Archive for the ‘Other Give’ Category

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Chicken Gas Chambers For Humanity

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

If nobody wants to be reminded that their chicken was slaughtered before arriving in the supermarket, then how can chicken producers advertise their new “humane” slaughtering process?

  • Your typical chicken arrives at the slaughterhouse on a truck. It’s plucked from its cage and hung upside-down with its legs shackled to a rail that takes it first to an electrical stunner, and then to a machine that slits its throat and bleeds it to death.
  • But electrical stunners aren’t perfect, and the ethics of hanging already-stressed live chickens upside-down for the last minutes of their lives are sketchy. So some producers are starting to use a gas-based alternative to the electrical stunner.
  • You can call it “controlled atmosphere stunning,” “sedation stunning,” or “slow induction anesthesia,” but the new method uses a carbon dioxide gas chamber to knock the birds out before they’re slaughtered, vastly reducing the stress, pain, and suffering that come with traditional methods.

Facts & Figures

  • Bell & Evans, one of the companies using the new gas-stunning method, “processes” 200,000 chickens a week.
  • Tyson Foods, which uses electrical stunners, slaughters more than 1 million chickens per week.
  • Companies in Britain and Nebraska that already use “controlled atmosphere stunning” tend not to advertise this fact on their product packaging.

Best Quote

“People don’t want to know too much. It’s hard to sell humane killing as a concept.” – Marc Cooper, Senior Scientific Manager in the Farm Animals Department of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, London

They Wanted The World To Change, So They Did It Themselves

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

Ever been frustrated by how slow things are to change, when people are suffering right now? If you’re anything like the latest crop of social entrepreneurs, you may be able to turn your frustration into something much more meaningful.

  • Today’s social entrepreneurs are taking on the world’s problems a bit at a time. Their successes show that it’s not necessarily the biggest, wealthiest organizations who make the small incremental changes that matter.
  • These individuals tend to identify specific problems and then do whatever they can to meet the need. One invented microfinance. Another is focused on making menstrual supplies available where a woman’s period causes her to miss school and work. And another pressures U.S. companies to stop buying from African warlords, effectively funding terrorism and horrific violence directed at women in Congo.
  • They’re often naive at the beginning, expecting too much and consulting with local people too little. And success is never assured. But the rewards are real – both for entrepreneurs and the relatively small number of people whose lives they are changing.

Facts & Figures

  • DoSomething.org provided $100,000 to help 23-year-old Maggie Doyne build a school in Nepal.
  • Lisa Shannon carried 45,000 pennies to Intel’s headquarters, offering to pay the extra penny it would cost Intel to source their materials outside of Congo and avoid 45,000 more violent deaths at the hands of warlords.
  • $300 sends a Nepalese child to Maggie Doyne’s school, with health and dental care included.

Best Quote

“If your own children were born orphans in Nepal, you wouldn’t wait for the U.N. or the government to do something about it while they were hungry and cold and breaking rocks by the side of a riverbed.” – Maggie Doyne

Forget Traditional Fundraising. Let’s Grow Weed!

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

Everyone had a theory about what would happen when California legalized marijuana for medical use, but growing it to fund an art foundation probably wasn’t on the list.

  • Using a small plot of land in Sonoma County, Kirsha Kaechele is experimenting with a way to fund arts programs in perpetuity by legally growing marijuana.
  • Some growers are already donating some of their profit to charities and creative causes, but Life is Art is hoping to use the marijuana farm as a consistent source of funding for a lifetime of homegrown art projects.
  • In November, California voters will consider a proposal to make marijuana legal for recreational purposes. Marijuana supporters who oppose the measure worry that expanding use will allow corporations to step in, put small growers out of business, and eliminate the potential for charitable growing.

Facts & Figures

  • Selling marijuana is still technically a crime under federal law.
  • An ounce of medical-grade marijuana sells for about $200 in the San Francisco Bay Area.
  • Art is Life plans to generate $1 million next year to pay for art projects based on the farm and in New Orleans.

Best Quote

“The whole game of finding support just started to seem so childish. So I decided to grow up and became a marijuana farmer.” – Kirsha Kaechele, Director of Art is Life Foundation

Shareholder Activism is…

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010

Shareholder activism is when a shareholder of a publicly-traded company uses their rights to pressure that company to make change. Basically, it’s a way that shareholders can influence and change a company’s behavior in a certain way. For example, shareholders may influence a company to become more environmentally friendly or disinvest from a country with a record of human rights abuses. Shareholder activism can take the form of voting for or against certain corporate actions or members of management, and/or in organizing groups of voters to block or force a corporate  action.

Taking Drivers To Task For Destroying Wildlife

Monday, September 13th, 2010

Roadkill is finally acknowledged as a serious environmental and human safety issue.

  • Individuals and state-sponsored research groups are increasingly using GPS technology and the Internet to pinpoint where critters are being mowed down on America’s roads.
  • The California Roadkill Mapping System has created the first website that involves volunteers combing the roads to collect roadkill information.
  • Researchers hope to use the information for two primary purposes: to accurately assess the impact of cars on wildlife and to highlight “hot spots” that would benefit from additional signage or other preventative strategies.

