Billions With Zero Knowledge

We wanted to do something unique for the holidays, that reflects the spirit of giving and community.

So to support our own project, the Million Dollar Blog Post which is part of our Gifter.Org series of social experiments, we have made the following donations to charity. We gave each of our team members $500 to donate to the charity of their choice.

Here are our donations from our team. Total Donations $2,500 - Wishes available for our friends and supporters 2,500.

Please enjoy your wish and spread the word. We wish you the best for the holiday season.

Shane Akhgar - Project Hope

Since 1958, Project HOPE has worked to make health care available for people around the globe – especially children. It’s in our name: Health Opportunities for People Everywhere. You may remember our hospital ship that traveled the world. Today our work includes educating health professionals and volunteers, providing medicines and supplies, strengthening health facilities, training community health workers, and fighting communicable diseases such as TB and AIDS.

Alex Eberts - CAMFED is the Campaign for Female Education

Started in rural Zimbabwe in 1993 by Anne Cotton, CAMFED now has programs in Zambia Ghana and Tanzania and in 2005 alone, provided almost 250,000 rural girls with educational support.

What I like most about CAMFED is that it has been setup so that girls who have been assisted by the program become part of an support network for the girls currently in the program. Not only is the system self-reinforcing but it’s also extremely efficient (their direct charitable expenditure is over 90%). Oh, and my mum is the chairperson of CAMFED’s International Board

CAMFED was just chosen by The Financial Times (UK) as it’s Seasonal Appeal and in 2003 was named International Aid and Development Charity of the Year. You can find out more about what CAMFED does on their website.

Austin Hill - Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (Wikipedia)

The goal of the Wikimedia foundation is to develop and maintain open content, wiki-based projects and to provide the full contents of those projects to the public free of charge.

In addition to the multilingual general encyclopedia Wikipedia, the Foundation manages a multi-language dictionary and thesaurus named Wiktionary, an encyclopedia of quotations named Wikiquote, a repository of source texts in any language named Wikisource, and a collection of e-book texts for students (such as textbooks and annotated public domain books) named Wikibooks. Wikijunior is a subproject of Wikibooks that specializes in books for children.

The continued growth of each of the Wikimedia projects is dependent mostly on donations but the Wikimedia Foundation tries to increase its revenue by finding alternative means of funding such as grants and sponsorship.

The Wikimedia Foundation is a 501(c)(3) with a vision to bring a free and accurate encyclopedia to every single person on the planet. This includes people who currently do not have electricity, computers, Internet access, or even clean drinking water. All proceeds from donations, as with all proceeds from all Foundation fundraisers, are fully dedicated to that charitable purpose.

Oliver Lavery - Dana Farber Cancer Institute Jimmy Fund

The Jimmy Fund started in 1948 when the Variety Club of New England (now the Variety Children’s Charity of New England) and the Boston Braves baseball team joined forces to help a 12-year-old cancer patient dubbed “Jimmy.” On a national radio broadcast, millions heard the boy visit with his heroes from the Braves as they stood by his hospital bed. Contributions poured in from people everywhere, launching an effort that continues to bring hope to thousands of children and adults facing cancer throughout the world.

Since its founding in 1948, the Jimmy Fund has supported the fight against cancer in children and adults at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, helping to raise the chances of survival for cancer patients around the world.

Join this more than 50-year tradition of support by making a gift to the Jimmy Fund.

Sebastien Pierre - ICCF Holland - Helping Children in Uganada

The south of Uganda has been suffering from the highest HIV infection rate in the world. Parents die of AIDS, just when their children need them most. An extended family can be their new home. Fortunately there is enough food in this farming district. But who will pay their school fees, provide medical aid and help them grow up? That is where ICCF Holland helps in the hope that they will be able to take care of themselves, and their children, in the long run.

ICCF stands for International Child Care Fund. This is a small foundation that was started by a few enthusiastic people who visited the Kibaale Children’s Centre (KCC). They worked there to help improve the centre, and got to know the people there and experienced the help they are giving to the needy children. After returning home, they realized that they could help KCC by starting ICCF Holland.

ICCF Holland is a foundation with very low overhead, because all work is done by volunteers. 99.5 percent of the donated money was sent to the project in Uganda in 2005.

Please go make a wish right now at the Million Dollar Blog Post and tell your friends about it.

Update Dec 18th/2006: Our first co-sponspor Andy Nulman has just sponsored 1,100 wishes and his great example is up at his blog.  Thanks Andy.

I’ll be updating this post with samples from the first couple of dozen of sponsors.  We are now up 3,600 wishes.  Go make yours now!

On Mon 18 Dec 2006.