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Bill Gates is only 56 years old, but he stepped down as the CEO of Microsoft a decade ago. He’d still be the richest man in America if he and his wife Melinda hadn’t been so busy giving money away. And instead of just donating, they did the research to determine how they would get the most bang for the buck. As it turns out, those bucks get a lot of bang when you use them to buy simple vaccines. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has gone through 25 billion dollars to not only get vaccines to children who need them, but to change the way that vaccines are developed, manufactured, and distributed globally.
The results have been equally massive: 3.4 million lives saved from hepatitis B, which causes liver cancer, 1.2 million lives from measles, 560,000 from the Hib bacteria, 474,000 from whooping cough, 140,000 from yellow fever and 30,000 from polio. In the past year the new initiatives have prevented another 8,000 deaths from pneumonia and 1,000 from diarrhea.
“I’ve met mothers who walked eight hours to get their child a vaccine and hoped that it’s there on that day,” Melinda says. On a trip in January to a rural clinic in Kenya she saw four children with pneumonia sharing a single oxygen tube. “They were just sucking breath,” she recalls. But across the clinic the Gates Foundation work showcased a different future: Children lined up to get the new vaccine that would dramatically reduce the risk they would ever get pneumonia.
Read about how they did it at Forbes. Link -via Not Exactly Rocket Science
So here’s an unusual post. For the first time in the history of the blogosphere, several major sites, including Treehugger, Boing Boing and Neatorama, are coming together for a good cause. And by cause we mean charity, of course. Which charity? YOUR charity! And by YOUR charity, we mean any charity you wish to support at any giving level.
How Do I Play?
Starting today, Monday May 17th, we’ll be playing for charities. Much like golfers have an annual Playday, so now there’s one for the blogosphere. But unlike those golfers’ playdays, you can choose to support ANY 501c3 that you believe in.
So have some fun playing the Bazinga! game below, and then make any size donation to any charity you presently support, or would like to support. (Minimum gift suggestion $1). The basic idea here is simply to take a moment of an ordinary day, when it’s not Christmas or some expected holiday, and do your part to help repair the world.
What Do I Win?
When you’re done, send us an e-mail at Play@QuizPlayDay.org and tell us how much you donated and to what cause. Also send us your quiz score. By doing so, you’ll be automatically entered into a sweepstakes drawing where you could win one of 10 sets of Wii games and a chance to go on national TV and talk about why you picked the charity and what the whole quiz play day experience was like for you! Prizing courtesy of our sponsors over at the Game Show Network. The randomly selected grand-prize winner will also take home a brand new Apple iPad, courtesy of Neatorama.com!!
So what are you waiting for? Take the quiz, play for your charity by making a donation, and finally, don’t forget to e-mail us at Play@QuizPlayDay.org and tell us how you scored and who you donated to (and how much). It’s all on the honor system here, so don’t let us down! We’ll be keeping track of how much each blog raises each day of the week. You can follow the money over here. At the end of the week, the blog (or “team”) that raises the most will get serious bragging rights and a BIG shopping spree in the xkcd/breadpig store to give to one random winner who played for their “team.” So don’t forget to say you’re playing for Team Neatorama!
The Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy is a group that gives $100 grants to people who promise to give it away in a meaningful and creative way. The formerly-secret society was founded in 2006.
Miss [Courtney] Martin was an aspiring writer who had just finished her first book, Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, and suddenly found herself in possession of a six-figure royalty advance. Unlike most people, who would be thrilled to have this amount of cash in their pockets, Martin felt guilty that she suddenly had so much money, so she decided to give some of it away to charity. The only problem was that she didn’t know how. In the end, she decided to give nine of her friends and family members $100 and then ask them to give it away as they saw fit. She only asked that they reported back to her a month later.
Several years later, we are privy to many stories of how members have given away their $100 grants. Read about 15 such grants, some with video reports, at mental_floss. Link
Reed Sandridge lost his job last year and took up a new hobby. He gives away $10 every day to someone who looks as if they could use it, a different person every day. And Sandridge expects nothing in return but a good feeling.
His mom, the daughter of a coal miner whom he remembers most for her kindness, always told him that when you’re going through tough times, that’s when you most need to give back.
So not long after he was laid off, on the third anniversary of his mom’s death, he started his “year of giving,” documenting each $10 gift in a small black notebook and then blogging about the people he meets. By Day 94, he had given away almost $1,000, handing out money in blizzards, in rainstorms, on the sunniest of days.
Sandridge is using his savings and his unemployment benefits for the giveaways. Some of the folks he gives money to use it to help others. He tells stories of the people he meets in his blog, which has led others to help them out as well. Link to story. Link to blog. -via Digg
(image credit: Katherine Frey/the Washington Post)
Many of you have heard the phrase “Knowledge is Power,” but what about
“Knowledge is Philanthropy?” At freerice.com, your intellect and breadth of vocabulary allow you just that, the opportunity to give.
By simply playing word games, freerice.com gives you have the ability to donate an unlimited amount of rice grains to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP.) The process is simple. For every correct answer you submit 20 grains of rice is donated, for every 5 correct answers 100 grains are donated, and so on and so forth. No risk, just reward.
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