There are more than two million nonprofits operating in the United States — roughly one for every 135 Americans. As the season of giving ramps up, how can you feel confident that your dollars will be spent responsibly? “If you find yourself considering a gift to charity that called you on the phone, you’ve already lost most of the battle to do as much good as possible,” writes Elie Hassenfeld, co-founder and co-executive director of GiveWell, an organization that highlights a few of the most effective nonprofits. “If you wait for charities to come to you, you’re just rewarding the ones that are most aggressive — not the ones that do the most good.” Read on to learn how you can avoid donor’s remorse.
[ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph]
Category: Bridging the Opportunity Divide
Chasing the Sun in the Navajo Nation
The oldest ethnic group in the United States is also the least connected.
In the Navajo Nation — the country’s largest Indian Reservation that sprawls across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — about 38 percent of homes are off the electric grid. Eagle Energy, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering disenfranchised people in this community, is trying to change that by installing or distributing solar-powered light kits across the reservation.
Eagle Energy is an offshoot of Elephant Energy, which operates in Namibia, Africa, distributing solar energy systems. In 2010, the founder of Elephant Energy, Doug Vilsack, took a trip to the Navajo Nation and discovered that many of the same energy issues present in Africa exists at home here in America. By partnering with local activists and Navajo chapters, Eagle Energy was born. The nonprofit’s staff, including its director of operations, Adrian Manygoats, is largely sourced from the local Navajo population.
To ensure that the Nation’s elderly demographic is well-served, guides who are fluent in Navajo are often used. This also makes it possible to find many of the community’s off-the-grid citizens, as only a long-time local would know where some of them live deep in the backcountry.
“One of the most shocking things about the Navajo Nation,” says Julia Alvarez, executive director of Eagle Energy, “is the extreme poverty despite the fact that it is right here in the south-central United States.”
Nearly half of the Navajo Nation lives below the federal poverty line. Years of mistreatment by the U.S. government, forced (and ineffective) integration and post-war uranium mining that lasted till the late 1980s marginalized and deteriorated the health of the population.
Today, those who live off the grid often rely on kerosene lanterns for indoor light. The cost of kerosene consumes a large portion of household budgets, while the smoke — released directly into the indoor environment — contributes to a high incidence of respiratory problems, which are exacerbated by the extreme temperature shifts between day and night in the desert climate (as evening descends, homes are shuttered against the cold, preventing ventilation).
Eagle Energy, partnering with other nonprofits, hopes to reach all of the estimated 18,000 un-electrified homes in the Navajo Nation, with its eventual goal of making these residences energy independent. It’s an ambitious mission, but every installation brings this extremely motivated group one step closer.
“We’re still a great people,” says Manygoats. “We’re still here. And I think that matters.”
If You Protect Your Smartphone With This Case, It Could Save Your Life
What’s so important about two Carnegie Mellon graduates and their small startup Lifeshel? For starters, they’re developing technology that has the potential to alter the fate of assault victims.
Lifeshel‘s first product, which will debut in 2015, is a smartphone case and app called Whistl. The case fits onto the user’s phone and has buttons on it that activate a 120 decibels alarm (sound that’s the equivalent of sitting in the front row seat at a rock concert) and contact law enforcement and emergency contacts when pressed. Accompanying the alarm is an LED strobe light meant to disorient the attack and alert help in the area. The app also takes a video and audio recording of the incident to prevent later confusion and discrepancies.
The app uses Bluetooth technology that provides location information to law-enforcement and emergency contacts (that have been programmed in), according to The Atlantic.
To safeguard against an attacker disabling it, a personalized security gesture or ID combination is needed.
Post-college, co-founders Jayon Wang and Alan Fu developed Whistl after seeing the effects of assault on their college campus, namely on their friend Lean Yingling who was attacked while running.
“[We] “knew people on campus who had been sexually assaulted, whose cases were never properly resolved because there was no evidence,” Wang tells The Atlantic. “There was no concrete data that showed when something happened and how it happened.”
Their device could change all that. So far, Lifeshel conducted a successful 20-unit trial at Carnegie Mellon, which was greeted with positive feedback from the participants.
Although there’s still much change that needs to happen in regards to the cultural mindset of sexual assault, Whistl is a step in the right direction.
MORE: Can Nail Polish Prevent Date Rape?
