This week's donation hemorrhage

I sent monthly checks off to two charities this evening: $70 to Thai Freedom House (sadly, I had just one ThaiForGood client), and $50 to The Baobab Home in Tanzania.

I've also been stockpiling coupon freebies for the past week or so, and I've finally identified a couple of tiny charities here in NYC that want what I've got...

Bottomless Closet helps disadvantaged women get into a decent job - interview workshops, budgeting seminars, second-hand interview and work clothes, etc. They also distribute a "goodie bag" of toiletries, so I'll be sending along the bargains I get on name-brand cosmetics, hair care products, deodorant, fem hygiene, etc.

Homeless Youth Services runs a shelter for teens in need, mostly LGBT runaways. I'm not a member of the LGBT community (I'm "S"), and indeed have very conflicted feelings about the T segment, but at the end of the day they're all just kids trying to survive. Apparently they're getting overspill from Covenant House, wow. This shelter's needs are sometimes so basic it breaks my heart. They post a weekly needs list in their yahoo group, and everything is really tiny - like milk because the food bank is so strained that they can't provide it anymore, moisturizer for one of the trans girls because her skin is so dry it hurts, plain felt Christmas stockings for the kids to decorate for themselves, OTC cold tablets. They don't mind donations of partially used shampoos and such - which is awesome, because I have some products that just don't suit me. They're also happy to accept prepared food for Thanksgiving dinner...I'm generally a lousy cook, but I make great mashed potatoes.

Still in "Giving" Mode

That 10-Day Give may have finished up 6 days ago, but I haven't completely slacked off the way I thought I would. So far this week...

• On Thursday, I mailed $1080 worth of coupons to the US Air Force base in Okinawa. And today I collected dozens of coupon flyers and chopped them up. This week's selection was obnoxiously crappy, so the yield for the Overseas Coupon Program was pitiful.
• I made another Kiva loan, this time to a seamstress in Cambodia. What can I say, I envy her skills!
• Today I mailed the $245 I raised with charity massages to Thai Freedom House, which is currently struggling with a bad landlord situation, inflation, blossoming enrollment, and reduced contributions due to the economy.
• This afternoon I will be doing another charity massage, and the money from this one will go towards a joint project by Feed Villages and Village Volunteers, earmarked for the construction of grain/produce storage facilities to keep the food supply from the Community Garden Project available for their feeding programs year-round. They need $3100 to pull it off.

Day 10 of the 10-Day Give

I was busy on Day 10...

First, I raided the paper recycling bins on 28 floors of my building and fished out about a dozen coupon inserts to chop up for the Overseas Coupon Program - 2 hours and $250 worth. I'll be swinging by the post office tomorrow morning to mail three week's worth of snippings: $1080.

Second, I gave a rather odd looking old man one of my half-price Thai massages - that's another $50 for Thai Freedom House. At the post office tomorrow, I'll be buying and sending a money order to them for $245: $165 worth of massage donations + $40 tip donations + $40 from my matching offer. I'm not getting as much interest in this offer as I'd hoped - I was willing and able to do twice as many. So I'm thinking of starting a blog-that-looks-like-a-website for it. I don't want to put a link to my regular business website because it has my phone number on it, and I don't want calls at 3am from idiots who think "Thai massage" is a euphemism for prostitution.

And today, I cashed in two coupons on sale items at the pharmacy for a total savings of $9 - which I put into the little Japanese jar I've earmarked for monthly donations to The Baobab Home in Tanzania. What can I say, the name of this blog is "CheapCharity", so why shouldn't a charity benefit from me being cheap??

Day 4 of The 10-Day Give

I stumbled on Saturday, Day 2. I went for a 2-mile walk around midtown Manhattan in search of a homeless old person to give $5, but didn't run into anyone who fit the bill. Why am I being so picky? My rationale is that they're too old to work, they've lived through some awfully tough times (WW2, segregation, The Great Depression, etc), and things must be really bad either in their families or in their brain chemistry if this is what they're reduced to at their age.

So I made up for it by doubling my efforts with coupon clipping for the Overseas Coupon Program. Instead of one round of the paper recycling bins on 27 floors of my building, I did two - and that worked out superbly: I hit the motherload on the 11th floor. Someone reads a lot of different Sunday papers and hadn't thrown them out for a couple of weeks - I got multiples of RedPlum, SmartSourch and P&G. Last Sunday, I clipped $202 worth of coupons and it took an hour to snip, sort into two piles, and add up the value. This week it took 3 hours and yielded $629. I could have artificially boosted the total by including coupons that I suspect are useless (do you really think they stock $50 bags of organic dog food or gourmet Amish pasta at the Air Force base commissary in Okinawa??).

