Innovative Charities

5. Oaktree Foundation

Charity’s version of Menudo, the Oaktree Foundation is an aid and development organization run exclusively by young people under the age of 26. Listed achievements from a website littered with bad spelling include a 2006 Make Poverty History Concert (with Eddie Vedder and, of course, Bono), an End Child Slavery campaign and Schools 4 Schools, an Australian school program raising awareness of global

poverty. Oaktree also supports the Adidome Modular Training program in Ghana, which combats Trokosi religious practices of surrendering young girls to shrines as reparations for supposed ‘crimes’ committed by family members (many of these girls remain imprisoned for life).

4. Community Voice Mail

Homelessness

Community Voice Mail provides free voice messaging services for the poor or homeless throughout the United States. You and I may snicker at the dated mention of “voice mail”, but to “those whose street address is the license plate of their car, a simple voice mail number may be the life line to mere survival” (US veteran). CVM has found their service is particularly useful in helping the homeless find employment, as it avoids the stigma of an employer contacting an applicant at a homeless shelter. In 2009, CMV served 43,000 households and over 57,000 individuals with voice messaging support. 

3. First Book

Literacy

Remember your first book? Mine was, honest to God, “Dick and Jane”. FIRST BOOK provides new books to children by mitigating the most important factor affecting literacy—access to books. The group has distributed more than 60 million free and low cost books in thousands of US and Canadian communities, using local volunteers and corporate donations. Key to their success is marketing their near-Draconian financial efficiency – non-programmatic costs total less than 3% of revenue, so 97% of revenue is devoted directly to programmatic costs. As a result, every $1 donation places $10 worth of new books directly into the hands of children in need. This achieves sky-high donor confidence, as evidenced in Random House’s 1.9 million book donation in 2005.

2. Modest Needs

Financial Crisis

This is the only charity that rejects you if you’re too poor. Why? Because Modest Needs’ unique aim is to stop poverty before it starts. Their grant programs are designed to assist people who generally pay their bills with no help from anyone, but can’t qualify for conventional assistance. Usually, these people are facing a single financial crisis or unexpected expense they just can’t afford on their own. Donors register with the Modest Needs website and review applicant cases, ‘voting’ for each with points purchased with credit. When a case receives enough points, the funds are released to the applicant. And when their crisis passes, many recipients later become donors themselves.

1. Ushahidi

Information Technology

Founded by Kenyan journalists to map post-election violence, Ushahidi is a free and open source web platform for data collection, visualization and interactive mapping of fast-moving crises or political events. And it’s been put to good use. To date, Ushahidi has used free “crowdsourced” data from mobile phones, email and the web to map and timeline Sudanese voting violence, earthquake response in Chile and Haiti, violent crime in Atlanta, uprisings in the Gaza strip and medical stockouts plaguing Kenya, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia.