Suggestions for charities? Plus, neepery on applied ritual.

[magistrate]

So... I'm not in a great financial situation, right now. Unemployment that's dragging on longer than I'd like (though, really, any time at all is longer than I'd like), issues with the startup I left never generating revenue enough to pay me some of my wages, living in California, etc. I'm searching for a job, and I'm getting some pretty excellent interviews, but nothing's really taken, yet; I'm also doing freelance work, writing content, and looking into other ways of generating income on my own.

But. All of this takes energy, and motivation, and unemployment seems designed to sap both. So I've developed a framework to help move me through.

There's an article I read, some time ago, called "assembly of a lesser god," which looks at beliefs and rituals, applied as psychological tools. (It also has a very sensible examination of placebo effects in there, which I always enjoy.) Distilled down, some of the meaning of the article is this:

Self-created ritual, and personification of parts of that ritual as a divinity, serves us psychologically by giving us emotional support in ways that rational self-interest doesn't. Or, as the author notes in discussing his friends who worship Rita, the god of finding parking (who always seem to find parking, even when he can't):

I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation for this, and I even think I know what it is. Finding parking spaces requires patience, persistence, and exactly the sort of optimism that Rita-worship evokes: Just keep looking; Rita will provide.

I, on the other hand, get frustrated very quickly. Rationally, I know that people come and go all the time, so it can make perfect sense to go around the block again, or to look down a street where there were no empty spaces five minutes ago. But when I don't find parking right away, it's very easy for me to imagine that every space for miles is occupied by people who are attending all-day meetings and then planning to go out for drinks afterward. It doesn't take very long before I hear a loud exasperated voice – my voice, it turns out – whining, "Forget it. I'll pay for a deck."

In short, my approach to parking is every bit as irrational as my friends'. The difference is that their irrationality serves them better than mine serves me. If I could believe in Rita, I would probably be better off.

Which is why I sat down and designed a patron god to cultivate. His name is Modumah.

Modumah's domains, as I've written out in my handy reference sheet (because I'm one of those authors, don't you know; I like having my little internal wikis to organize information) are "Wealth, Charity, Cultivation, Increase, Contribution, Patronage, Flow/Redistribution of Wealth". Which is important to me: my long-term goal out of this relationship isn't just becoming filthy rich, it's becoming responsibly well-off. Which is why, in the section on "cultivation", I have:

Sacrifices are generally monetary or material. Money can be given directly to Modumah (in such a place as a wishing well or another location where the money will not be retrieved and used by the petitioner; some may choose to leave coins in locations such as quarter-candy dispensers, take-a-penny-leave-a-penny cups, or the change slots of vending machines, for others to receive) or spread into the community; donations to charities, street performers, and beggars can all be dedicated to Modumah. Material goods can be dedicated to Modumah so long as they are given to individuals or organizations which solicit them along with monetary donations from the general public; food given to a food bank which also accepts money is a fitting sacrifice for Modumah.

Devotional actions include both the acts of sacrifice and actions taken to increase individual work (for oneself or for others). Taking wage-earning work; working toward a project which will hopefully earn money (even if it is not currently earning money); studying money, economics, or business; educating others about money, economics or business; loaning money or investing money; applying for or pursuing wage work; all these things can be devotional work for Modumah.

Petitioners earnestly cultivating Modumah will generally try to make a sacrifice (even if only a penny) either every day or on the fourth day of the week (measured from Monday, thus Thursday), and take a devotional action every day or every weekday. On Saturdays, earnest petitioners will generally celebrate Modumah by making a purchase, generally one appropriate to their earnings during the week; someone who has earned very little might purchase something from a dollar store, whereas high earners might enjoy lavish nights out with their friends.

Money isn't just a thing you have, and then everything is good. Money is a thing you grow by diligent work, which you can apply to get yourself things that will make you happy, and which you can use to do good in the world. Part of a healthy relationship to money, IMO, is learning how to spend it responsibly.

So. Every Thursday, having made some money (usually by content writing, though I actually made more than I thought I would when I did the open post on Tarot!), I make a sacrifice to Modumah by donating something to charity. And I think it would be good to have some diversity in those gifts.