I also got another lovely email from Terri @ The Baobab Home yesterday. I'm planning to go to Kenya and Tanzania for my first ever trip to Africa, and I'm wondering how possible it would be to drop in and maybe bring hard-to-find-locally supplies. Apparently they've got a fundraising auction in TriBeCa next month, how cool is that!

Lisa @ Thai Freedom House also contacted me this morning, letting me know that the $120 I sent a few weeks ago plus $100 that a yoga instructor raised in a similar fashion helped her school/food programs through a rough patch last month. Between global inflation and the growth of her charity, their monthly expenses are currently $1500 instead of the outdated figure of $1000 mentioned on her website. So far I've raised $195 and am hoping that I'll do one more massage-for-charity before I mail her a check at the end of the week.

Matching Mayhem & Clipping Craziness

This past Saturday, I gave a charity Thai massage to a fellow Thai masseuse - someone who's actually Thai and is technically a competitor. We advertise in the same places, but we have different catchment areas in NYC with only a tiny overlap. I almost didn't respond to her inquiry for that reason, but decided I was being a whole lot picker than Thai Freedom House would be about where their donations come from. I'm very glad I did, because not only did she turn out to be a lovely person, but she paid $90 - that's the $50 minimum plus an additional $40, which I match when the time comes to mail my monthly donation in. I told my mother about this, and she said "who would know if you didn't match it? heck, who would even know if you kept or sent the money?" (she was just playing devil's advocate - it wasn't actually a suggestion!). I said that karma would hit me back so freaking hard I'd metaphorically find myself with a fat lip and a black eye. She laughed and totally agreed. Anyway, between the annoying guy on Thursday, this Thai woman, and my matching, TFH can expect no less than $195 this month.

Last night, I raided the recycling bins in my building and collected 4 sets of the same Sunday coupon insert. I figure that this plus whatever I scrounge up next week will count towards one of my 10-Day Give activities. So far, my ideas for that challenge are:

• Kiva loan
• Thai Freedom House donation
• Overseas Coupon Program
• Women For Women (maybe) sign-up and start
  

Two More Thai

The Thai-for-Thailand massage idea is going fairly well. The only real problem has been one minor league jackass who insisted on being naked and getting more than an hour (at least he paid for it, but there's a reason I limited the offer to 60 minutes). Maybe I should specify "no banker-bodybuilders" in my advertising - that's a double-whammy of unpleasantness. On Saturday, I have a fellow Thai practitioner coming in for a donation session...almost didn't respond to her inquiry because she's technically a competitor, but decided to set aside my hyper self-preservation instincts for the sake of a $50 donation. I'm secretly hoping that we get along and can exchange in the future. I miss getting Thai massage for myself.

I emailed Lisa from Thai Freedom House to let her know that the first check for $120 was on its way, and she responded, "Thank you so much for continuing to think of us and support us! We really appreciate it. It has been extremely hard to get any donations lately and everything helps a great deal." I'd heard that charities were suffering - understandably - in this economy, so I hope my timing helps pick up the slack for a bit.

Weekly Thai Total

I just finished my second "Thai for Thai Freedom House" session 20 minutes ago, so that's another $50 for the underserved Hill Tribes of northern Thailand. I'll see if I get any nibbles for this weekend, and then send a check for the total on Monday. As it stands, they're getting $120...not too shabby for a charity that needs $1000/month to fund its programs.

My original plan to do this once a month is kind of out the window - I'm enjoying this more than I'd anticipated. It's not taxing my body or energy levels to the detriment of my income, and I'm getting to meet some unusual people. I can easily do this weekly if I can generate enough interest in my off-peak offer.

So I just might google my fool head off this afternoon to seek out another tiny Thai (or at least Southeast Asian) charity to support with my service-by-donation dollars.

The Opposite of a Jinx

Yesterday, I did my first Thai massage-for-charity session, and I might be doing a second one tomorrow morning. The minimum donation is $50 (about half my regular fee), and Alessandro gave me $60...I match anything over the minimum, so this means at least $70 for Thai Freedom House this month, maybe even twice that if Participant #2, Jack, comes through this week.

