From their website:

“Oxfam America is an international relief and development organization that creates lasting solutions to poverty, hunger, and injustice. Together with individuals and local groups in more than 120 countries, Oxfam saves lives, helps people overcome poverty, and fights for social justice. We are an affiliate of Oxfam International.”

Oxfam, through efficient operations and minimized administrative costs allocates 79% of their expenditures on development programs and emergency relief. The AIP (American Institute of Philanthropy) recommends 60%. From the AIP site:

“In AIP’s view, 60% or greater is reasonable for most charities. “

Now that I’m aware of the AIP site I’m going to use it to check on the organizations I donate to and I suggest you do the same just to be sure your money is being put to good use. Nothing worse than donating money only to realize most of it goes to cover administration costs, etc.
Oxfam can use our help. Here’s a link to their donation page.

Thanks goes out to Matt for another great suggestion!

After reading todays article at kgmb9.com about the Mililani teen searching for a marrow donor, I decided to write a post for a non-monetary donation.

Let’s go out and join the marrow donor registry. You can join the donor registry at http://www.marrow.org. If you are like me, a bit worried about having bone removed, rest assured, this isn’t necessary and is a rather common misconception. In fact the national marrow donor program put together this Myths & Facts about Bone Marrow Donation page which made me feel a lot better.

So I challenge and encourage everyone to sign up! I’ll post more info as I myself go through the process.

If you’re already on the donor registry I’d love to hear comments on the process. If you end up signing up, I’d love to hear comments on that as well!

Donated today to a teacher at Waianae Elementary School who is trying to build up a collection of books to add to her library for her third graders. She needs a total of $465 to purchase 45 books. I donated $10, one skipped lunch.

If you’d like to donate to her project — Build Our Library, Build Their Brains! — you can use this link or search for more teachers in need at DonorsChoose.org. You can search by state in order to target your donation to someone in your neighborhood.

DonorsChoose.org is a site where teachers send in proposals for projects that lie outside the funding provided by the public school system. At the completion of the project you get a teacher impact letter, thank you notes, photos, etc. What more can you ask for? he he he.

DonorsChoose.org screens the applications for proposals to insure it meets their eligibility requirements so I feel good knowing my money isn’t being added to the buy-a-teacher-a-new-Porsche project.

I’m searching for a project to donate to now, I’ll post back with what I select.

Kudos to Matt for the great suggestion. If anyone has ideas on good donor sites and/or organizations, send me an email to ideas@skipalunch.com.

For only $10 (okay, not a regular lunch, but a decent lunch with a drink) you can help purchase a insecticide-treated bed net as well as help in the educational programs the Red Cross sponsors to teach families the proper use of bed nets.

Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and can be BOTH prevented and treated. Unfortunately every 30 seconds a child in Africa dies from this disease. 300 million acute cases a year resulting in 1 million deaths, of which 90% are in Africa and are mostly children.

Please help the American Red Cross, donate here. You can download a fact sheet from the American Red Cross here (pdf) to learn more about malaria.