Giving

When I first started giving to charities, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I gave random amounts of money away to organizations that happened to float into my attention. That’s a good way to start! Giving money to others is always better than hoarding it for some perfect some day when you’ve figured it all out.

Now I sit down once a year and make a plan. I list out charities and amounts I will give to throughout the year. I take 1% of my net worth at the beginning of the year and distribute it across local, carbon, and social good charities from my donor advised fund. I’ll probably change this strategy in the future, but right now it works well for me. It’s allowed me to give away 6% of my net worth so far, with an additional 21% set aside for future giving. That’s 27% of my net worth set aside for charity, which I feel is pretty good!

These are the non-profits I regularly support, and a little context for why I like them. They’re not all perfect, but I think they’re doing good.

---

Tahoe Local

I’m a big believer in your local community, so a lot of the non-profits I give to are doing good things around Tahoe (and other places I frequent). You’ll see a lot of the charities align with access to wilderness and getting kids opportunities to explore the outdoors. I was fortunate enough that my Dad brought me to the Sierra a lot when I was a kid (camping used to be a cheap vacation), and I’m constantly thankful for growing up knowing how much joy is found in our public lands. Public lands are what make the West magical.

• Strong Towns

  Okay, this isn't strictly a Tahoe thing, but it's an every town thing. Strong Towns builds an actionable framework for making our towns more resilient and prosperous. Do you like downtowns? Bikes? Tree-lined streets? Outdoor dining? Small, locally owned shops? You'll probably like Strong Towns.

• SOS Outreach

  SOS Outreach works to get kids out on the slopes who wouldn't otherwise be able to. They provide lift tickets, gear, and mentorship to a lot of kids here in South Lake that would not be able to get out on the slopes otherwise.

• Gateway Mountain Center

  Similar to SOS, Gateway works to get kids out in the Sierra — hiking, climbing, and all kinds of activities to learn more about this beautiful place we live in.

• Boys & Girls Club Lake Tahoe

  Our local chapter of the Boys & Girls Club provides all kinds of extra-curricular support for our local kids. They get to explore robotics, art, lake science, and most importantly — build community with the families that live here.

• Tahoe Area Mountain Bike Association

  Have you ever heard of Toad's Wild Ride or Flume Trail? TAMBA is behind all of the incredible mountain biking trails we have around the lake. I'm happy to support any organization giving people more access the natural beauty of our mountains.

• Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship

  SBTS was crucial in helping TAMBA become the organization it is today. Their support in learning how to navigate relationships with land managers to actually build trail cannot be overstated. And of course, they build trail too. Their connected communities vision is one of the most ambitious trail-focused projects I've ever seen. As someone with a soft spot for California mountain towns, I look forward to seeing it to fruition.

• Tahoe Rim Trail Association

  The Tahoe Rim Trail is a 165 mile long multi-use trail that forms a loop around Lake Tahoe. The TRTA are the people that make this trail possible.

• Sierra Avalanche Center

  Know before you go is the mantra of backcountry winter excursions, and my local avalanche center is the first place I turn to for knowledge.

• American Institute for Avalanche Research and Education

  AIARE creates the model for avalanche education we use here in United States.

• Mt. Shasta Trail Association

  I spent years living in Dunsmuir, and it'll always hold a special place in my heart. The Mt. Shasta Trail Association is responsible for many multi-use trails around the region, as well as the highly anticipated Mossbrae Falls Trail.

• Sugar Pine Foundation

  Specailizing in planting disease resistant Sugar Pines (the world's largest pines) and White Pines around the Tahoe region.

• The League to Save Lake Tahoe

  If you've ever seen a Keep Tahoe Blue sticker, these are the people behind it. The League is a scientist-led organization dedicated to preserving the clarity of Lake Tahoe.

• Chile Lagos Limpios

  CLL is a sister organization to The League. Chile is facing a lot of the same challenges that Tahoe faces - climate change, industry, and increased development are threatening the clarity and health of their lakes. The hope is that we can learn from each other - trading science, tools, successes, and failures. Tahoe has spent over $2 billion to save our lake, and we still see yearly impacts from mistakes like Tahoe Keys. Hopefully we can help Chile learn from our mistakes – and make better decisions as more and more people move to this incredible part of their country.

• Clean Tahoe Program

  Clean Tahoe provides a fairly simple service: they make sure trash ends up at the dump (and not in our forests and neighborhoods). We live in a magnificently beautiful place, and Clean Tahoe helps maintain that.

• The BEAR League

  Almost every time I meet someone from out of town, they ask me: do you ever see bears? It's kind of a funny question, beacause of course I do. Almost every day. Bears are a part of live in the Sierra. Unfortunately, humans aren't always the best at co-existing with bears, and that's what The BEAR League works to improve.

• Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care

  LTWC is our local wildlife care facility. They take in injured and at-risk wildlife, rehabilitate them, and release them back to the environment.

• Tahoe Bike Coalition

  The Tahoe Bike Coalition works to improve biking inside our cities around Tahoe. They advocate for bike friendly traffic design, offer bike valet at events, and help people fix their bikes through their bike kitchens. I've said it many times, and I'll say it again: biking by default is the best way to get around Tahoe.

• Friends of Ski Run

  Shortly after I decided to make South Lake my forever home, I met Chris McNamara and Corey Rich. Friends of Ski Run is the organization they've used to enact tactical urbanism on Ski Run Blvd in South Lake. They've been able to carve out special zoning exemptions to allow farmer's markets, brewfests, community dinners, and just this year opened up a community-built park. It's hard to describe the community The Friends been able to foster in South Lake — it's truly something special to have a community interested in making their town better and actually doing it. We need more Friends of Ski Run in America.

• Tahoe Coalition for the Homeless

  Tahoe can be an especially difficult place for the unhoused, and The Coalition is the first organization there to help those experiencing homelessness in South Lake Tahoe.

• Live Violence Free

  LVF provides support for some of the most vulnerable in Tahoe — people impacted by domestic abuse, sexual assault, and child abuse.

• Food Bank of El Dorado County

  Have you ever eaten Government Cheese? Well, it doesn't really matter — I don't think anyone should go hungry. The EDC Food Bank provides food for many who live in and around Tahoe.

• Great Northern Services

  Same as above, but for Siskiyou County (where Dunsmuir is located).

Carbon Removal & Sequestration

The planet isn’t doing so good as of late. These are a few organizations I think are helping us prepare for a future where we’ll take carbon removal seriously.

• Carbon 180

  Carbon180 is dedicated to educating the public and policymakers on the best, most viable solutions for carbon removal. They are an incredible resource in everything climate — and the first place I'd direct anyone looking for how to help.

• Protect Our Winters

  POW is a climate-change focused organization, built around the concept of The Outdoor State — unifying all of us who consider the outdoors our playground.

• Cool Earth Action

  Cool Earth works with rainforest communities to stop deforestation, helping them build financial resilience so they are under less pressure to cut their forest under a crisis. Far more effective than planting trees — saving our existing rainforests is critical to slow the advance of climate change.

• Trees for the Future

  TREES works with farmers around the world to implement their Forest Garden Approach to combat deforestation from agriculture. Their system uses trees to grow fruits and vegetables while adding nutrients back into the soil — a win for carbon sequestration and agricultural productivity.

• Sierra Club

  The Sierra Club believes that everyone has a right to a healthy world, and fights for that right through advocacy across a large number of topics — from endangered species protection, to national park protection, to shutting down coal-fired energy plants.

• Drawdown

  Do you ever wish we had a big list of things to do in order to combat climate change? That's exactly what Project Drawdown is. I have a feeling this is going to be valuable in the future.

• The Ocean Cleanup

  Every decade or so, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch hits the news — a floating gyre of plastic about twice the size of Texas floating in the ocean. The Ocean Cleanup builds technology to harvest plastic from this patch, as well as innovating systems along rivers to prevent new plastic from getting there in the first place.

• Clean Air Task Force

  The CATF is laser focused on creating a zero-emissions, high-energy world. I can get behind that.

Social Good

I don’t really know what to call this category, but I’ve settled on social good. It’s organizations that do things like combat global poverty, prevent people from dying, or builds some kind of super valuable free infrastructure for the world.

• GiveWell

  GiveWell is at the heart of the Effective Altruism movement in philanthropy, an evidence-based approach to pick effective charities around the world. I'm very far from an expert in poverty or global health, so I'm thankful GiveWell exists to maximize my impact without becoming an expert.

• GiveDirectly

  GiveDirectly has a bold, simple view on how to combat poverty: give people money. That's it. You give them money, they pass it along to people living in poverty. Unsurprisingly, it's incredibly effective.

• Wikipedia

  Imperfect as it may be, I can think of few websites as valuable as Wikipedia.

• Internet Archive

  Most people know of the Internet Archive as the people who make the Wayback Machine, but did you know they also a free digital lending library, vintage software archive, and a whole host of live music shows?