This holiday season I’ll be making a donation to one of the organizations listed here:

http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/organizations

This is a compiled list of the most effective charities.  The metric they use is an estimation of how much money it costs to save a life, which usually ends up going to impoverished 3rd-world areas.  You can be selective, too.  There are a few different choices for what the charities do, and I believe some of them even have donations specific to geographic regions.

I wanted to set it up and pledge to donate 10% of my photography net income, but I got to it too late in the game.  A quick discussion with my tax adviser revealed it would be a huge mess to do that  so close to the end of the year.  Oh well, I’ll just have to keep that in mind for next year.

So basically I can’t officially claim that I’ll be donating a specific percentage, and I can’t offer any of my customers the benefits of a tax write-off for donating to a 501(c)(3) non-profit.  But I can say I plan on donating, and I urge you to do it as well.  It feels good.  :)

Cheers,

-Martin