In its' third year, Softies for Mirabel is an appeal for handmade stuffed toys to benefit children supported by The Mirabel Foundation. [more inside]
posted by hecho de la basura on Nov 5, 2009 - 2 comments

Sweet! The Crookedest Street in the World was turned into a giant Candy Land game today, to celebrate the board game's 60th anniversary. Photos: 1, 2, 3, 4 [more inside]
posted by zarq on Aug 19, 2009 - 26 comments

"The Yankees' best game this season came after the lights were dimmed." [more inside]
posted by zarq on Aug 14, 2009 - 39 comments

Tom Williams: Hired by Apple at 14. His full story? — not quite… What he doesn't mention in his monologue is that his current project is reminiscent of GiveWell, with similar origins in high finance. He responds. (via)
posted by blasdelf on Jul 7, 2009 - 45 comments

The Uniform Project - "Starting May 2009, I have pledged to wear one dress for one year as an exercise in sustainable fashion. Here’s how it works: There are 7 identical dresses, one for each day of the week. Every day I will reinvent the dress with layers, accessories and all kinds of accouterments, the majority of which will be vintage, hand-made, or hand-me-down goodies... The Uniform Project is also a year-long fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education in India."
posted by You Should See the Other Guy on Jun 10, 2009 - 74 comments

Gather round the microphone, friends, put your headphones over one ear, and wave your hands in the air like you do care, very deeply. It's time to celebrate the benefit song. [MLYT] [more inside]
posted by DiscourseMarker on May 22, 2009 - 36 comments

Eric de la Cruz needs a heart transplant. He has a pre-existing medical condition (over and above that), which prevents him from having medical insurance. His sister, former CNN.com reporter Veronica de la Cruz wrote to Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, asking for his help. Last night, Trent posted a plea for donations and an offer to fans to attend a show, hang out with the band, backstage, etc. As of a few minutes ago, over $260,000 in donations have been accepted by NIN on Eric's behalf since last night.
posted by Bluecoat93 on May 21, 2009 - 94 comments

Wilco has just started streaming their new album, Wilco (The Album) The band has done this since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and is asking those who download the entire thing to donate some cash to The Inspiration Corporation charity in Chicago.
posted by TheDonF on May 13, 2009 - 84 comments

ROSA LOVES is a non-profit t-shirt company. Their limited edition t-shirts are specifically designed to raise money for individuals in need. Each individual's story is told through a unique design on the front and also by actual text that appears on the inverse of the shirt, directly in line with the heart. They have been featured in GOOD Magazine, and AOL named them one of the top 12 businesses that could be the next big thing. Recently, they introduced a t-shirt to "support the reinforcement and perseverance of a home that nurtures the culture of music in New Orleans". [more inside]
posted by Houyhnhnm on Mar 28, 2009 - 8 comments

Eddie Doyle, 69, has been laid off from his job in Boston. Who is Eddie Doyle? Nobody special, just a bartender at a bar in Boston (that used to be) called The Bull & Finch. If that doesn't sound familiar, you might have seen the outside of it in the credits of a little television show in the 80s. The show brought thousands to the bar each day but the current recession has taken its toll and the owner, who has been friends with Eddie for 40 years, had to make some tough choices. [more inside]
posted by tommasz on Mar 15, 2009 - 37 comments

His beard can lift random objects… and the human spirit. Every Friday, MeFi's own eamondaly will use his facial hair to lift things for charity. He'll add one pound per hundred dollars raised until he hits $5K (or his beard gives up the ghost). [via mefi projects]
posted by Damn That Television on Feb 12, 2009 - 25 comments

If you got an email from a stranger who said they'd donate $200 to a charity of your choice if you would invite him and a friend over to your place for dinner, would you say yes? Toronto artist Franke James did, and now she now thinks it might be an interesting idea for fundraising.
posted by Staggering Jack on Feb 5, 2009 - 35 comments

You know what to do. In case of doubt, click this link.
posted by jefeweiss on Dec 20, 2008 - 35 comments

Play Trivia to Help Save Abandoned Animals. Free Rice set the standard for on-line charity games and Free Poverty soon followed by donating water. Now you can play for free kibble to be donated to either Rocket Dog Rescue or The Urban Cat Project.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy on Dec 17, 2008 - 9 comments