Facts & Figures

  • The Humane Society estimates that 1 million animals are killed on roads each day; the Federal Highway Administration says that 1-2 million large animals are killed every year.
  • Roughly 200 people die each year as a result of hitting animals while driving.
  • There are 4 million miles of public road in the U.S., and about 258 million vehicles using those roads.

Best Quote

“For some people the only contact they have with wild animals is when they run them over,” said Fraser M. Shilling, the lead researcher on the project. “This is the first time people have been able to record roadkill online and I think it will change our understanding of what our road system is really doing to wildlife.” – Fraser M. Shilling, Lead Researcher, California Roadkill Observation System (a research project by the University of California, Davis)

Nonprofits Added Jobs During The Recession

Wednesday, September 8th, 2010

What?? But yes, it’s true…

  • The Johns Hopkins University Center for Civil Society released a study showing that nonprofit job openings actually grew from mid-2007 to mid-2009, while employers in the for-profit sector were shedding jobs left and right.
  • One explanation for this surprising trend is stimulus funding, which pumped more money into public programs in response to the economic crisis. But not every area of the nonprofit world grew equally. Social-service nonprofits did relatively well, but that is likely because the whole social-service sector (including for-profits) did well.
  • There is concern that when stimulus funding runs out, the job situation in the nonprofit sector will reverse.

Facts & Figures

  • Nonprofit jobs in the 21 states studied grew by an average of 2.5% each year
  • In the same time frame, those states lost jobs at a rate of about 3.3% each year
  • Job growth in the nonprofit sector actually grew more between 2007-2009 than it had between 2001-2007

Best Quote

“The service area has been growing, historically, pretty fast, much more so than manufacturing.” – Lester M. Salamon, Director of the Center for Civil Society Studies

New Job-Training Programs Are Looking Good

Monday, July 26th, 2010

A new report shows job-training programs prove to be a great way to bolster employment numbers.

  • Job-training programs typically collaborate with specific industries (like construction and health care, for example).
  • Participation in a job-training program can significantly increase an unemployed or low-skilled worker’s likelihood of getting hired.
  • Certain elements from the programs contribute to their success, such as linking to employers and screening the participants.
  • These programs must identify employers’ needs, screen for suitable program participants, be able to fund the training and hire the staff needed to train.

Facts and Figures

  • Program participants earned an average of 29% more than those who didn’t attend.
  • Job-training programs are active in 40 states.

Best Quote

“It’s very easy for someone to say, ‘We have a sectoral-employment strategy,’ particularly when more money may be coming from Washington. We really wanted to make sure we were doing this with our eyes wide open, to help scale the positive findings in the study.” – Nadva K. Shmavonian, President of Public/Private Ventures, which authored the report

Using Social Media To Nonprofits’ Advantage

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Nonprofits are learning that the interactive and communicative elements of fund-raising are essential for raising money with social media.

  • On Facebook, direct fund-raising has proven to be unsuccessful.
  • Nonprofits raise more money when donors can engage in the philanthropy (through dialogue and games, for example) rather than direct solicitations.
  • Establishing relationships between Facebook users and real-world outcomes has led to more people donating to a cause.
  • Zynga (the largest game developer on Facebook) has partnered with Water.org and Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) and has raised more than $130,000 for the causes.

Facts & Figures

  • 61.1% of nonprofits reported little to no results when fund-raising through social media.
  • More than 235,000 nonprofits are on Facebook, but a relatively small number of them have donor funds.

Following Gates, Co-Founder Of Microsoft Plans To Donate $13.5 Billion

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

Billionaire co-founder of Microsoft plans to leave the majority of his fortune to philanthropy.

  • Paul Allen is worth an estimated $13.5 billion and has announced that he’s donating most of it to continue the work of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
  • This public announcement was in response to Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffet’s campaign to encourage billionaires to donate half of their wealth to charity.
  • Allen’s Foundation was started 20 years ago, and it has distributed 3,000 grants totaling about $400 million.
  • For the most part, the Foundation has remained local (Pacific Northwest) and personal.

Facts and Figures

  • Paul Allen is 57 years old.
  • Forbes ranked Allen as the 37th richest person.
  • Allen has donated approximately $1 billion in his life to date.

Best Quote

“As our philanthropy continues in the years ahead, we will look for new opportunities to make a difference in the lives of future generations.” – Paul Allen, Co-Founder of Microsoft

Who is the United States’ biggest philanthropist?

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

There are many big-time philanthropists in the U.S., but the biggest is none other than Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. He and his wife, Melinda, started the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which, among other things, spends approximately $800 million a year on medical research. In January 2010, the foundation pledged $10 billion towards vaccine research over the next ten years in an effort to vaccinate 90% of the un-vaccinated children in Third World countries. Melinda Gates estimates that the research will help save 8 million children’s lives over the next decade. The $10 billion dollars is a substantial increase over the $4.5 billion (approximately) that the charity allocated towards vaccine research in the previous decade.

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