Category: Philanthropy and Volunteering

Meterstones, 2023

Small accomplishments during the year, not otherwise accounted for. Not major milestones, but bigger than inchstones.

  • Served as a teacher’s aide for English Empowerment Center for three terms.
  • Reorganized the space behind my desk to be more Zoom-worthy. Artificial backgrounds are just evil, even if you have a green screen.
  • Reached level 6 of WaniKani.
  • Along with my various community science projects, I pulled-chopped-yanked-sawed a lot of non-native invasives. All told, I logged almost 300 service hours for Virginia Master Naturalists, and I’m three-fourths of the way to 1000 hours of service. On one survey trip, I found a really interesting parasitic fungus of alder trees that causes a gall-like response.

Oh! And something I stopped doing: I retired from NPR, closing the books on a 42-year career in software development.

My year in contributions, 2023

I finished my Giving Tuesday list a little early this year.

What organizations are worthy of support? Please give some consideration to this list.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2023.

My year in contributions, 2022

Looking for somewhere to spend that Hanukkah gelt (yes, I know, but just imagine)?

What organizations are worthy of support? Please give some consideration to this list.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2022.

My year in contributions, 2021

There are a few hours left in the giving year.

(Who will win the dubious prize of last begging e-mail of the year? Judges are monitoring my inbox hourly.)

What organizations are worthy of support? Consider this list as some recommendations from me.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2021. Limited travel and in-person work this year, so my out-of-pocket expenses continue to be down.

My year in contributions, 2020

There not much time before the window closes on tax-deductible contributions for the year. What organizations are worthy of support? Consider this list as some recommendations from me.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2020. Limited travel and in-person work this year, so my out-of-pocket expenses were down. But, thanks to a mini-windfall, I was able to surge my dollar contributions and generally bump up contribution levels.

Some assembly required

A Fairfax Master Naturalists project that I could work from my desk: I cleaned up the automated transcription of a video presentation on climate change, presented by Rachel Licker to Master Naturalists in 2014. Dr. Licker speaks softly, and the AI performing the transcription often made a hash of things. My favorite machine blunder was pursue potations for precipitation, followed closely by 4 percent the patients for for precipitation.

My year in contributions, 2019

‘Tis the season when we are beset by requests for contributions. What organizations are worthy of support? Consider this list as some recommendations from me.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2019.

My year in contributions, 2018

Did you have a good year this year? Great! Please consider sharing some of that good fortune with one of these organizations. (If you had a bad year, I’m sorry.)

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2018.

A milestone: 7

I happened to be checking a report and discovered that I had recently passed an important (to me) milestone with Learning Ally (formerly Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic, formerly Recording for the Blind): 2,000 volunteer hours, the equivalent of one year of 40 hours/week service. It took me almost 24 years to get there, and I’m pretty chuffed about it.

I started with open reel analog recording, made the transition to digital, and moved into virtual studio recording. And the new editions of textbooks keep coming.

On to 2,500 hours!

My year in contributions, 2017

If you’re looking for a last-minute contribution to make—maybe to round up your tax-deductible total for the year—I have… some suggestions.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2017.

My year in contributions, 2016

It’s too late for tax season, but I still encourage you to support the good work that these organizations are doing.

These are the groups and projects to which I gave coin (generally tax-deductible), property, and/or effort in 2016.

Donations

Applying market-oriented techniques to allocate resources where there is no market: how can we get food bank donations to the charities that need them most? Sendhil Mullainathan summarizes a points-based approach.

Markets report such dispersed information in the form of prices. Feeding America, for example, was surprised to see pasta at one point trading for 116 times the price of fresh vegetables. That was revealing data. In hindsight, it made sense: Vegetables spoil rapidly, which is why food companies donated them freely; pasta, with its longer shelf life, was a rarer commodity, as far as donations go.