There are plenty of good non-profits and charities to donate money to. We often get caught up in the media glitz of charity drives and fundraisers, these are often for very good causes who need all the money they can get but what about the smaller outfits doing good work?
I started to bookmark all the donation pages for charities and non profits I would like to give money to in preparation to me actually having some money to give. I hope this list inspires you to think about the causes close to your heart and maybe encourages you to make a list of your own and heaven forbid, actually donate.
This List is in no particular order.
Resonance 104.4 FM
WBAI, New York 99.5 FM
WikiLeaks
Internet Archive
Creative Commons
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Open Rights Group
Free Software Foundation Europe
Xiph
Debian
Mozilla
Resonance 104.4 FM
London based arts radio station provides some of the best radio in the city. It has an eclectic mix of shows and tries to focus on the arts. It has some limited funding but I believe the majority of staff work unpaid. I feel a bit self conscious having it on in the background when with guests as the output of the station can be strange to say the least with interesting sound art and provocative shows but I would recommend checking it out. Resonance have an MP3 stream so you can listen anywhere in the world although I prefer tuning in with my FM radio even though their signal can be weak in parts of London. I get a pretty good quality sound here in Hackney. I delight in just leaving Resonance FM on all day long and being pleasantly surprised by the soundscapes and intellectual talk on offer.
WBAI, New York 99.5 FM
Another good quality community run station that has no advertising and transmits from the Empire State in New York. Again streams are available online and podcasts are available for some particular shows. I mention WBAI even though I don’t live in New York because I have followed Emmanuel Goldstein and the 2600 crew for many years in their superb hacker radio show “Off the Hook”. I have listened online but tend to catch the show as a podcast. For anyone who is inquisitive about technology and it’s possibilities I can’t recommend it highly enough. I Haven’t heard much of the rest of the stations output but I would recommend it based on off the hook alone it has provided me with many years of listening pleasure and turned me on to many new things. I would recommend donating to WBAI especially if you live in New York and I would strongly recommend checking out 2600.com for The Hacker Quarterly magazine and podcasts
Wiki Leaks
In a world where investigative journalism is dyeing out as media outlets become nothing more than the mouthpiece for their owners it’s important to have someone like wikileaks.org uncovering the big stories for this generation. They have done a lot of good work in uncovering injustice and criminal activity often by organisations so big that getting this information out can otherwise be silenced by intimidation or legal action.
Internet Archive
It’s important to keep the public domain available to the public. I take specific delight in being able to download classic film noir now in the public domain freely and in multiple formats. The archives website is difficult to navigate but there is a wealth of material on the site. I would recommend downloading the noir “detour” which I first saw at the BFI in London and the creative commons licensed animation “Sita Sings the Blues”. You can spend days diving into the archive and there is a lot of flack on the site but buried deep inside are some gems.
Creative Commons
One of my personal heroes Lawrence Lessig helped create the creative commons which is an important project to help open up our culture to allow remixing and propagation while maintaining authorship. If you produce anything that can be copyrighted you can alternatively release your work under a creative commons licence allowing other people to copy and share you work, perhaps remix it and all the time keeping control of wether people are allowed to profit from your work. As your pictures or your videos circulate the web the licence makes it clear that you should be attributed for your work and gives you unique control of how it can be used. Having a rich free culture is important in the age of the internet where copying and sharing is so easy.
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The EFF have done a lot of good work in pushing free speech on the internet along with a lot of related issues. They have been around for as long as I can remember fighting DRM, promoting anonymity and privacy on the net and fighting state wire tapping. In a world where often brain dead politicians make up law based on industry lobby groups rather than having a balanced analysis of the issues the EFF strive to educate the people about the implications of digital legislation. They also try to promote your rights online.
Open Rights Group
Similar to the EFF, ORG are a British based charity fighting for digital rights. They are small but they do a lot of good work, campaigning against the Digital Economy Bill here in the UK and promoting rights online. I helped out at a few talks that ORG organised and they are a friendly bunch. There are a lot of issues being decided for us by business and the government that needs the scrutiny of competent geeks (in the best possible way) like ORG.
Free Software Foundation Europe
After giving to the US based FSF I became aware that there was a more local branch, the FSFE. Free software is an important component of my digital life. I use a free and open source operating system and free (as in freedom) software to create my art and to browse the web. Free software can be hard for some people to grasp when they are used to paying for all their software. But free operating systems nowadays offer a viable alternative to propitiatory systems like Windows and Apple’s OS X. The FSFE work at promoting the free software cause and help fund free software projects. With people like Apple and Microsoft wanting more and more control of your devices like with the iPad and the XBox 360 being able to control and run whatever software you want is becoming more of a cause. I don’t want to have to pay to create and I don’t want to be tied to one system for all my media. Free software and codecs provide us with the tools to get things done while benefiting your fellow man in the process.
Xiph
Talking about codecs there are no finer open source multimedia codecs than those made by the Xiph open source community. Having control of your media is important and you don’t want to be tied to a supplier or manufacturer to be able to play your own media. OGG actually provides better sound quality than MP3 at smaller file sizes and Theora is a superb video codec. Both are free and open source severing any ties your media may have to propitiatory systems that lock you into a specific digital ecosystem.
Debian
As the basis for popular free operating system Ubuntu which I am currently using Debian is the backbone to many Linux implementations. I love GOTO10’s media and arts operating system pure:dyne which is based on Debian and provides artists with a multitude of free software tools to create and share their work. There are many distributions of Linux but I have to pick one and as I run Debian on my desktop and Ubuntu on my laptop I feel obliged to support what I know.
Mozilla
The people who bring you Firefox and Thunderbird are a important force in the free and open source world. With the browser being such an important element of our computers it’s crucial we have secure and stable browsers to deal with the multitude of things we find on the internet. With the monstrosity that is Microsoft Internet Explorer and the need to promote open standards for the development of the internet Mozilla do much good work in developing Firefox.
If you have been inspired to donate, I tip my hat to you. I hope that even if you don’t want to give over your hard earned cash you are hopefully more aware of some important projects.
