Tweet of the Week Donation

Hi guys,

Sorry this is a bit late, but I just wanted to let everyone know where I decided to donate my Tweet of the Week money, for those who are interested. I decided to give to the Binghamton Regional Sustainability Coalition, a local non-profit organization that works in many ways to make the Binghamton area a healthy, thriving place to live. They have three major initiatives: Binghamton Rising , which is a regional Buy Local network that connects locally-owned member businesses with individual members and promotes local spending for a vibrant economy, the Many Hands Food Co-Op, which aims to to provide the community with access to affordable and nutritious food options, and Southern Tier Solar Works, which promotes energy efficiency and the rapid deployment of solar energy in our region. I worked with BRSC for about a year for Southern Tier Solar Works, and as I have come to know the leaders of the organization, I can see that it is a worthy non-profit with nothing but good intentions and aspirations for the success of Broome County. 

Dina Truncali

(PS: I don't work for BRSC anymore, in case anyone was worried about a conflict of interest)

Tweet of the Week

Good Evening Class,

I would just like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for an exciting and thought-provoking class and to also inform you all where I will be donating my tweet of the week money. I will be giving my check to CEO. As we all know I was a huge advocate for CEO overall. What made me donate to CEO is the twofold. One, I believe considering the structure of the class a local donation is most appropriate. Second, from my research and evaluation of CEO I am most informed about this organization in comparison to any other non-profit that comes to mind.

I believe in the overall mission and effectiveness of CEO in trying to achieve a greater life for their clients. As a small/new non-profit I believe the impact of my money will be greater at CEO. At the same time their commitment to successfully achieving social change is inspiring.

Thanks again for a great class I honestly developed and grew as a philanthropists 

Please read over this before tomorrow!

Hi everyone, I'm going to be talking briefly about Mom's House and Family Planning at the awards ceremony tomorrow. This is what I've prepared; please read over it if you wouldn't mind, and let me know if you think this is an accurate representation of the way the class feels. I'm happy to make changes if people think different things about the organizations should be emphasized.

          Hello, my name is Jesse Cole, and I'm a freshman at Binghamton. I'm going to tell you a little bit about two of the grantee organizations, and why our class chose to give to them.

         

          The greatest barrier to education for single parents is the lack of high-quality, affordable childcare. This leaves many single parents permanently stuck in low-paying jobs, and robs society of many of the contributions their talent could provide, given the chance. This problem resonated with our class, as we are all experiencing the benefits of a top-notch higher education. Mom's House helps to solve this problem by providing state-licensed childcare to single parents while they further or finish their education. Joan Peterson is a great example of the amazing work that Mom's House does. When she became pregnant at the age of 15, Mom's House helped her not only graduate from Broome Community College, but also obtain a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in Public Administration. Peterson remarked, "because of Mom's House, I was able to get a good education. Because of my education, I have always been able to get a job, to support my children, to own my own home, and just as importantly, to help others." For this reason, our class is awarding Mom's House $2,000 to go towards repairing damage to their facilities caused by the flood of 2011.

CALL UP LAURIE BOWEN

         

Unwanted pregnancies sometimes occur because of lack of access to or knowledge about contraception. People, often in their teens or early twenties, either don't know their options in terms of contraception, or simply can't find it or afford it. This leads to responsibilities they are not ready for, and can limit their opportunities if no one steps in to help. Family Planning of South Central New York provides free and reduced-cost contraception, as well as education programs to help people know their options. Unfortunately, they were forced to discontinue their free condom program due to the government cutting their funding. Our class believed in the great work this organization does, and will be awarding them $3,000 to re-start their free condom program.

