Welcome, everyone. While I didn’t get much interest in the other charity thread, I’m going to start this up right now and get it going. I meant to get it going Monday, but I was really busy. We will try to run each week from Monday-Sunday. Post if you donate so we can drum up continuous interest. For those that didn't see my post:

Anyway, here are the first two charities:





Description: Anyone who has watched ESPN knows about the V Foundation. Named after the late basketball coach Jim Valvano, the charity collects donation for cancer research. Jim passed away from bone cancer, and much of his legacy is based off of his speech during the 1993 ESPY awards when he was battling from cancer. A famous quote from his speech is used as the charity’s motto. “Don’t Give Up…Don’t Ever Give Up.”

Why I chose this charity: A very reputable charity that I’ve seen plenty of publicity for and never actually donated to. They have a charity drive every year on ESPN, but their charity should not be forgotten for the other 51 weeks of the year. And cancer sucks. Easy call.

https://www.jimmyv.org/





Description: A lot of times I’ll probably just copy Wikipedia, so here it is.
The Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF) is a nonprofit organization, established by rock musician Sir Elton John – in 1992 in the United States and 1993 in the United Kingdom – to support innovative HIV prevention, education programs, direct care and support services to people living with HIV. It has raised over $200 million to support HIV related programs in fifty-five countries.

Why I chose this charity: To keep track of what types of charities we have covered, I’ll most likely choose two similar charities each week. This was chosen as this is one of the highest rated AIDS charities on Charity Navigator. Elton John is also involved in other ventures and important issues such as LGBT equality. And just as cancer sucks, HIV/AIDS does too.

http://ejaf.org/



I’m not sure how often we will run into something like this, but for the EJAF, there are two sites that you can go to donate. They have a NY and London branch, so each branch deals dedicates its efforts to a certain part of the world. Maybe if we split it up that would be most effective, but in general, I’ll be donating to the US branch of any of these large charities that might have worldwide offices as we will be covering world problems such as clean water, for example, anyway.

Here is the spreadsheet link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

Post your name and donation amount. If you want to donate anonymously, that’s obviously fine, but I do ask you to post into the spreadsheet so we can see how much we’ve raised. If you are the first anonymous donor, you would put Anonymous1 under the donor column. I'll update it with a new tab each Monday so weeks and amounts donated per week are easy to keep track of.

An obvious benefit to raising money for cancer and AIDS research is that Gus' posting should improve.

The spreadsheet is 'view only', randoms don't have access to edit.

Funny.

And yeah, I just changed it. V Foundation is a $10 minimum, so if someone wants to add $5 more to EJAF because I did $10 and $5, that would be helpful.

It's be down for this.

FWIW, there's a huge drought in Eastern Africa affecting millions of people and aid is desperately needed so a charity related to that (The UN?) could be helpful.

Am I reading it correctly that it'll be likely a 5 minimum and we're doing it weekly?

Any chance we can get 50 people in on this for $10/week (or even $5)? Then each person could have a week where they choose 1 or 2 charities and those charities would end up with $250 or $500 plus anything that comes from someone who isn't committed to giving weekly.

I can and would commit $500 over the course of the year, but would prefer that method to one guy picking the charities each week. Maybe skip the last 2 weeks of the year as its a busy time where people are already spending and giving and those weeks might get overlooked.

I wouldn't be opposed to others choosing charities throughout the year. Anyway, the only reason I was talking about minimums is some charities have minimums they accept for online donations. EJAF for example has a $10 minimum as I found out when trying to donate.

We do have the two first charities that a few people have already donated, so let's get some more.


And I do want to reiterate there is no minimum or maximum for donating. I think $10 a week is a good minimum and makes donating easier since many of these charities have minimums. No reason people can't pool money together if necessary.