Charity advice for Japan relief

[michelel72]

I'm looking to donate funds for rescue and support efforts in Japan. I'd prefer to donate as directly as possible (rather than to an aggregator who funds an aggregator who funds ...), and ideally I'd also donate to organizations with a good track record of using a high percentage of donations for programs rather than overhead. There's only so much one can find in short order, though, and I'm pretty sure swiftness is urgent.

I'm currently looking at this promotion for animal rescue and perhaps Peace Winds via Mercy Corps for people (though I've donated to Doctors without Borders before and would be willing to do so again here).

If anyone has any information about these agencies, good or bad, I'd appreciate word; highly recommended alternates would also be welcome. (No religious charities, please, and not the American Red Cross.) I know GreaterGood.org is collecting and paying credit card transaction fees, for example, but all they say is they pass on donations to "affiliated charities". And I'd love to bid over at the fandom auctions (chibi art by gnine!) or offer a donation in exchange for something like intensive Photoshop collage tutoring, but I'll be donating anyway and much sooner, so I don't want to outbid someone and thereby "cost" some charity that donation.

I'll update this post when I actually donate, no later than Saturday or probably before.

Update: DWB/MSF are very good, as I mentioned, as is Partners in Health; for this event, though, I'm choosing Direct Relief International's Japan Relief and Recovery Fund. Direct Relief is highly rated at Charity Navigator and has been recommended via multiple different paths. For animals, I'm looking at a split between the promotion linked above and the WSPA.

Comments

[sentientcitizen]

I don't have any suggestions, but if you get any good ones I'd love if you'd pass them on. All the charities I'm most familiar with are religious; admittedly, they do good work, but it sort of grates at me a bit. I used to be a big fan of Mennonite Central Committee. Then I realized they won't hire sexually active non-heterosexuals or people who aren't members of a church congregation. That left a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth. They still do good work - really, truly excellent work - but...

[michelel72]

Yeah, it's always disheartening to see organizations that do otherwise great works turn out to be exclusionary. That's why I'm always happier when I can find good alternatives.

For what it's worth, I can already recommend Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, and I've seen a lot of strong recommendations for Direct Relief International. Both are top-rated at Charity Navigator. Partners in Health is also highly rated (very high effectiveness rating), but that's US-based, though its programs are international. For animals, it's a lot harder to find top-rated organizations, unfortunately, but apparently WSPA is on-site (two stars at CN, ~75% effectiveness rating), and I'm thinking I'll probably go with the coalition I linked that is raising funds via ChipIn.

[kristen999.livejournal.com]

I'm about to go to bed and leave to go out of town, but I've I've always held in high regard http://www.msf.org/ which is connected to doctors without borders.

My charity of choice is normally http://teamrubiconusa.org/ but they are not going to Japan based on their capabilities and the country's infrastructure, but wanted to give you the link for the future.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières definitely have a good rep; they're on my annual donations list. I hadn't heard of Team Rubicon, but I'll definitely check them out; I quite like that they've assessed their likely use to Japan and determined they aren't the right fit, actually. Thanks!

[kristen999.livejournal.com]

Team Rubicon is a smaller organization but I love their mission and core vales and I trust that my money has direct impact on relief.

[skaredykat.livejournal.com]

I tend to check in with charitynavigator.org and veer toward four-star charities on there, for legitimacy and information on whether most of the money goes to actual relief vs. overhead & fundraising. (DWB tends to be my default safe-choice.) Also maybe ask busaikko if she has ideas, as she's there?

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

The only problem with Charity Navigator is that they focus only on US-based charities, as far as I can tell, so it's hard to check out more direct / Japan-based organizations. That said, they rate Direct Relief quite highly, so I'm going with them. (I don't know busaikko personally, and I'm wary of just PMing someone fairly randomly, but thanks for the suggestion.)

[skaredykat.livejournal.com]

True, though I think they're starting to rate (bigger) international ones too, I think? And I should have said, they rate both MSF/DWB and Direct Relief highly, and I've given to both of those after various natural disasters in part because of the consistently high ratings from charitynavigator and related reports/sites.

Hee, my slightly fuzzy initial thought was something like "I betaed some stories for busaikko and she seems very nice and I betaed a story for michelel and she seems very nice too, so of course they must know each other" which =/= in fact, true. Duh! Though it does show how less-shy I've become online. :)

[ninjamonkey73.livejournal.com]

Just to throw a different one in the mix, Wil Wheaton posted this article yesterday, labelled "Direct Japan Relief".

http://syndicated.livejournal.com/wilwheaton/692705.html

I find vetting charities to be nearly impossible, unfortunately, and I like to think of myself as an internet ninja.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

That's multiple recs for Direct Relief; they look good and are well-rated by Charity Navigator as well. We have a winner. Thanks!

[violetcheetah.livejournal.com]

Heather has seen good recs for http://www.directrelief.org/. Highly ranked by Forbes as far as fundraising stats.

[michelel72.livejournal.com]

That's multiple recs for Direct Relief; they look good and are well-rated by Charity Navigator as well. We have a winner. Thanks for the MSPCA link, too; I'm thinking I may split a donation between the folks I linked and WSPA.