This year, in a change from years’ past, most of the votes I got for Readers’ Choice charities were general, not specific. The majority of comments I received fell into one of two camps: food pantries, and no-kill animal shelters.  Well, those are both causes I support, too.  So in a departure from past years, instead of putting a poll in this space, I’m going to make a $25 donation each to The Greater Chicago Food Depository, and PAWS Chicago.  Both are awesome organizations, four-star rated on Charity Navigator, with a proven track record. I’m delighted to support them both.

Frankly, it’s always sort of troubled me how to choose among the many great organizations recommended by people, particularly when so many have similar missions and I’m not in a good position to evaluate their efficacy. This way, I hope, I’m honoring the spirit of what people recommended, and giving to two very worthy and reputable organizations.

So thank you again, for your support and your enthusiasm for this weird little project of mine. I love doing it, I love hearing from you, and I can’t wait to do it again next year. Happy Holidays!

I recently read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (the whole Kingsolver canon is available for Kindle download through our library, and this one weirdly had no wait list) and I liked it way more than I expected to.  I’m not quite ready to cast aside this urban life and take up farming myself, but in reading it I *was* reminded anew how many city-dwellers, poor city-dwellers in particular, are entirely removed from access to fresh healthy foods, let alone foods locally grown.

The concept of a food desert isn’t a new one, but it’s apt in many Chicago neighborhoods. Many of us struggle to “eat healthy;” imagine how much harder that would be if you lived in an area where the only places to buy food are corner stores and maybe a Walgreens.

Growing Power is technically a national nonprofit, but most of their work is in the Midwest, and I know them for their work in Chicago.  The organization’s mission is to create what it calls Community Food Systems.  In the organization’s words:

these systems provide high-quality, safe, healthy, affordable food for all residents in the community. Growing Power develops Community Food Centers, as a key component of Community Food Systems, through training, active demonstration, outreach, and technical assistance.

In Chicago, that means several urban farms that train community members (including youth, who have a heck of a time finding summer jobs to keep them off the streets) in farming, so that their communities have access to fresh, healthy, affordable food regardless of their economic circumstances.  Growing Power’s farms sell to restaurants and grocery stores, and have recently started providing food to Chicago Public Schools (a HUGE deal, as you know if you have any experience with the microwaved-in-plastic, highly processed food served in most school lunch programs.)

Particularly compelling to me is Growing Power’s work in the community that used to be Cabrini Green, one of the most notorious public housing high rises in a city full of notorious public housing high rises.  As the Cabrini buildings started coming down and the area redeveloped as mixed-income housing, the neighborhood changed so quickly (picture an enormous whole foods and rei being built virtually across the street and you’ll have an idea) that generations of the neighborhood’s residents, and the redevelopment’s mixed-income ideals, threaten to be subsumed by the pace of gentrification. Since 2003, Growing Power has operated a large and vibrant community garden on a patch of land that used to be part of Cabrini:

the overarching goal of the community garden is to help facilitate a thriving diverse community and ensuring that present residents are not cast aside in this process of transformation. . . the farm empowers neighborhood youth and residents to have increased economic opportunities through access to organic produce, nutritional education, and work-force training.

Cool, right?  Will Allen, Growing Power’s “Farmer in Chief”, is kind of a big deal- he’s a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and a James Beard Award winner. Guy knows his stuff. But for me, it’s the micro, community-level focus of Growing Power that is so compelling. They actually make a fair amount of their operating budget by selling their produce, so strictly speaking they are not entirely dependent on donations. But I think their work is so cool, and their mission so important, that I’m happy to feature them here, and to help in some small way.

No GMMA extravaganza would be complete without an appearance by this next organization:

Like the Cara Program, the Women’s Treatment Center takes a problem — in this case, addiction — and provides concrete, essential services to help women address it.  There are thousands of children in the Chicago area alone whose parents struggle with drug addiction.  For women with children, beating drug addiction is not just about beating the substance- it’s about figuring out who is going to care for your children while you do, and repairing your relationship with them as you get better.

The mission of The Women’s Treatment Center is “to provide women with a continuum of care, recovery tools, and parenting skills to maintain a sober lifestyle as they rebuild their lives and mend the bonds with their families.”