This Little Girl Loves Books. Like Really, Really Loves Books
Once in a blue moon, an extraordinary person comes along to remind us of the importance of books. Today, this honor belongs to a third-grader from Cleveland, who passionately shared her love of literature to local station WKYC Channel 3.
Eight-year-old Madison Reid was promoting the city’s newest Little Free Library, which is a box full of books where anyone can check out a book in exchange for another. With a flair for the dramatic (and a cheeky wink to someone off camera), Madison declares, “The world needs books! What would the world be like without books? They fuel our mind like cars and gas! The cars can’t go without gas, our brains can’t go without books. The world needs books. We need books.”
[ph]
To Madison, a world without books is like a bucket without water, a brain without knowledge, or a file cabinet without papers. She adds, “It would break my heart if one book was lost, just a page, just a word, just a letter, was gone. I would be heartbroken! What would the world do without books?!”
FieryAntidote, a commenter on Jezebel, points out that Madison is not only pretty, cute, and smart, she’s clearly getting a whole lot of intellectual stimulation at home. “Let’s hear it for parents who read with their kids and give them access to a library.”
WATCH: Watch Neil deGrasse Tyson Give a First Grader Terrific Advice About Saving the Earth
Another commenter adds, “Madison is one of my former students! This makes my heart so happy to see this. I see lots of comments about how her parents must be doing the right thing; her Mom is a single parent, so it’s a feminist AND urban education win!” According to WKYC, Madison’s mom, Tracy, is a steward for one of the area’s five Little Free Libraries.
To no one’s surprise, Madison’s passionate speech has gone viral and gave some welcomed publicity to the Little Free Library movement (there are reportedly 10,000 Little Free Libraries all over the world). Co-founder Todd Bol laughs to WKYC, “She’s a way better spokesperson than I am.”
Clearly, the world needs more book lovers like Madison.
DON’T MISS: This is Why Libraries Matter: Ferguson
Across Southern California, This Woman Is Bringing Green
Los Angeles is seeing green, and we’re not talking about not money or jealousy. Instead, we’re referring to grass, and it’s sprouting in unusual spots: vacant lots.
Across L.A. and southern California, From Lot to Spot is taking old abandoned lots and beautifying the space — turning it into community gardens and public parks.
Founder and Executive Director Viviana Franco started the nonprofit back in 2009 after witnessing the lack of public space and fresh, healthy food access in low-income communities. So, she decided to get to work turning old lots into green space and parkland.
“I founded From Lot to Spot seven years ago out of a need in my personal neighborhood Hawthorne and Inglewood ,” Franco tells Sustainable Cities Collective. “There was an abundance of vacant lots. So I went to school to learn.”
The group’s projects include the 118th & Doty Pocket Park in Hawthorne, Larch Avenue Park in Lawndale and the Stanford/Avalon Community Garden in Los Angeles, as well as a mass projection in Riverside. Working with the community, From Lot to Spot helped Riverside improve already existing parks, such as the Tequesquite Community Garden, Arlanza Community Garden and East Side Community Garden at Emerson Elementary School. These are only a few of the many projects on which the group has worked.
From Lot to Spot’s target is low-income food deserts where fresh, local food is scarce and fast-food restaurants and liquor stores thrive. Historically, many of these areas also contain large populations of Hispanics and African Americans.
The hope is that the parks and gardens will reverse the current health trends in these areas of obesity and diabetes and encourage healthy lifestyles. Parks provide a comfortable place for walks and exercise, and community gardens not only offer fresh food, but also boost the local economy, as well.
Although From Lot to Spot has grown over the past eight years, Franco has high hopes for the future as there is still much more work to be done. Her goals include the creation of 20 more farms by 2020, more partnerships with local organizations and increased access to local food in Riverside and Southern California.
“From a health and sustainability standpoint, local food is intrinsic,” Franco says to Sustainable Cities Collective. “There are no geographical limits of low access to healthy foods.”
MORE: This Startup Uses Urban Relics to Serve Up Local Food
For Kids Afraid of Broccoli, This Center Helps Squash Their Fear
You’ve heard about the importance of literacy for reading, for finances (“financial literacy”), and maybe even for math — aka, numeracy — but what about food literacy?
The Food Literacy Center, a nonprofit in Sacramento, Calif., is inspiring kids to become knowledgeable about food in the hopes that they’ll develop life long healthy eating habits.