Christmas Caped Crusader Tis the season for heartwarming news filler, perhaps, but the video of this guy at the children's hospice makes me think he's the real deal. When the cameras stop rolling, though, do stunts like this make people give more deeply or more often to charity?
posted by Grrlscout on Dec 13, 2008 - 12 comments

How to write about Africa. Binyavanga Wainaina is among a rising generation of African voices who bring a cautionary perspective to the morality and efficacy behind many Western initiatives to abolish poverty and speed development in Africa. An interview with Krista Tippet.
posted by nax on Dec 8, 2008 - 12 comments

Charity fundraising volunteers, known colloquially as "chuggers", are a common sight in downtown London. And charity watchdog group Intelligent Giving believes they should be banned. Chuggers are not without their defenders, of course, or their detractors. Some have already downplayed Intelligent Giving's report, and Mick Aldridge, chief executive of the Public Fundraising Regulatory Association, has called it "grossly irresponsible".
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Nov 25, 2008 - 65 comments

As forclosures rise, so do tent cities filled with Americans. Across the country, tent cities are rising everywhere. From California, where foreclosures are taking over 60,000 homes per month, to Vegas, where hungry children sleep in the glittered dust of the wealthy, to St. Petersburg, Florida where the cops are destroying the tents of the homeless to make them leave the city, to the suburbs, homelessness, hunger, and poverty are on the rise. The government's response? Change how "homeless" is defined, so that the numbers appear to be decreasing at the same time that tents are springing up all over the country. [more inside]
posted by dejah420 on Nov 7, 2008 - 135 comments

The warm and fuzzy one, not the end of civilization as we know it. For the third year in a row, a whole gaggle of artists have donated original art for a silent auction to benefit domestic violence shelters and a crisis line in Portland, OR and Fleminton, NJ. One (prolific and admittedly talented) guy's obsession turned to good. [more inside]
posted by yiftach on Oct 20, 2008 - 5 comments

Charity Navigator is most interesting for the CEO salaries, but non-profits are a huge segment of society. Melissa Data lists all the organizations with nonprofit status for your zip. This is an excellent rant on one of them.
posted by Bitter soylent on Oct 4, 2008 - 31 comments

Art... on skateboards... for charity.
posted by maggieb on Sep 2, 2008 - 3 comments

What book got you hooked? For Scarlett Johansson, it was Fantastic Mr. Fox. For Stephen Colbert, it was Swiss Family Robinson. Neil Patrick Harris? Bridge to Terebithia. And it was Franny and Zooey for Ira Glass. These and dozens of other celebs have shared their answer to this question with First Book, a charity that has distributed more than 60 million free and low cost books to children to spur their interest in reading. What book got you hooked? (Via the always fantastic Get Rich Slowly)
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on Aug 4, 2008 - 185 comments

The Girl Effect.
posted by sveskemus on Jun 17, 2008 - 61 comments

The Banyan Tree Foundation promised to take donations from contributors to be redistributed to worthy Canadian recipients. The foundation also gave donors inflated charity receipts for tax declarations, and donors were encouraged to borrow money to contribute even more, and did... from a company now owned by Banyan Tree president Robert Thiessen. Now, the money has stopped flowing, and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has called the organization a "sham" and is going after Banyan donors for past charity receipts totalling more than CAD$100 million. [more inside]
posted by Shepherd on Jun 4, 2008 - 12 comments

Melrose Place, Governor Napolitano, and Freshly Baked Chocolate Chips: social entrepreneurship to combat meth and sell art. Is Belleza Gallery, wholly owned nonprofit gallery of Renaissance House, the coolest little pocket of altrusim-meets-art that almost no one has ever heard of? [more inside]
posted by yellowcandy on Apr 10, 2008 - 3 comments

Six Masai warriors will face cultural challenges when they run in the Flora London Marathon to raise money for clean water for their village. Meet the runners (video clip) Think about making a small donation in their time of trouble because when we had problems here in the US, they were most generous to us. [more inside]
posted by madamjujujive on Apr 7, 2008 - 25 comments