TWTC provides essential medical, mental health, and social services in a setting that can accommodate children in residential treatment.  That means that while they are receiving treatment, mothers receive parenting classes and guidance, and are able to continue to build and repair relationships with their children, rather than being separated from them for weeks or months at a time.  TWTC is also one of the few facilities in the  country that has a crisis nursery, which can provide 24-hour care for a woman’s children when she is unable to care for them herself.  This reduces one of the major barriers to treatment, as a woman can enter detox knowing that her children are safe, well cared for, and close.

In short, The Women’s Treatment Center is committed to helping women conquer substance abuse while honoring, protecting, and building essential family relationships.  Its programs address the parallel issues of treating substance abuse and taking proactive steps to prevent child abuse and neglect.  It’s an important place, and I’m happy to support them every year.  Thank you all for helping, too.

I have spent a lot of my life working with various populations that are categorized as “at risk.” At risk youth in an education setting, at risk adults struggling with addiction, depression, and crippling poverty; at risk individuals who are struggling to get back on their feet after periods of incarceration. It is easy enough to say that folks out to pull themselves together and get a job. But it is so, so hard to do that when you’re staring 100 different road blocks in the face. It’s hard to get a retail job if you read at a 4th grade level. It’s hard to land a janitorial position if you’ve never been on a job interview. It’s tough to get any on-the-books employment if you don’t have an address to put on your resume because you’re homeless.

The Cara Program is a proven, step-by-step program that prepares adults who have struggled with homeless, poverty, incarceration, and other challenges not just to enter but to succeed in the workforce.  Human services agencies all over Chicago refer people to the program who they believe are ready to take on the serious work of becoming job-ready (including strict selection criteria that includes a phone interview and a drug test.)  The Cara Program is probably best described in its website’s own words:

We don’t shield students from the realities they will face in the workplace; rather, we recreate the workplace here at The Cara Program.  We deploy an experiential training approach that reaches beyond what we teach in the classroom and extends into the very fabric of every student’s experience at The Cara Program.  We give them a manager, a work team, and responsibility.  We make them accountable to themselves, accountable to their team, and accountable to the Cara community at large.

Students receive training in job readiness with classes like professionalism, customer satisfaction, computer skills, and interviewing competency.  What makes the Cara Program so cool, and so effective, is that students simultaneously receive wrap around services from career and life coaches, who help students address their own individual barriers to job readiness (such as housing stability and access to child care).
Students have the opportunity to participate in a program-sponsored internship, and get job placement services with employer partners.  This part is key, too: the program doesn’t just get students *a* job, it strives to get them a good, living-wage job:

Rather than finding ‘just any job’ for our students, The Cara Program commits to working with companies that offer a competitive combination of wages and benefits.  We have formal standards in place for evaluating what qualifies as a ‘quality job’ (where quality is measured by exceeding a certain number of guaranteed hours worked, wage, availability of benefits  and permanency in the position). As a result, our employed students’ current average starting wage is $11.09/ hour at an average of 39 hours/ week.

We partner with companies that find real value in working with The Cara Program to fill their entry-level positions.  Companies typically tell us that Cara students are, on the whole, more motivated and more prepared for their entry-level positions than are non-Cara candidates.

The program’s numbers are startling for their success: 72% of program graduates not only land a job, but still have that job a year later.  Anyone who has worked with adults struggling to become attached to the workforce will tell you: it’s job retention that is the kicker, and it is incredibly difficult to obtain.  The Cara Program’s successes are truly remarkable.  And on top of that, Charity Navigator gives The Cara Program a 4-star rating, reserved for those organizations that exemplify transparency, accountability, and sound financial practices.

I’m super excited to feature this organization, and hope that many of you will help me out with your comments!

For anyone who may be new, here is how this works: each day this week I will feature a different charitable organization to which I had already planned to give money at the holidays. I am committing to give each featured organization a minimum $25 donation. Here is the twist: I invite everyone to read about the charity and, for every comment that I receive on the post, I’ll donate an additional 50 cents. Comments will remain open until the next day’s post goes up. You get to give money to charity, without having to spend any! Fun, right?

I like to use this space to feature smaller and local charities that do important work in my community. It’s not that I don’t also appreciate and support the work of much larger charities – I certainly do – but in every community there are smaller organizations filling real need, and I love being able to shine a small light on some of those great organizations.