It opened its doors three years ago, offering classes on cooking and all-around vegetable know-how to children and has become so popular that now, dozens of volunteers work alongside its four full-time employees — reaching 2,400 kids at public libraries, after-school programs and other nonprofits. It specializes in reaching low-income kids and those who qualify for free and reduced lunch. These families often can’t afford fresh produce, leaving their kids inexperienced in everything from carrots to kohlrabi.
At the Food Literacy Center, they learn such facts as how to distinguish fruits — including the frequently misidentified bell pepper — and why whole fruits are better for them than juices and jellies.
The founder of the center, Amber Stott, tells the Sacramento Bee, “Because kids’ eating habits haven’t been firmly formed yet, we have a great opportunity to create healthy eaters, to help these kids become food adventurers and build habits that will last a lifetime.”
The effect of fruit and veggie literacy often extends to the kids’ parents. Evonne Fisher, the mother of a seven-year-old participating in the program, says that before her daughter’s food lessons, neither of them were culinary adventurers. “Before Food Literacy, if I was scared of how a certain food looked, I wouldn’t try it,” she says. “But this has really opened me up. I never would have tried a persimmon before, and now? I love them.”
MORE: This Innovative Idea Brings Produce Directly to Low-Income Neighborhoods
The Software That Could Enable Drones to Go Mainstream
The skies may soon be filled with more than birds, insects and planes.
Airware, a startup gathering rapid momentum, has invented what MIT News calls, “the DOS of drones.” In other words, the company has created a reliable base hardware on which other businesses can customize and expand — giving them the ability to customize drone sensors, cameras and communication devices, for example, taking drones out of the military and into everyday society.
The Linux-based autopilot device c an be as universal to drones as Intel and Microsoft’s DOS were to the progression of computers.
CEO and founder Jonathan Downey says to ABC, “I think nobody understood all of the different apps that would be on your phone before there was a platform like Android or IOS.”
Airware’s platform handles the basic software and hardware, as well as the cloud services that host and transmit the data the drones collect. Before the advent of this new invention, applying different uses to drones took a lot of work and time, but this software eliminates the process.
“In 2011, we identified a significant gap in the market,” he said. “Military autopilots were too inflexible and expensive and hobbyist projects weren’t safe or reliable enough for commercial use.”
Since capitalizing on this ‘gap in the market,’ Airware has gathered significant funding ($25 million in one instance on top of the $40 million already invested) from a variety of investors, including G.E., who hope to use the drones for uses such as the collection of data on defunct wind turbines or agriculture crop management.
This innovation also bears good news to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), who are set to vote on commercial drone usage in 2015. Downey thinks having an umbrella platform for all commercial drones will gather favor in the decision.
“Rather than see a world where there’s 500 drones flying overhead, and every drone has different software and electronics, it’s good for the FAA if all of them had reliable and common hardware and software,” he says.
MORE: How the America of Tomorrow Will Look
A Hot Commodity on the Job Market: Nerds
Looking for a nerd? Although this sounds like a strange commodity, on HourlyNerd.com, they’re abundant and ready to hire for the “odd jobs” of the consulting world. With a tough, changing job market, this startup is connecting employers with capable MBAs to work on projects that otherwise couldn’t be funded.
This idea started back in 2013 when four Harvard Business School students decided to turn a class project into a business. They realized that it was difficult for graduates with MBAs to find work, as well as hard for small businesses to afford consulting advice and help. So the students started a business where MBAs can find jobs in a wide range of areas, including analyses of competitors or starting social media sites for non-profits.
Freelancing and a master in business administration aren’t usually associated, but with the changing work environment, which emphasizes individuals with unique, specific skill sets, it’s not such a crazy notion. With just a year under its belt, HourlyNerd already boasts 32 employees who work with a multitude of businesses to find work for around 8,000 MBA freelancers.
HourlyNerds’ service benefits both employer and employee. The website is a place where MBAs can market their own individual skill sets. Furthermore, the hours are very flexible, allowing workers to create their own schedule. At the same time, employers are receiving valuable work at a low long-term cost.
Services offered by HourlyNerd include interviews with employers to match their needs to specific workers, help creating project proposals and figuring out appropriate prices. For big projects, there is even a competition which ensures top quality work. Based on skill set and proposals, employers choose the best candidate and work with them to agree on a cost.
Peter Maglathlin is one of the founders of HourlyNerd and cites the flexibility and adaptability of the programs and the workers as a major attraction for employers.
