Tag: kiva

How Can We Help Right Now?

You may remember November and December. The year doesn’t matter, because the story is the same, no matter the year. Giving.

The winter holiday season rolls around and we start to remember “’tis better to give than to receive.” And, that is good.

Perhaps, though, we could think about giving right now?

Below are three possibilities for charitable giving that insure as direct a line to those in need as I can fathom other than walking around your neighborhood handing out donations.

A $25 donation for any of these orgs can make an amazing difference locally or around the world.

Kiva – Founded 10 years ago, this micro-lending organization allows contributors to search and select which efforts around the world they would like to fund. Over the life of your loans, you receive updates on the status of the projects you’ve funded. When the money is returned, you can withdraw it from Kiva or do what I do and put it back to work on another worthy project.

DonorsChoose – Oprah and Stephen Colbert love this educational granting site. You can search for teacher’s grant proposals by location, grade level, discipline and a number of other factors. While I wish this org didn’t need to exist, I can speak from personal experience that it can make a direct impact on classroom supplies.

HandUp – Somewhere between Kiva and DonorsChoose, HandUp helps connect donors with those in need to fund needed purchases. Funds are distributed to HandUp’s partner organizations. Those partners then help connect the applicants to their funds. While only serving the SF Bay area, Oregon, and Detroit, it turned out I don’t care where people are, so long as they are being helped.

Things I Know 312 of 365: I’m Kickstart(er)ing the holidays

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

– Lao Tzu

One of the best gifts for those who have everything is to give to those who have nothing in their name.

I’m a proud member of Team Shift Happens, I’ve gifted a pig, and I’ve let donors choose. Each gift has led to some wonderful holiday conversations around the purpose and work of these tremendous philanthropic organizations.

This year, I’m welcoming a new property into my charitable portfolio – Kickstarter.

For the uninitiated:

Kickstarter is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. Every week, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

A new form of commerce and patronage. This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project.

All or nothing funding. On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.

Each and every project is the independent creation of someone like you. Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They’re inspiring, entertaining and unbelievably diverse.

Though Kickstarter doesn’t currently support gift backing, I’ll be pledging in my recipients’ names. My thinking here is this – The recipient of the gift will receive whatever rewards are connected with the project I choose, and the project will be receive much-needed funding toward following their passion.

As a teacher and fan of passion following, this appeals to my sense of doing good in the world.

Kiva, Heifer, and DonorsChoose are still on the list this year. I’m just opting to diversify the giving portfolio.

Things I Know 46 of 365: Education should never be our country’s Third World

If we take these steps — if we raise expectations for every child, and give them the best possible chance at an education, from the day they are born until the last job they take — we will reach the goal that I set two years ago: By the end of the decade, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. (Applause.)

– President Obama, 2011 State of the Union

I’ve been in trouble with the charity mob lately. They’ve called my phone. They’ve e-mailed friends and co-workers. They’ve faxed my principal.

Donors Choose is looking for me.

More specifically, they’re looking for my Thank You Packet. I’ve been horrible at thank you notes since I was little. Always loved the idea, but been horrible in its execution.

Rather than feel guilty, I’ve become resentful.

Not resentful toward Donors Choose – they’re just doing how they do.

Resentful there’s a need for Donors Choose to do how they do.

According to CharityNavigator.org, Donors Choose spent almost $17 million on program expenses for the 2009 fiscal year. That’s $17 million that school districts couldn’t get to their teachers, classrooms and students to make the learning happen.

I remember the excitement I felt when I first learned about Donors Choose. I was immediately enamored of the idea I’d never have to negotiate the funding tug-of-war within my district when my students needed new books. I remember telling a science teacher friend about DC and watching her face light up as she realized she now had an avenue for procuring the new lab supplies her students desperately needed.

If we are true to our commitment to making America a STEM powerhouse, a creative force to be reckoned with and a leader in social development, we must acknowledge the irony of an education that forces teachers to outsource the purchase of Romeo and Juliet or scientific calculators.

For every dollar brought in by DC, an administrator wasn’t reminded of the needs facing his or her school. As those dollars piled up, administrators didn’t see as much need in telling their bosses or there bosses’ bosses their schools needed money for books, for computers, for field trips, for art supplies.

According to Donors Choose, “Since 200, 182,386 projects have been brought to life.” That’s 182,386 reminders of the needs to better fund our classrooms that never made it past their online proposals.

I love Donors Choose, but I wish I shouldn’t need to remember it exists.

When I was teaching in Florida, one of the heads of the district came by to speak at our faculty meeting. It was part of an initiative to talk to talk up new programs in the district. They were great programs – really designed to help kids.

Our guest asked if there were any questions or concerns he could address.

I raised my hand.

“Can we get pencils?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can we get pencils. These programs all sound excellent. I know they’re going to help students learn. It’s just that, they never have pencils, and it holds up the learning in the classroom. If we could just get some pencils, I know it would make a huge difference tomorrow and take a load of stress off my day.”

Our guest chuckled.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

I got a bit of a talking to from my principal after the meeting.

“Hey, he asked,” I said.

Stern stare and I was excused.

The next Monday, a package arrived via district mail – 1 gross of packages of 12 pencils.

I’ve never seen so many pencils.

What I said in the meeting certainly broke from protocol, but it also delievered the message that literacy specialists were going to be more effective had the children the tools with which to show their literacy.

In the age of Donors Choose, I worry those messages aren’t being delivered frequently enough.

Instead we’ve a sort of education Kiva doling out school supplies with repayment of teachers and students thanking donors for the tools of learning their schools and districts should have provided in the first place.

While I certainly support the work of both organizations, I cannot help resenting the systems which continue to make both of them necessary.

21 Ways: (2) Kiva.org

Last year, I cut back on the stuff I gave for Christmas. While my younger siblings still got books, other family members got gift certificates to various charities in leiu of gifts. Thus, this. Each day from here to 2010, I’ll be posting one charity, NGO or non-profit I can get behind in the spirit of giving.

Kiva - loans that change livesKarl Fisch is all over this one. Still, it’s one of my favorites, so I’m keeping it.

Kiva founders Matt Flannery and Jessica Jackley hatched it idea after a trip to East Africa led them to three realizations:

  • We are more connected than we realize.
  • The poor are very entrepreneurial.
  • Stories connect people in a powerful way.

These realizations led them to one of the most prosperous P2P microcredit institutions in the world. Similar to the Grameen Bank Kiva lets lenders loan amounts of $25 or more to those applicants in developing nations working to better their stations in life and their communities. What’s different about Kiva is that it acts as a network, making connections between lenders and microcredit institutions around the world. Here’s a down and dirty on how Kiva works.

According to Kiva’s most recent newsletter, after 50 months of operation, the org has raised $105,968,360 for 260,967 entrepreneurs in 173 countries.

Most astounding for me is Kiva’s 98% repayment rate.

As the loans are repaid, many of the entrepreneurs will blog about the effect the money and how their ventures are progressing. As a classroom tool, this is a way to help kids get in touch with other parts of the world and build global citizenship.

I keep at least $75 in Kiva loans.

As soon as a payment is made by an entrepreneur, I’m given the option of re-investing, donating to Kiva’s operations or withdrawing my money. I can’t imagine withdrawing my money.

Like Donors Choose, Kiva offers a gift certificate option that makes for a spiffy gift.