CALL UP Mary Robinson, Director of Development

Hindsight is 20-20

Many things can be said over the debate last Tuesday. I, personally, was in one of the groups who was not backing any individual organization and were just asking questions. Watching the other groups support their own organization and attack the others,' in all honestly, made me feel ridiculous for the entire class. I think we can all agree that the debate in class was extremely non-productive, and much more emotional than intellectually based. I was going to write about the different debates that occurred, and how some of them seemed biased and incredibly unfair to specific organizations, but I felt that it would be too rude to the individual people. Instead, I would like to write about different solutions that we could have implemented to make sure that the debate does not devolve into every group bashing the others' organizations and ideas. The fact that this is hindsight is what makes it possible. It would be impossible to predict all the problems that came up or would come up if these ideas were implemented. So for next semester I give the following ideas for change. First of all, there is the question of whether or not it is okay for debate to be constrained. In other words, are there certain things, which we will not allow to be said because it is unfair or bad for the overall conversation? What would these be? Constraining debate can cause only productive debate to be said, but there are some obvious negatives to this. If certain ideas and comments cannot be said, than we as a class might lose out an a number of useful thoughts. More so, censoring ideas might stifle conversation, and stop people from saying whats on their mind, because they perceive it to be non-productive while in reality it poses a very serious question. Another option, which was said by Professor Campbell was to create group with only one person from each group in the team so that no one group is too fired up. This would have also allowed us as a whole to be able to make decisions without quite a bit of uproar. A third idea would be to have every group present a plan for the money to be split instead of for a specific organization so that there are a number of well formulated and thought of plans before we even start a discussion. Instead of getting 24ish people to a discuss a plan together. Without some changes people will only vote based on emotion of the conversation. Personally, I got confused and ended up voting for whichever group did not act too outwardly obnoxious and loud. I also heard people around me voting against organizations, because they did not want to see a specific group “winning” so to speak. If you have any other ideas for changes that would support future debates or just plain disagree with the overall idea please comment?

Second-Guessing

I was very surprised during Tuesday's class. I had thought we were all in agreement about at least Mom's House, CHOW, and Family Planning. I expected there would be debate about CEO, but I was one hundred percent not expecting people to waver on the other three. Suddenly people were arguing over whether CHOW needed our money, whether Mom's House needed any money, and whether Family Planning was a unique organization. Derek started it off, trying to play devil's advocate to sow doubt about the other organizations and give CEO a stronger platform.But I think that he was only a catalyst, exposing our uncertainties that were already there.
$10,000 is a lot of money. I'm going to guess that it's the most money most of us have been responsible for up to this point. The anxiety that so often accompanies financial decisions, times a thousand, had been lurking all semester, and we all momentarily succumbed to it. This was evidenced by the hour long debate turned yelling match-over $250. Yes, some of it can be explained by the fact the we were all put into our favorite organization's group and people had strong feelings about who was the worthiest choice. But we went back to the basics, questioning if some organizations should even get the money at all, which I at least had thought was essentially decided last week. We were second guessing a lot of the facts, measures, and decisions we had already been over, because suddenly everything was very real, and we were adults and philanthropists deciding which charity got Doris Buffett's money. Another source of anxiety seemed to be, at least for me, that while we were nervous about how much money $10,000 is, we were also realizing how little money it is in terms of charitable giving. Some people were talking about how no matter how much we give CHOW, it's only a drop in the bucket, so maybe we should turn our attention more towards the other organizations. I found a nice infographic, which is actually based on Peter Singer's six reasons people don't give from "The Life You Can Save", at the bottom of this article:

http://recharity.ca/6-reasons-why-people-dont-give-more/

The two reasons I've given here fall under the "money" and "futility" categories.
This anxiety is my theory for what was going on subconsciously/consciously for us that turned what we had thought would be a cut and dry situation into a class-long debate. I'm really interested to hear if you guys think it was money anxiety, or more peoples' passion for the organizations, or a mix of both. I'd also like to hear if you guys noticed any more of Peter Singer's six reasons sneaking their way into the final debate.

Tweet of the week donation $104

Well since I tweeted about it, and that's what you all voted for, I decided to donate the $104 to the couple I know that lost their home and three pets in a house fire.  Before donating, I had to do a little research on YouCaring.  I found this review on the fundraiser website, that was interesting.  It gives a bit of information on how it works.  Basically, people donate and who ever is set up to receive those funds gets the money.

http://crowdsunite.com/platforms/youcaring/#&panel1-1

There is a 3% transaction fee that is actually added at the checkout when you make your donation.  At first I thought that the transaction fees would be taken off at the end of the fundraiser time frame, but when I was making the donation, it actually calculated it at the checkout.  So I typed in how much I wanted to donate, and it calculated the transaction fees.  Today there has been a little over $1500 collected for them!  It is so awesome to see my community come together to help these people that have been volunteering hours of their time for their community for the past 18 years.
Thanks for the support guys!

Oh and if you want to check out the fundraiser again, here's the link!
http://www.youcaring.com/other/fire-loss/169187