Do you ever waver about what to do when you see someone standing on the side of the road with a sign asking for some kind of help? I'll skip the internal and external debates to tell you what my wife and I currently do.
1. At the smallest scale, we keep a handful of $10 McDonald's gift cards in the driver's side pocket door of our cars, suitable for handing out our windows quickly when we are moved to do so. [Reference Chris Arnade and his book 'Dignity' and various articles he's written about Mcdonalds, eg. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mcdonalds-as-america-a-c...]
2. One step up from there, my wife puts together gallon zip-loc bags with basics, e.g. water bottle, socks, toothbrush/paste, protein bars, etc. Sometimes also McDonald's cards. These get handed out in the same fashion as above.
3. I've got friends who do this at the scale of keeping 50lb bags of rice, beans, and other staple foods, binning them out in 1-2 week portions, and delivering them, along with similar-sized portions of e.g. potatoes, carrots, onions, etc to needy families they know. They deliberately cultivate not only the giving of things, but the development of relationships with those in need (which is all of us, sooner or later.) We're looking at how to step up to this level.
I wonder if you have any spare/used/old ThinkPad/laptop that you can give to me for free? It will be life changing for me!
I'm currently really struggling in life (I barely eat once a day at the moment) but I'm really passionate about Linux/free software. So, a free laptop could really help me get local jobs (sysadmin or web developer for SMEs), put food on the table, & pay rent! Thank you!
I wonder if someone who is both on HN and local to you has a spare laptop. Can you say where you are located, e.g country and city?
I'm currently in Balikpapan (city), Indonesia (country).
Thank you!
If you're a software engineer in the US, you're earning _way_ more than most people in the world, and you can comfortable donate a large chunk of your income to help people (including non-human people) who are much worse off than you.
So I have worked on: -- making free software viable (late 80s/mid 90s) -- making Internet access available to non-businesses (late 80s/mid 90s) -- reducing drug dosage (bad for people, bad for the water supply) (mid 00s) -- Distributed solar thermal with storage (early 10s) -- Climate repair (starting 20s)
Alan Kay said ""The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Less grandiosely, I work on the future I wish to live in.
bookofjoe@gmail.com
Having a budget for donations is really nice because it makes giving away money much easier. In my mental model this is simply not my money, but I can decide where it goes. This also makes spontaneous donations much easier. When the Ukraine war broke out and my employer set up a donation matching program, giving away 2000€ didn't require second thoughts from me.
Scaling your donations with your salary is nice because it gives you a reason to ask for higher salary besides becoming even richer.
With a software engineering salary, this is also enough money to support multiple organizations with a significant amount of money each. Discovering new organizations that do cool stuff and reading the occasional newsletter with positive news, knowing that your money supported that outcome, is really nice.
I give the bulk of it to the Against Malaria Foundation, drawing from the effective altruism idea. They distribute mosquito nets and score very high in the (years of "healthy" life saved)/dollar metric. The rest goes to various NGOs around human rights, civil liberties, environmental protection, journalism, and the FOSS/donationware that I use.
Of course we all have selfish behaviors, but I think it's good to generally put others before yourself.
And don't just give food or money to the homeless; give them your time. Take them out to eat. Cultivate a relationship with the underbelly of your city. Look out for your friends as well; make sure you understand their needs and desires, and find ways to help them be successful in meeting those needs.
The most important thing you can do with success is share it with others.
Most, if not, all of these students come from a home where no one holds a college degree or even a stable source of income. I didn't comprehend the impact I could have just by showing up every week, being present, and taking an active interest in who these teens were as people.
If you have the time, I would highly recommend volunteering with organizations like this. It changed my life.
[0] https://riseup.net/en/donate
About a year and half ago I decided to start volunteer with Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. (I been out of the Marines for about 10 years.) For reason out of my control I'm now the President of the Colorado chapter.
Let me know if any wants to come to the Gold Tournament or volunteer. ;)
Money is great, but volunteering is really giving back.
As a lawyer, look for a volunteer lawyer association near you; this could be very meaningful, you can help with less skil required tasks like case intake.
More generally; do you have hobbies you can teach others how to do, likely fun for you too.(ie, teach, advise, or be involved at a local school, college, special needs, or veterans program)
--- For me --
I'm a software engineer, so I've worked tech talks, conferences, and take extra initiative to teach best practices at work or when doing open source development.
but love to change the pace by working physically. This is building, gardening, or moving heavy objects. I'm also the car guru in my extended family, I advise and sometimes assist repairing.
I'm athletic. I used to advise a college club I graduated from (I also help fundraising efforts). I play tennis once a year with a special needs program.
Volunteer and Charity. I target volunteering once a month and contributing 10% of my income to charity (and yes, I tax deduct them l
I would investigate spiritual matters and if you are willing to believe, love God.
* $$$ donation to charities I have done some research on. I try to keep this limited in number, because I think X going to N charities is less of an impact than 5X going to N/5 charities over years.
* I try to highlight folks who are less prominent than I am. (I'm not that prominent, but do have access to a couple of platforms, so I lend them to others.)
* I volunteer. In particular, I help organize a local tech meetup, mostly wrangling speakers. I know folks learn from the meetup and make career connections, some of which impact their life. (I also volunteer in other, less tech related, ways.)
I'm currently really struggling in life (I barely eat once a day at the moment) but I'm really passionate about Linux/free software. So, it will be cool if I can contact you & talk about my situation in details. Your help might be life changing for me!
yonibot, I hope you see this post & reply to it! thank you!
Other than that I just try to do small things daily to make the world a better place. Holding the door for someone, thanking them for doing something, etc... may not add up to a lot but I'm hoping that I can help everyone a small amount.
Thanks to everyone who has posted—lots of great ideas here for additional effective ways to give back.
* Fix bugs on open source projects.
* Donate to open source projects that mattered to you.
* Donate to reputable nonprofit.
Don't neglect yourself though. But on your own mask before helping others.
In some more socialist countries, the "legal minimum" is choosing to live off welfare and not working/paying taxes at all.
It makes more sense to me to address the problem at the root, so I’m a member of several socialist organizations that are trying in various ways to build towards an alternative mode of organizing society.