Dollar Philanthropy

Tiny Stitches Helping Provide Clothing for Disadvantaged Newborns

This week's good cause of the week comes at the request of my husband. His company has a very active corporate charity committee (in fact, they just raised 30 thousand dollars for the 3-day walk for breast cancer) and he alerted me to the recent donation they made to this very deserving organization.

Tiny Stitches is a non-profit organization that provides basic clothing and other items for disadvantaged newborns in North Georgia.  Their volunteers are those who are talented in sewing, knitting, and crocheting who want to use their hobby to make items for those in need.  Tiny Stitches coordinates the distribution of supplies to volunteers who want to help but can't afford the materials and end products to those new families who need it.

I'm not one of those talented souls that can sew.  However, my mom is great at it.  As a child, I enjoyed many cool outfits and items made especially for me.  Because Tiny Stitches donates all sorts of items (blankets, gowns, washcloths, bonnets, booties, quilts, bibs, burp cloths and sleepers), children born into poor, but loving homes are getting handmade items, made with love, that will be cherished in years to come. 

Monetary donations to Tiny Stitches go toward the purchase of supplies.  This enables talented people on fixed or limited incomes to use their gifts to create beautiful and useful items for others. 

$5.00 buys a yard of fabric
$3.00 buys a yarn for a blanket or bobbins
$1.00 buys a spool of thread or a pack of needles

Send Your Dollar

Pay Pal:  You can use PayPal to donate by clicking here and using the "Make a Donation" button.

Network for Good:  You can donate $10 or more by credit card by clicking here.

By Mail:  Payable to Tiny Stitches to:

      Tiny Stitches

   

           P.O. Box         254

      Suwanee,       GA 30024-0254

Dollar Philanthropy is TypePad Featured Blog

Thanks to the kind people at Typepad and SixApart (the company that hosts this blog) for making Dollar Philanthropy today's featured blog.  Read more ---> Here.

For those of you who are new visitors, thanks for stopping by.  To learn more about Dollar Philanthropy, take a cruise through the category "How This Works."  To take a tour of the featured nonprofits, these can be found in the "Good Causes".

As the Typepad folks said, the challenge here is to contribute $1 per week to the highlighted organiations.  However, nothing is set in stone-- so don't let the challenge be the message you walk away with. 

Instead, my real hope is to be a reminder that every small effort does make a difference. I think in the cynicism of today's world it is easy to for us to feel like we cannot do anything to help make big issues and ills better. 

So give as your heart leads and feel free to use Dollar Philanthropy as a resource for good causes that need help.  I encourage you to use your own gifts, talents and creativity to determine the best ways you can help. That could be through a donation of personal time, money, services, or blog space.  Or it could be gathering a group of friends and colleagues to find your own creative ways to help.

Thanks again for dropping by.  If you know of a small to medium nonprofit that is doing great work in your corner of the world, drop me a line. 

~Carol

Our Pal's Place: Educating Pets and People to Ensure Forever Homes for Orphaned Animals

Here in the South, pet overpopulation is a very real problem because of our poor spay/neuter rates.  This results in a large number of animals being euthanized in our county shelters simply because they run out of room.  Our Pal's Place is a no-kill animal shelter that rescues dogs from county shelters when they have been assigned a 'death date'. When these dogs are taken in, they are fully vetted, nursed back to health and some are given a human coach to help them overcome behavioral problems that may have been a product of their life before coming into Our Pal's Place.  This K9 Coach program helps to make sure that animals are as ready as possible to be polite and pleasant members of their new households.

Last year, Our Pal's Place found permanent homes for 75+ animals and rescued many more. In January 2006, the Helen Woodward Animal Center recognized Our Pal's Place adoption efforts in conjunction with their Home 4 The Holidays Campaign.  Recently, Our Pal's Place was featured in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution for their positive work with animals.

Our Pal's Place is also committed to educating the community around them about the importance of spaying and neutering as well as positive training methods to ensure that every animal can be maintained in their forever home.

Last year, Our Pal's Place moved to a new location and then a week later sent a team to New Orleans to help rescue some of the animal victims of Hurricaine Katrina.  With the move and the influx of new animals, Our Pal's Place lost their space for education.  Since then, classes and education has had to take place outside of their facility.  They are hoping to raise money to be able to erect another building on their property so that they can continue the crucial community outreach and education necessary to permanently reduce the pet overpopulation problem and euthanasia rates in shelters around Atlanta.

Send Your Dollar Today

Gigi Graves, the Executive Director of Our Pal's Place, says, "We are very careful with the money people give to us.  We will use it in whatever way they desire.  If a person requests that his or her donation go directly for the care of the dogs, then it is done.  If he or she would like the donation to go toward a specific animal, then it is done.  We feel a real responsiblity to making sure our donor's money is spent as they intend."

You can donate to Our Pal's Place

By Mail: Check payable to Our Pal's Place, Inc.
4508 Canton Highway
Marietta, GA 30066

By Paypal through the Our Pal's Place Website:  Click here.  Scroll to the bottom of the page.

By Credit card through Network for Good: Click Here

I volunteer and regularly donate to Our Pal's Place.

Do Gooder TV: New Way to Learn about Charities

DoGooder TV is a new service like YouTube specifically for nonprofit organizations. Visitors are able to view compelling video stories of nonprofits and then DoGooderTV gives them a direct way to donate to the organization, join, volunteer or simply find out more information.  The service is currently in alpha, but a fuller version is expected to launch in November.

I recently had the opportunity to trade e-mails with Michael Hoffman, the CEO, of See3 the parent company of DoGooder TV.   I asked him to tell me more about the philosophy, purpose and goals behind DoGooder TV:

DoGooderTV is being built as a community for people who care about issues and organizations. Our goal is to bring this qualified audience into the work of organizations. Once emotionally hooked by watching their videos, the audience will be able to act – to donate, sign-up or learn more.

DoGooderTV gives all of those gala dinner videos a new lease on life, and organizations a way to leverage the existing investments they have made in video material by getting it in front of new audiences.

In it's November launch DoGooder TV plans on rolling out some social networking functionalities similar to that of MySpace and Facebook.  When asked about this, Michael said,

We believe the social networking idea has legs, and not only for MySpace. Our goal with DoGooderTV is to allow people who get excited about an organization’s mission to share this excitement with their friends, and to seek out others who share their interest. We need a mechanism for “friends telling friends” and then to begin to rely on their friends opinions of worthy causes and organizations.

Relatively few Americans donate money to non-religious nonprofits. If social networking can be tapped to get people to act we are all for it and we want to be a leader in this regard. I must say there are others doing social networks built about issues, such as progressive politics. Where we think we will add something is that our network will be built around video, which we think is a much more interesting frame of reference than say, annual reports.

So drop by DoGooder TV and view some of the great videos that are up already.  Then come back again in November to see more cool stuff.  For more on my interview with Michael Hoffman, visit my personal blog Driving in Traffic.