“What we have established is an open marketplace,” Maglathlin tells National Journal. “The cost of bringing on a full-time employee right now is very, very high. Companies are searching for other ways to grow aside from hiring a person full time. We’re giving companies that option.”
MORE: Why More Cities Are Creating Innovation Labs
The Restaurant That Serves a Second Chance to Kids Who Need It Most
A hot, new restaurant is coming to downtown Dallas early next year. But Café Momentum does more than just serve food.
As Good News Network reports, the nonprofit restaurant will be staffed by boys and young men that have served time at the Dallas County juvenile detention center.
According to the Christian Science Monitor, the new restaurant will allow 30 to 35 formerly incarcerated youths to take part in a 12-month internship that pays $10 an hour (well-above state minimum wage), learning the ins and outs of the restaurant business, such as food preparation, assisting chefs, waiting tables, and washing dishes. They interns will also take classes on financial literacy, anger management, art and social media.
MORE: 5 States’ Innovative Plans to Keep People From Behind Bars
The Café Momentum program started off as a pop-up restaurant concept in 2011, and more than 40 dinners have been held since. These once-monthly events are held in restaurants around the city, where patrons dine on a gourmet meal designed by a popular chef, with food prepared and served by the formerly incarcerated youths. CS Monitor notes that Café Momentum’s dinners usually sell out — bringing in $8,000 to $10,000 each in ticket sales and donations.
The program is so much more than giving these kids a job; it’s an opportunity for them to stay out of the prison system. Co-founder Chad Houser (who will also serve as executive chef at the new permanent restaurant) says in the video below that while the recidivism rate for juvenile offenders in the state of Texas is 47 percent, of the 160 kids he’s worked in the last three years, their recidivism rate is only 11 percent.
“[This] means that in a little over three years we’ve saved Dallas county taxpayers almost $8 million,” Houser says. “That’s almost $130 million in deferred in lifetime savings from keeping them away from being career criminals. Think about all the lives that could be changed, all the good that could be done in this community with that money.”
DON’T MISS: The Legislation That Has the Potential to Reduce Youth Recidivism in California
The Harry Potter Producer That Gave Up The Movie Business to Help Families with Sick Children
While working as an associate producer on the film “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” Paula DuPré Pesman received a phone call from an organization that grants wishes to critically ill kids. The child’s wish? To see the movie about the boy wizard before she died.
Presman’s initial reaction was that it was impossible. But in part because her own husband, Curt, was struggling with colon cancer at the time, she was determined to make it happen.
“We figured out a way to do a rough cut,” Pesman tells the Denver Post. “We got a screening room in San Francisco. We did a screening for this little girl, Gillian. Her picture hangs over my desk…She shot me out of a cannon, basically. It became my reason to go to work.”
After granting that wish, Pesman couldn’t stop there. She continued to make the dreams of sick kids come true with visits to the Harry Potter film set and screenings. Once, she mentioned to a sick child’s father that he must have a lot of friends helping him out. “He said, ‘Are you kidding?'” Pesman recalls. “We’re living a parent’s worst nightmare. People don’t know what to say or do, so they don’t do anything.”
So Pesman made helping such kids and their families her full-time mission. “I was walking away from something I loved. I loved working on films. I loved supporting the team. And I worked 16 years for the nicest company. You don’t walk away from a perfect job.”
But Pesman did, leaving the film industry to start There With Care out of her home in Boulder, Colo. The nonprofit takes care of every conceivable need that families of critically-ill children struggle with.
Volunteers make sure these families’ refrigerators are stocked and that they don’t run out of toilet paper. They deep-clean homes for kids coming home from the hospital with weakened immune systems, and they drive families to doctors’ appointments so the parents can provide comfort during the ride. Most importantly, the volunteers listen at a time when friends can turn away out of fear and shock about the situation.
Pesman runs the nonprofit full time — but she hasn’t completely stayed away from movie-making. She’s worked with Colorado filmmakers on such projects as “The Cove,” the 2009 Oscar nominee for best feature documentary, and last year’s Emmy-winning “Chasing Ice.”
“I was a control freak as a producer,” Pesman says. “I had to get everything done, everything perfect. I don’t do that anymore. I think Curt being sick changed all of that for me. I didn’t have a choice anymore. I saw how quickly things could change and be taken from you. That’s probably why I love documentary so much. You think you’re making this movie and you’re not. You’re making this one.”
MORE: Why Every American Should Read Harry Potter