but hopefully it will make your donation to DU a little more satisfying.
Here's a list of all the charities that DUers suggested. I included a link to the website if it was included in the post. Some of them you have certainly heard of, and some others are smaller but no less deserving. Hopefully this is an opportunity for all of these charities to get a little exposure, even if we don't pick them for our fund drive. If you would like to express your support for any of these charities, please post to let us know. And you are welcome to suggest any charity that isn't on the list.
A Wish With Wings
Ali Forney Center (LGBT homeless youths)
American Cancer Society
American Friends Service Committee
http://www.afsc.org /
American Heart Association
American Indian College Fund
http://www.collegefund.org Amnesty International
Animal Umbrella
http://www.animalumbrella.org Appleseed: a network of public interest justice centers.
http://www.appleseeds.net ASPCA
Autism Society
http://www.autism-society.org Big Apple Bull Terrier Rescue
http://www.bigapplebullies.com /
Bread for the World
Charity: Water
http://www.charitywater.org childfund
http://www.childfund.org Chilren's Make-A-Wish Foundation
Cosmetic and Reconstructive Support Program from the Nat'l Coalition against Domestic Violence
http://www.ncadv.org/programs/CosmeticandR... Doctors Without Borders
http://doctorswithoutborders.org Environmental Defense fund
Equal Justice Initiative
http://www.eji.org Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen, NY
http://farmsanctuary.org Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest)
Fisher House Foundation (Veterans)
www.fisherhouse.org Food & Friends
http://www.foodandfriends.org Fresh Start
http://www.freshstartwc.org/WelcometoFresh... Friends of Pine Ridge (Lakota Nation)
http://www.friendsofpineridgereservation.o... Gesundheit Institute (Dr. Hunter Campbell "Patch" Adams)
http://www.patchadams.org Habitat for Humanity
Heifer Project
http://heifer.org Holt International Children's Services
http://www.holtintl.org Homes for Vets
http://www.homesforvets.com /
Hospice
Humane Society of the United States
I Love Mountains
http://ilovemountains.org Iraq Veterans Against the War
http://www.ivaw.org Justice for Murdered Children
http://www.jfmc.org Kiva
Lake Claire Community Land Trust
http://www.lcclt.org Mazon
http://www.mazon.org Mercy Corps
http://www.mercycorps.org Mind Freedom
http://www.mindfreedom.org /
Modest Needs
http://www.modestneeds.org NARAL
National Aids Foundation
www.aidsfund.org National Association of Free Clinics
http://www.freeclinics.us /
National Resources Defense Council
http://www.nrdc.org /
Near East Foundation
http://www.neareast.org/main/default.aspx On Our Own
http://www.onourownmd.org/asp.html Operation Smile
OXFAM
www.oxfam.org PFLAG
Pink Ribbon
http://www.pinkribbon.org Planned Parenthood
Red Cross
Remote Area Medical
Remote Area Medical Foundation
http://www.ramusa.org/index.html Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
St. Jude's
Treehouse (foster children)
http://www.treehouse4kids.org USO
VetDogs (pair injured Vets with service dogs)
Wilderness Society
http://wilderness.org Wine to Water
http://www.winetowater.org 