Your comment need not say anything in particular (I have had many people just say “comment!” every year, and that’s fine!) but if you want, you can tell me a little about one of YOUR favorite charities. On Friday, I’ll select five charities that other people have mentioned and set up a poll. The charity that gets the most votes will get a $50 donation from me.

So! Let’s do this. Tell your friends, tell your blog and your Twitter stream, tell the random person you see on the street. Strain my wallet. Lets do some good things for people who really need it at this time of year.

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The first organization I’m featuring this year is unapologetically inspired by the work of one Emily Cassee, who took what started as a partnership with Huggies and ran with it, independently raising money for a local diaper bank.

Today, I feature a diaper bank that is local to me: Bundle of Joy.

As you may know, food stamps and other public assistance do not cover the purchase of diapers, and families are often driven to extreme lengths to try to conserve and reuse disposable diapers. Lack of access to clean diapers, in addition to causing families stress and embarrassment, is linked to real health problems.  No baby deserves that. Diapers are one of the first items to be snapped up at food pantries; they’re hard to keep on shelves.

Bundle of Joy was started by parents who were inspired to act after learning about diaper need in the area. They donate diapers to food pantries and child care agencies throughout the city. Bundle of Joy is 100% volunteer-based, meaning 100% of all donations go directly to purchasing diapers for families in need. That’s pretty remarkable.

So get to it! Leave a comment, and I’ll donate 50 cents to Bundle of Joy. Let’s help some families in need this holiday season.

(Side note: do you know about justgive.org? It’s like online shopping for charitable donations.  I was able to put all my donations in one basket and pay in one transaction.  Easy-peasy.  Highly recommend.)

This was a record-breaking year for GMMA- thanks to you all, some really deserving organizations received over $250 of my hard-earned money at a time when the need is tremendous.  Thank you for participating, thank you for making me feel all warm and fuzzy about this community, thank you for keeping me accountable and honest and pushing me to do the right thing when it comes to philanthropic giving.  I can’t wait to do it again next year.

And with that, I shall sign off until after Christmas.  Hope everyone has a lovely holiday.

I had kind of a lousy day yesterday, frankly, but reading about your favorite charities really helped lift me out of my funk.  In researching your charities I learned some more about some I was already familiar with, and discovered some really amazing organizations for the first time.

So now it’s time for the poll!  I have selected five organizations from the ones you nominated.  There’s a little information about each of them below, followed by a poll.  The organization that receives the most votes in the poll will receive a $50 donation from me.

And now, for the finalists!

WATCH:  “WATCH’s mission is to make the justice system more effective and responsive in handling cases of violence against women and children, and to create a more informed and involved public.”  A model for court monitoring programs around the country, trained WATCH volunteers monitor over 5,000 hearings each year.

Donors Choose: A fan favorite (over a dozen nominations!) Donors Choose allows donors to search through thousands of small, classroom-based education projects seeking funding.  Individual donors this way fund individual education projects in low-income classrooms around the country.  The organization was just selected as one of Oprah’s favorite things (whoa)- it’s come a long way since I was a teacher in a Donor’s Choose classroom 7 years ago, that’s for sure!

House of Ruth: Many of you expressed an interest in organizations that help women and children.  House of Ruth is a domestic violence organization that provides a safe haven to victims of domestic violence and their children.  It is recognized nationwide as one of the nation’s most comprehensive domestic violence centers.

Partners in Health: The devastating earthquake in Haiti may feel like a long time ago, but the nation is still struggling.  Partners in Health has a broad approach to providing and improving health care in poor and developing countries, and they’ve been instrumental in Haiti.

826 National: 826 National is a nonprofit tutoring, writing, and publishing organization with locations in eight cities across the country. The goal of 826 program is to assist students ages six to eighteen with their writing skills, and to help teachers get their classes excited about writing. Their work is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success. 826 centers help students publish their work, putting out several anthologies a year, which are for sale on the website.  The national organization grew out of 826 Valencia, the San Francisco writing tutoring center started by Dave Eggers.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your support and good spirit during the annual Giving My Money Away extravaganza!

I cannot say enough about how important the work of this organization is.  It’s easy enough to say, when thinking about the challenges faced by people battling addiction, “get better. Your children need you to get better.”  And that’s so true.  But what about when you are the primary caregiver for those children?  What happens then?