The 41st Annual Holy Angels/Santa Anita Jockeys Charity Basketball Game takes place tonight. The 7th/8th grade basketball team for Holy Angels Catholic School will be facing against jockeys [scroll down for details] from Santa Anita Park. The charity game [youtub vid from last year's game] raises money for Holy Angels Athletic department. The jockeys are currently 11 point underdogs for tonight's game.
posted by Stynxno on Feb 21, 2008 - 4 comments

Barefootin'! Ron Hunter, men's basketball coach of IUPUI, decides to raise awareness for Samaritan's Feet, a charity that collects shoes for needy children, by coaching barefoot. Initially, he hoped to collect 40,000 pairs in honor of the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. - 110,000 pairs of shoes were collected by tip-off. [more inside]
posted by geekyguy on Jan 27, 2008 - 7 comments

Burrito Project is an organization which helps feed the hungry and homeless in cities around the world. The organization encourages people "to get together with friends and build burritos to take to the streets". Anyone can start a Burrito Project and the organization encourages everyone to help feed the hungry in their local communities. Haven't heard of the Burrito Project? There's probably a good, albeit very strange, reason why. [via]
posted by basicchannel on Jan 3, 2008 - 42 comments

"When we're running, you can't tell. When people look at us, they don't point and go, 'Yeah, he's homeless, she's not, she's educated.'" Mahlum explained, "You look and say, 'Oh, look at the runners.' That's a positive association, because there's no separation." [more inside]
posted by stagewhisper on Dec 21, 2007 - 8 comments

Do goats make great gifts? Not everyone thinks so.
posted by teleskiving on Dec 18, 2007 - 52 comments

How rich is rich? [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea on Nov 27, 2007 - 53 comments

"Puppies Behind Bars" gives cute lil pups to hardened prison inmates, who train them to eventually be guide dogs and police bomb sniffers. The puppies teach the convicts as much, if not more. Being responsible 24/7 for a dog can turn the most hardened criminal's life around. "This is my way of doing something to reparate," says one murderer. Some say it's their first taste of unconditional love. "The strongest guy in here's going to get that lump in his throat," says an inmate. The dogs get weekend furloughs to NYC so they can get used to city streets. No convict who trained a puppy has gone back to prison after being paroled.
posted by CunningLinguist on Nov 7, 2007 - 60 comments

So, apparently some of those Sudanese orphans were neither Sudanese nor orphans. The organization Zoe's Ark may have fucked the fuck up.
posted by Sticherbeast on Nov 1, 2007 - 17 comments

The 100 Artists Project is compiling two books of sketches from 100 people to be auctioned in support of two charities. Anyone can contribute artwork.
posted by studentbaker on Oct 19, 2007 - 1 comment

Join the volunteers and become a virtual crewmember of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution by downloading the desktop pager. The pager can be set to monitor all stations in the UK and Ireland or just specific stations. If you had it running in 2006 it would have gone off 8377 times (PDF).
posted by TwoWordReview on Sep 5, 2007 - 8 comments

Ted Haggard returns --with a cash for heaven offer to support him while he helps "broken people". Unfortunately, the procedure outlined is illegal, and the charity (Families With a Mission) is unregistered and run by a convicted sex offender. Meanwhile, Mike Jones, Haggard's favorite whore, pops up at a dirty bar trivia night (questions about Haggard and him, maybe nsfw, textwise)
posted by amberglow on Aug 25, 2007 - 184 comments

Cycling for a cause is the project/site of Canadian college student Michal Brichacek. On May 3rd of this year he set out from Alaska on his bike, aiming to ride all 12,000km (7440 miles) by early August. He's riding to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and he's over halfway done, currently riding across a hot Mexico landscape. His blog has his daily adventures (mostly about having to look for tent spots, supplies, and meeting interesting strangers). He's also posting daily photos of the trip.
posted by mathowie on Jul 9, 2007 - 9 comments

You are most welcome. sigh. Bill Gates must feel like several billion dollars.
posted by longsleeves on May 29, 2007 - 48 comments

Five For Fighting (John Ondrasik) is pretty cool and has some good music (enbedded audio). This video, created by school kids, really rocks. You can watch and submit your own home vids for in support of some good charitable causes.
posted by snsranch on Apr 20, 2007 - 7 comments