So, I'd love to compile a list of organizations doing good work, with the aim that when Thursday rolls around, I can just click on a bookmark, decide who the week's $5 will go to, and not have to sit there thinking, "Did I have someone in mind? Who am I not remembering?". My hard criteria are: they have to take donations as low as $5 (because I don't make that much off my content writing, and am in no real state to be giving lavish gifts; most of my money has to go toward supporting myself), and they can't be organizations I'm ethically opposed to, like the National Organization for Marriage or something.

Organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Ada Initiative, Lambda Legal, IMAlive, Clarion West, and RAINN are already on my list; the Electronic Frontier Foundation would be, but their minimum donation seems to be $25, and 826 Valencia would be, but they don't seem to take donations.

I would love suggestions for organizations working with an eye toward civil rights, resources to underserved groups, environmental causes, QUILTBAG (or LGBTQ/whatever other acronym you use) issues, education, etc, etc. Pitch me on your favorite charities, guys!

And if anyone else wants to join me in cultivating Modumah... let me know. We can start an email list or just chat from time to time on AIM, or something.

And, for my own reference, an actual list of charities:

• Ada Initiative
• American Civil Liberties Union
• Bikers Against Child Abuse
• Clarion West
• Heifer International
• Hero Network
• IMAlive
• Kiva
• Lambda Legal
• Mama Hope
• Malala Fund
• Matthew Shepard Foundation
• Oxfam
• Planned Parenthood
• RAINN
• Scarleteen
• Stanford Cat Network
• Sylvia Riviera Law Project
• Trumpeter Swan Society
• Wikimedia Foundation
• WisCon Member Assistance Fund

Comments

[brainwane]

Here's a small list I compiled a while back -- and I work for the Wikimedia Foundation which allows very tiny donations.

[magistrate]

Awesome! Thank you!

[avia]

For obvious personal reasons I like The Trumpeter Swan Society, who accept donations as low as $1. The only thing that might be a problem is, they don't accept online payments... I think you have to mail it in.

[magistrate]

It looks like they may have just started accepting online donations – there's a sidebar that says "We now accept MasterCard and Visa". So. Thanks!

[sholio]

Most of what I donate to is already on here ... not that I've been doing much lately (though this is a good reminder that I should do more). The Matthew Shepard Foundation and Kiva.org are other places I've donated in the past. (ETA: Though I'm not sure if either one of them fits the "very low donation" criteria, come to think of it.) (ETA2: Most of what I've been doing lately along those lines has been contributing to "hat-passing" when someone in fandom is in direct need, like from copperbadge's Radio Free Monday posts and whatnot.)

Beyond that, I like the theory behind this post and it has definite applications in the direction of my own spiritual practices, which I suppose are aimed not so much at a specific deity as providing a framework to encourage healthy emotional/spiritual habits of my own. For example, I cultivated a habit a long time ago of quietly saying "Thank you" whenever I hit a green light, find a great break in traffic to make a left turn, or otherwise encounter an optimal situation while driving. I started doing it on the principle that we "acknowledge" bad traffic luck with little rituals that make us notice and remember it (cursing, pounding the steering wheel, whatever), so why not apply that same concept to good luck? (Besides, it never hurts to be polite just in case Someone is listening.) I don't think I'd ever realized that other people do the same general sort of thing, but it would be ridiculously egotistical to assume I'm the only person in the history of ever to think of it.

[magistrate]

Oh, right! I lend through Kiva, but I always neglect to donate to them, mostly because it prompts at lending checkout and I want to keep my money circulating. But I can definitely add it to the list. And I can definitely set up an alert on the Radio Free Mondays list; nice to have a place that does those compilations.

...I habitually thank elevators and automatic doors. Doors as a way of reminding myself that there are a lot of little things that the universe makes easier for me even though it doesn't have to, and elevators because, er, they kinda scare me. I find that rituals and personifications are really handy mental hacks, not only for getting stuff done over a long time period but also for imparting a sense of meaning to things. And having a sense of accountability to an outside party on this stuff, even if is just to someone I made up a couple weeks ago, is a surprisingly potent motivator.

(A lot of magical techniques work really well, too; one of the techniques in one of my books concerns charging a gesture with certain types of energy, which is the magical way of viewing what psychology (or Derren Brown) would render as linking a gesture with an emotion – like confidence – so you can use the gesture to call it up later. But in my experience magic is more fun than psychology, and I'm more likely to stick with it. Magic is awesome.)