December 28, 2017
Organizations I've supported in 2017
"I have a little hope that America’s amazingly robust and wealthy civil society, which is unlike any other civil society in the world, ever, will change the situation, or will make it progress differently." - Masha Gessen, Apr 2017
Early in 2017, I committed to supporting a number of nonprofits; I wrote about the organizations I planned to support and why. I focused on civil society and on climate change organizations, with a bias towards legal groups. (I was inspired by DJ Capelis's post earlier).
2017 brought disruptions, natural triggers were amplified into logistic and human disasters. 2017 brought old fears into new focus - nuclear proliferation, civil-military relationship strains, use and control of force questions. Progress addressing climate change (emissions and decarbonization) has been disappointing. I found it difficult to sustain attention and focus on particular problems.
I did not foresee how 2017 would and did proceed.
The year also brought the incredible strength and depth of our civil society and their role in the public sphere into focus - legal organizations via lawsuits as expected, but policy and journalism organizations to educate and focus attention too. I did not know about whole classes of organizations in the policy and public education spaces just ten months ago, now I am deeply grateful for their works.
Breaking down my donations ---
By "area":
By organization:
Top organizations:
| Union of Concerned Scientists | 13.6% |
| Natural Resource Defense Council | 9.3% |
| EarthJustice | 7.3% |
| Pro Publica | 5.6% |
| Electronic Frontier Foundation | 5.0% |
| Ploughshares Fund | 4.9% |
| American Civil Liberties Union | 4.9% |
| National Immigration Law Center | 4.5% |
| World Food Program | 3.6% |
| UNICEF | 3.0% |
| Global Zero | 3.0% |
| University of Washington Climate Impacts Group | 2.9% |
| Environmental Defense Fund | 2.75% |
| Northwest Immigrant Rights Project | 2.6% |
| International Medical Corps | 2.5% |
| Rocky Mountain Institute | 2.2% |
| International Rescue Committee | 1.9% |
| Freedom of the Press Foundation (Signal) | 1.6% |
| Team Rubicon | 1.3% |
| International Refugee Assistance Program | 1.25% |
| Brennan Center for Justice | 1.2% |
| Medicines Sans Frontieres | 0.9% |
| Mercy Corps | 0.9% |
| World Resources Institute | 0.9% |
| Let America Vote | 0.6% |
| Airwars | 0.6% |
| Washington National Parks Fund | 0.6% |
For the most part, I donated to the organizations I committed to. Standout differences --
- I did not expect to have to think about weapons control and nonproliferation; and I did not know about the work of Ploughshares or Global Zero at the start of the year
- I did not know about smaller "think-tank" environmental organizations, such as Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Resources for the Future, Ceres, etc. at the start of the year
I did not include donations to political candidates or organizations above.
I also began purchasing carbon offsets this year in bulk, as a direct means to mitigate unavoidable personal emissions and in excess of what zeroth-order calculators claim. I purchased 110 metric tons of offsets from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation, from cooleffects, from the Colorado Carbon Fund, and from a private provider. (Not included above). I am not sure about the effectiveness of carbon offsets to in bulk to mitigate climate change and would appreciate any data or arguments either way. Without additional arguments, I plan to purchase offsets for ~1000 metric tons through the end of 2018.