2016 charity plan

This is our plan for our 2016 charitable giving. Our ongoing goal is to spend 10% of our annual budget on charity (minus big ticket items like house purchase and renovations.) Here is the breakdown:

Charity	notes	category	scope	Final %
Wikipedia		education	global	1.4
AMF	malaria	health	global	15.2
Cool Earth	global warming	environment	global	6.2
SCI	parasites	health	global	11
Deworm the World	parasites	health	global	9
Give Directly	poverty	human services	global	8.3
Manos De Christo	Austin homeless	human services	local	5.5
Elephant Sactuary	tenessee	animals	national	1.4
Cure Alzheimer's Fund	gene mapping -> cure	health	national	2.1
charity navigator	meta!	research	national	1.4
Meals on Wheels Austin	elderly/poverty care	human services	local	5.5
ACLU	civil rights	politics	national	5.5
Sierra Club	environmental	environment	national	5.5
Southern Poverty Law	social justice	politics	national	4.1
Planned Parenthood	reproductive	human services	national	5.5
represent.us	bottom-up anti-corruption	politics	national	4.1
pro publica	journalism non profit	politics	national	4.1
union of concerned scientists	science advocacy	politics	national	4.1

This year we have greatly increased the share of our giving to national causes. Mostly this is because we no-longer trust the US federal government to do a good job in areas we care about, like civil liberties, social justice, global warming, and education. But a big portion remains focussed on global problems like Malaria.

These are all (technically) non-partisan causes, but in addition I may seek out and support particular politicians and political organizations.