Giving

When I first started donating to charities, I didn’t really know what I was doing and gave random amounts of money away to organizations that happened to float into my attention. That’s a good way to start! But it didn’t work well for me longer term.

So now I sit down once a year and make a plan: a list of the 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.

These are the non-profits I regularly support, and a little context for why I like them.

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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).

• 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.

• 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.

• 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).

• FIND Food Bank

  Same as above, but for the desert communities around Palm Springs.

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?