The mission of The Women’s Treatment Center is “to provide women with a continuum of care, recovery tools, and parenting skills to maintain a sober lifestyle as they rebuild their lives and mend the bonds with their families.”

The services provided by TWTC include social services, medical care, and mental health services- in short, all of the pieces women need to actually fight and beat addiction. But perhaps most important, TWTC provides these services in a program that can accommodate children in residential treatment.  That means that while they are receiving treatment, mothers receive parenting classes and guidance, and are able to continue to build and repair relationships with their children, rather than being separated from them for weeks or months at a time.  TWTC is also one of the few facilities in the whole country to offer a crisis nursery, which can provide 24-hour care for a woman’s children when she is unable to care for them herself.  This reduces one of the major barriers to treatment, as a woman can enter detox knowing that her children are safe, well cared for, and close.

In short, The Women’s Treatment Center is committed to helping women conquer substance abuse while honoring, protecting, and building essential family relationships.  Its programs address the parallel issues of treating substance abuse and taking proactive steps to prevent child abuse and neglect.  It’s an important place, and I’m happy to support them every year.  Let’s help them out a little this season.

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So get to it! Comment!  And remember, today is the last day to tell me about one of your favorite charitable organizations- I’ll select five of the organizations you identify in the comments and put up a poll tomorrow morning.  The organization that receives the most votes will receive an additional $50 donation from me.  Whee!

Today, I’m featuring an organization I’ve never featured here before.  But that’s not because I don’t love them, or the work they do, because I really, really do.  Allow  me to introduce you to the Erie Family Health Center

Erie Family Health Center provides health care services to over 33,000 low-income uninsured and underinsured Chicagoans each year.  They serve ten high-needs neighborhoods in Chicago, especially Latino neighborhoods where the need for adequate health care is particularly acute.  Their services include basic health care, well child care, behavioral services, dental care, women’s health services, and teen wellness.  In addition to providing care when people are sick, they have programs that focus on health education and preventative care, which is particularly important and often neglected when money is tight.

Poor women and children are a key part of the Center’s work.  Sixty-eight percent of the patients served by the Center are female.  Forty-six percent are under age 19, and twenty-four percent are children.  Eighty-eight percent come from families that live below the federal poverty line.  The need is real, folks, and Erie Family Health Center is serving an absolutely essential need.

In the Center’s own words:

At Erie Family Health Center, we believe health care is a right, not a privilege. Our mission is to provide accessible, affordable and high quality health care for those in need.

I couldn’t have said it any better than that.

A reminder how this works: you leave a comment, I add fifty cents to my donation to Erie Family Health Center.  Lets do this.

Today, I’m featuring an organization that is a repeat player in this space: the Night Ministry.

The Night Ministry (which has been rated four stars by Charity Navigator) is a remarkable organization that provides basic supplies, self-care supplies, free health care, supportive housing and services for youth, and referrals to other resources.

But with The Night Ministry, it’s not just the “what” that’s amazing — it’s the “how”.  The Night Ministry offers services “at the moment of need on the street,” through the use of their Health Care Bus and their Youth Outreach program.  The Health Outreach Bus travels to six Chicago neighborhoods from 7-11:30 pm Monday through Saturday on a regular schedule.  This model allows the bus to provide essential health care services to people who very often find it difficult or impossible to access health care services elsewhere.  Volunteers also provide meal service alongside the bus so that clients can get a meal, too.

The Night Ministry also provides a continuum of care services for homeless youth in the area, which includes meeting and building relationships with youth where they are- on the street.  This mission speaks particularly loudly to me this year.  About 25,000 youth experience homelessness in Illinois each year, about 10,000 of them in Chicago.  Homeless youth are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.  And research indicates that a disproportionate percentage of homeless youth are those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, who often become homeless when they are forced out of their houses or feel they have nowhere else to turn.  On the heels of the awful spate of gay teen suicides earlier this year, and the powerful response of the It Gets Better campaign, this part of the Night Ministry’s work seems more timely and important than ever.

So! Let’s give them some money, shall we?  And remember, if you’d like, you can tell me about one of your favorite charities to put it in the running for Friday’s poll!