Now here's an odd little twist...I first started advertising this on Craigslist last Saturday, Sept 6, and I was swamped with business that Sunday - regular business, not charity stuff. In fact, I didn't get a single enquiry for the half-price Thai session for the first 5 days I advertised it. Now, Sunday is usually a very quiet work day for me, maybe 1-2 clients if any, and would normally be an ideal day for a "donated" session. Last Sunday I did 7 back-breaking hours, and yesterday I did 6, one of which was the charity session. In my 5 years as a massage therapist, this is unprecedented. It's like I put the opposite of a jinx on myself with this idea. Sweeeeeet.

Rainy Saturday Updates

It's a gloomy, gray, wet Saturday, and no one - myself included - has much inclination to set foot outside. That means zero business and lots of time for introspection and initiative. And naps.

Thai Freedom House
Today I posted an ad on Craigslist offering one half-price Thai massage this weekend, with all of the proceeds going to Thai Freedom House. I should have advertised it earlier this week, but I thought I was going to have some minor surgery on my leg this morning, which requires two days off from work. No nibbles yet...I blame the weather. There's always next weekend if this one doesn't pan out.

Goods4Girls
I need a lesson on how to use a sewing machine and what the little "insider" tricks are for getting things to line up right. Next Saturday I won't have any water at all from 4am to 8pm, so I'm heading to NJ to visit my mother, who said she'd see if her very-skilled best friend would be willing to spend an hour with me over a sewing machine.

Kiva
I made my second loan to an African entrepreneur - well, a group of entrepreneurs. I have trouble finding ones I like because either (a) the microlending institution has a religious backer, or (b) the loans are to Nigerians, who've just run too many scams for me to feel charitable towards, or (c) they're polygamous, which just makes me feel weird.

Thai for Thai Freedom?

On and off for the past few years, I have tried to think up a way to link my massage work with charity, but those attempts never panned out. In 2004, I tried volunteering my services to organizations that helped assault victims and 9/11 survivors, but they weren't interested. In 2005, I contemplated organizing an event with other practitioners, but as much as they put forth that they were all about spirituality and compassion and universal energy, they just didn't walk the walk.

So now that I've found a Thai charity (thanks for the lovely comment, Lisa!) that does something I wish I was out there doing myself, I'm thinking about giving it another go. Since Thai Freedom House's greatest need is reliable funding, I've come up with a possibility...

Once a month, I could offer one hour of Thai massage at an off-peak time for a minimum donation of $50 (regular charge is nearly twice that). Anything over that $50 minimum, I match. What can I say - I like the idea of using what Thailand has given me to give back to Thailand.

Thai Ties

I fully acknowledge that I'm a bit "backwards" in terms of what makes me comfortable or even interested in giving. While most people prefer large organizations with thorough oversight and accountability, I'm a huge fan of the tiniest operations out there - I like supporting causes that are run by someone who's in it heart and soul. That's not to say that I don't think massive charities like Unicef, Doctors Without Borders, World Vision, etc. aren't doing amazing work and benefiting from economies of scale - I just think they're better off pursuing bigger donors than little ol' me. My little $25 donation is hardly worth the time and stationery involved in sending me a receipt that I don't even want.

Anyway, I think I may have found a charity that satisfies more criteria than I can count, all of which I've touched on in previous posts...

- I mentioned wanting to do something for the Burmese after the initial post-cyclone burst of aid, especially given the colossal mismanagement by their despotic government.
- I've been to Thailand a few times and have been casting about for a specific way to help their most neglected populations (sex workers, hill tribes, etc).
- My father always had a special place in his heart and conscience for southeast Asia, having spent over a year there as a tourist immediately following his discharge from the Air Force during the Vietnam War in the late 60s.

The charity is Thai Freedom House, and it's a one-(wo)man band operation. This one has an additional super-personal angle for me: the focus is on education with an emphasis on language. I have an MSc in Applied Linguistics and the Cambridge TEFL certificate, and I taught English in Spain and Japan back in the 90s (I hated teaching and was at best mediocre).

Lisa Nesser, the woman behind all this, recognized that the Burmese refugees and hill tribe people of northern Thailand have almost no chance of improving their circumstances - the same circumstances that lead to human/sex trafficking - if they can't speak the national language. She runs classes for children and adults to learn Thai and, to a lesser extent, English. She also feeds them, since things like nutrition and sustenance are not fixtures in their lives. Her goal is to get 40 donors to commit to monthly donations of $25 to keep things going, and I have a feeling I'm going to join that club.