Three million long-haul truckers traverse India's 8,000-kilometer highway network for months at a time. According to studies, more than two-thirds of those men are having frequent unprotected sex, and it's a big problem. Seena Taan Ke is a campaign that's underway to create AIDS/HIV awareness among the truckers, featuring Bollywood celebrities as well as Hollywood celebrity Richard Gere. It's a good thing for a good cause. Well, up until Richard got a little frisky onstage and planted some kisses on Big Brother winner/Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty. Crowds of Indians are now burning effigies of both Gere and Shetty in protest. "Such a public display is not part of Indian tradition." said the spokesman for Hindu nationalist party Bharatiya Janata. Well, so much for AIDS awareness for truckers.
posted by miss lynnster on Apr 16, 2007 - 73 comments

One man's pocket change is another man's $3 million dollar home. Today, 3 previously homeless families were handed the keys to homes located on one of Hawai'i's priciest streets: Kahala Avenue. Japanese billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto has so far chosen 4 native Hawaiian families to live rent free for up to 10 years, making good on a promise made back in November 2006. Obviously, Kawamoto's motives are suspect, as his record as a landlord has been rather tainted. And his approach to alleviating 4 family's homeless situation doesn't solve any systemic problems or go very far in providing long term solutions to homelessness. But for now, it's a feel-good story, and the start of an interesting sociological experiment...
posted by krippledkonscious on Mar 23, 2007 - 22 comments

Tap Project. What if every glass of water you drank quenched someone else's thirst? Looks like its only official in NYC restaurants this Thursday, but hopefully it will expand to other cities.
posted by allkindsoftime on Mar 20, 2007 - 20 comments

Is the rise of philanthropic fashionistas decked out in Red T-shirts and iPods really the best way to save a child dying of AIDS in Africa? One year into the "save the world by shopping" initiative championed by Bono, Steven Spielberg and Chris Rock, and the bill is right at $100 million - and so far, Red has only raised about $18 million. Nonprofit watchdogs worry about a backlash. Red's CEO replies, "this marketing would have been spent anyway, on other product lines. It never would have been (nor will it ever be) given to the Global Fund."
posted by jbickers on Mar 6, 2007 - 87 comments

Behind on your car payments? Need to pay rent? Digital Charity may be your answer. Digital Charity gives you a list (sorted by category) of people who are looking for donations via PayPal. Each person looking for a donation can create a page with their situation and a PayPal link. Anyone interested in giving them money can then click on that link.
posted by Jenesta on Jan 30, 2007 - 45 comments

The One Million Masterpiece. Be a part of a global collaborative art project and help raise money for international humanitarian and environmental charities.
posted by amyms on Jan 25, 2007 - 4 comments

This is one of the most wonderful uses of the web I've seen to help others: Blogger One & friend question the fine print (scroll down) of charity web site. Blogger Two reads Blogger One's post and contacts him. The three people team up and do what most people who don't read fine print assume the charity was doing with their donations and video results. {via Kottke}
posted by dobbs on Jan 18, 2007 - 61 comments

In need of last-minute Christmas gifts? Want to help the world in some way? Websites like ChangingThePresent and Alternative Gifts International allow you to buy or sponsor something useful as a present - from an hour with a creative coach, to wheelchairs in Cambodia; from walking children to school in the West Bank to flighting corruption. Maybe even a charity gift certificate? [more inside]
posted by divabat on Dec 23, 2006 - 19 comments

Goodsearch is an Internet search engine with a simple concept and unique social mission. GoodSearch enables you to help fund any of hundreds of thousands of charities or schools through the simple act of searching the Internet.
posted by ZenMasterThis on Oct 15, 2006 - 9 comments

(RED) is an initiative started by Bono and Bobby Shriver, to (Embrace) you in the fight against AIDS in Africa whenever you buy iconic red-colored products like the iPod, Amex card, Armani and others. A portion of the sales proceeds of each product goes to the Global Fund charity that gives away antiretroviral drugs to HIV infected people. Watch out for Bono painting the town red with/on Oprah today to mark its US release. Make friends with it on mySpace.
posted by forwebsites on Oct 13, 2006 - 36 comments