Category Archives: Philanthropy

Calling on the kindness of strangers.

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(This might not be the best title, since I feel like I’ve gotten to know a bunch of you here through this here series of tubes!)
It’s the holiday spending season, and I wanted to point you toward a use of your money that won’t translate into more toys on your floor. You can sponsor a runner in this Sunday’s Honolulu who is running to support TAPS, an organization providing support to the families of those who die on active duty in the armed forces. TAPS is accepting general donations, but you can also sponsor a particular runner on Team TAPS.
Mike Dunford (from whom I found out about this) explains:

A death in the family is a massive tragedy, and creates a great deal of upheaval in the lives of those left behind. For the families of active duty troops, this disruption is even more massive. Besides dealing with the loss, the families frequently need to move – often to someplace where they haven’t lived for years (if at all, in the case of the children). TAPS provides many forms of assistance to the families of the fallen, from grief counseling to aid with the day-to-day problems involved in re-establishing some form of normal life. The organization is not government funded, and relies on donations to do its work.

Thanks in advance for your kindness. It really can make a difference.

Sb/DonorsChoose fundraiser preliminary result.

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Between the moment the drive kicked off on June 15 and the moment it closed last night, here’s what generous ScienceBlogs readers accomplished:

  • 195 of you made donations.
  • Together, those donations added up to $16,097.27.
  • You also helped 4 of the 19 challenges meet their goals, securing an additional 10% of the totals raised in those challenges ($841.53) from DonorsChoose.
  • Thus, with the $10,000 match from SEED, you’ve raised $26,938.80 to help students and teachers get what they need to make education happen.

That’s pretty awesome! We thank you and the teachers and kids thank you.
Don’t forget: If you want to be in the drawing for the fabulous prizes, forward your email confirmation from DonorsChoose it to: sb.donorschoose.bonanza@gmail.com This is your contest entry. Starting July 5, we’ll select random entries and keep going till we’ve given away all the prizes.

Last day for Sb/DonorsChoose drive: help make a difference!

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ScienceBlogs readers have raised $14,913.09 to help science teachers get the materials they need for engaging explorations of magnets, marine biology, electricity, and evolution. You’ve helped fund classroom equipment and field trips. You’ve helped stack the deck toward a future where fewer people are scared by science and more people are involved in conversations about science.
But we have the rest of today to do just a bit more.
DonorsChoose is generously rewarding bloggers who meet their Bloggers Challenge goals with DonorsChoose gift certificates worth 10% of the total amount they raise. These aren’t gift certificates they can spend on CDs or fancy dinners or airplane tickets — they’re only good for funding more teachers’ proposals at DonorsChoose. Luckily, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do here.
Most of us with bloggers challenges in this drive set our goals too high. (This is not to suggest at all that we overestimated you or that you folks let us down — we just hadn’t done a drive like this before, so we were pulling numbers out of the air.) But there are a few challenges that I think we can — and should — meet. Really, they’re so close, it would be a pity not to fund them. Here’s the rundown:

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Last leg of Sb/DonorsChoose drive: maximizing our impact.

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It’s been two weeks since we kicked off our first ever ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose drive to raise money for math and science classrooms. In that time, 172 generous readers have donated a total of $13,685.14 and SEED has kicked in $10,000.
But there are three days left of the drive, and I know you all have some greatness left in you.
Here’s the deal: Of the 19 blogs participating in this drive, only Pharyngula reached its challenge goal. This would be no big deal if we were just concerned with interblog bragging rights. But, there’s more at stake here: the good people at DonorsChoose are kicking in another 10% of the funds raised for each compeleted challenge. The Pharynguloids raised $6257.51, so DonorsChoose is giving PZ $625.75 to fund more teachers’ proposals.
In other words, for the last three days of the drive, we need to focus on the bloggers with challenges that are closest to completion so we can get additional money from DonorsChoose and do even more good.
Details of the strategy (plus some current stats) below the fold.

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Not another Sb/DonorsChoose attack ad!

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This time they’re going after Tara. So sad that a fundraiser would inspire such an underhanded attack. Someone must be feeling very desperate!
* * * * *
Reading Aetiology was fun — but suddenly I was washing my hands obsessively, sending back rare hamburgers at restaurants, and turning down rest-stop guitar-string tattoos. My friends want to know what happened to the happy-go-lucky guy I used to be.
That blog turned out to be a vector of buzz-kill.
I plan to protect my kids from the germ theory of disease.

Philanthropy gets ugly, as the script for a Sb/DonorsChoose attack ad is discovered.

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I should have known it would come to this.

A week into our ScienceBlogs/DonorsChoose drive to raise money for schools, the warm spirit of pan-science-harmony has started to erode.
An anonymous source has come into possession of the text of an attack ad targeting our biological brethren and sistern. I hate to even give a story like this oxygen, but in the interests of full disclosure, I reproduce the ad below the fold.

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