Author Topic: Plan your charity  (Read 3210 times)

charlie

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Plan your charity
« on: January 30, 2019, 07:52:13 PM »
You just won a $1 billion prize in the lottery. After taking the lump sum payment and paying taxes, you have $350 million. You set aside $50 million for yourself, friends and family and have $300 million left for charity.

What do you do with the money?

Mike

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Re: Plan your charity
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2019, 08:19:21 PM »
Crack baby basketball

micah

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Re: Plan your charity
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2019, 09:46:30 PM »
Aside from my previous idea, I think it would be nice to have a charity that helps other non-profits. Not necessarily the massive Komens and Shriners of the world, but the small groups that are largely volunteer run and put most of their funding into their cause.  There are 1.5 million charities in the US. Many of them do a lot of good in their local communities but they need things to run better.  I would give grants for things like upgrading and streamlining communications infrastructure at a local food bank, vehicle repair and replacement for churches that transport people in their communities, equipment and furniture at the regional shelter, or providing a funding to hire staff, consultants and legal representatives needed for a worthy organization that is growing rapidly but would stall without full time assistance.

Alternatively, or in addition too, I'd help these groups by creating a marketing agency that take non-profit clients at low costs or pro-bono to help them spread their message and raise funding. I've been working on the tech side of marketing for 9 years now and I really think it would be great if smaller non-profits had accesses to resources generally only affordable by businesses and larger charity organizations.
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ober

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Re: Plan your charity
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2019, 10:22:07 PM »
10 years ago I would say give a chunk of it to food allergy research.  But with OIT, that's become highly manageable.  I would give a lot of it to education I think.  Fuck, you give 1 million to as many schools as you can and you could prevent parents and teachers from buying basic classroom supplies for several years.  Or you fund some of the school's tech budget.  Give the kids a leg up on the world.

You could fully fund the building of at least 6 full K-8 or maybe K-12 campuses with 300 million in most districts.  I can't tell you what a difference the new school in my city has made.

charlie

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Re: Plan your charity
« Reply #4 on: January 31, 2019, 03:11:27 PM »
Aside from my previous idea, I think it would be nice to have a charity that helps other non-profits. Not necessarily the massive Komens and Shriners of the world, but the small groups that are largely volunteer run and put most of their funding into their cause.  There are 1.5 million charities in the US. Many of them do a lot of good in their local communities but they need things to run better.  I would give grants for things like upgrading and streamlining communications infrastructure at a local food bank, vehicle repair and replacement for churches that transport people in their communities, equipment and furniture at the regional shelter, or providing a funding to hire staff, consultants and legal representatives needed for a worthy organization that is growing rapidly but would stall without full time assistance.

Alternatively, or in addition too, I'd help these groups by creating a marketing agency that take non-profit clients at low costs or pro-bono to help them spread their message and raise funding. I've been working on the tech side of marketing for 9 years now and I really think it would be great if smaller non-profits had accesses to resources generally only affordable by businesses and larger charity organizations.


Shit. I like these ideas, too. You can come run my foundation when I finally fund it.

charlie

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Re: Plan your charity
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2019, 01:27:51 PM »
Ok, so here's my plan:

Start a foundation. Set up multiple wings that each have different goals.

Wing 1: Small gifts
Similar to Micah's idea that spurred this, I would set aside a certain amount of money to be invested and then use the returns to fund giving small to medium one time donations to random people for random reasons. The goal would be to find situations where a small amount would lead to a large amount of short term happiness or stress reduction. Employees at the foundation would get an allowance from this fund where they could give to whoever they wanted. So if they met someone in line at the grocery store with a good story they could give them $100 or something and get reimbursed out of their fund. We'd also take suggestions and requests from people outside the organization (like when local radio stations have people call in and nominate other people to get free christmas gifts for their kids). Nowadays we could probably also go through the millions of gofundmes and find a bunch of people who fit the bill.

Wing 2: Lead
I'd want to invest in cleaning out lead based paint and have the goal of removing all significant sources of lead poisoning in various communities. I'd probably start in the U.S. (maybe Flint if there's room for more assistance) but would mostly look for places where the money could do the most good. Even if it meant tearing down large housing developments and building new ones I think it would be worth it and there would be ancillary benefits anyway.

Wing 3: Science
I'd have one section that gives money to research that needs funding. We would focus on replication and meta-analysis studies that clarify and hone scientific knowledge rather than make big discoveries. I'd be especially interested in funding something that tried to be a source for current scientific understanding with an emphasis on accuracy and a holistic point of view rather than give results of individual studies.

Wing 4: Other
I'd probably save some for just regular charities I'd give to anyway. See this article for good examples. Something like GiveDirectly is pretty similar to Wing 1 idea except it's international and helps people who are much more poor than most Americans.

Jake

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Re: Plan your charity
« Reply #6 on: February 06, 2019, 01:25:18 AM »
I would ask my wife to handle the charity and would do what she told me.

But if I had to pick something it would have to do with nature and conservation of the land.
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