Just a brief recommendation. Two great organizations, Heifer International and Green Mountain Coffee, have collaborated on a coffee blend you can buy from Green Mountain's website. A press release on the partnership is here.
Apart from the considerable social positives of this product, it also tastes good. It's relatively light and balanced, and has a bit of natural sweetness. The price is competitive. As consumer products go, you could do a lot worse.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's health grants now exceed the budget of the World Health Organization, according to this article in Financial Times.
I recommend you check out Direct Relief, based in Santa Barbara, California. This charity, operating out of a single warehouse, provides free emergency medical supplies to health organizations around the world.
The American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are also organizations that deserve your support.
I finally tracked down a quote I first heard a few years ago at a conference of financial leaders of religious institutions. A nun was giving a speech on the Church's role in economic life, and said, with heavy emphasis: "we...are on the side...of the poor."
I have wondered about this phrase. Her delivery suggested that she was quoting, but I didn't know the source. The earliest use of it I can find is from an article by Dorothy Day from 1950:
"It is not avoiding the question, and it is being eminently realistic and practical to repeat, to affirm, that we are on the side of the poor. And who would not want to be?"
In 1999 Duncan MacLaren, secretary-general of the Catholic charity Caritas Internationalis, echoed Day's line:
"You are unlikely to find a government or International Monetary Fund official who would be able to distinguish scripture from a Morris West novel, but those values we stand for say something truthful about the human condition which resonates with everyone. It also says whose side we are on - the side of the poor and marginalised, the ones excluded by society but loved by God. A major reason why we are taken seriously by what people in the World Bank like to call the 'real world' is because they know what we stand for."
A colleague who has spent a great deal of time in developing countries recommends Heifer International, which gives livestock and training to needy people worldwide. A recent Barron's article on the organization is here.
Here is a list of tsunami charities recommended by the American Institute of Philanthropy and the Better Business Bureau.
The tsunamis have come and gone, but in the aftermath there is now a massive medical crisis around the Indian Ocean. Children, disproportionately affected by the initial disaster, will also be more vulnerable to the host of diseases that inevitably follow something like this.
Direct Relief is based in Santa Barbara, and provides primarily medicines and other supplies to disaster-stricken areas.
While the international relief effort is gearing up, Doctors Without Borders already has put teams on the ground and is flying in more doctors and other medical specialists tomorrow.
More information on the situation and charities that are helping is here.
I strongly recommend you check out any organization you're planning to give to using Charity Navigator.
Also this blog, which is run out of Asia, is a good portal for up-to-date information about the crisis.
Some extraordinary fortunes were made in Silicon Valley in the 1990s. Now, dissatisfied with existing charitable options, some of those same entrepreneurs are devoting their energy to finding better ways to do philanthropy.
Jeff Skoll, one of the founders of eBay, has a foundation that is making grants to train MBAs in sustainable business practices, and gives an award for social entrepreneurship.
Donna Dubinsky, who co-invented the Palm Pilot, has been a major supporter of Accion International, an innovative microlending organization.
There is a also a terrific organization called CharityFocus. Founded in 1999 by a group of Silicon Valley professionals, this organization provides web services and technical assistance to non-profits everywhere. One odd thing about them, or about the era in which they were founded: CharityFocus actually took over a for-profit dot-com in 2002...
