1) Especially for those of us in the watershed of the U.S.'s largest estuary, I would add the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (https://www.cbf.org). They do a wide range of fantastic work to improve the entire bay ecosystem: planting lots of oysters, planting lots of trees, helping farmers keep cattle and animal processing waste out of streams, bringing lawsuits against polluters, lobbying to protect streams and marine life, running a small farm that models bay-friendly organic practices (and that donates much of its produce to local food banks), and educating lots of youth about the importance of improving and protecting the Bay. Not only are they highly effective, their work affects a large region of the U.S. and has benefits for generations into the future--as well as for us watershed denizens in the here and now. According to their 990 data on ProPublica, their top executives are paid around $300k, which is on par with the top executives at federal agencies and hence strikes me as reasonable.
2) As someone who has spent a lifetime living on and profiting from land ultimately stolen or cheated from Indigenous peoples, I'm very moved by Indigenous activists' calls to give back land and/or recognize their right to sovereignty over it (https://landback.org/manifesto). While I'm not prepared, at this point in my life, to uproot my family and cede my land back, I can at least heed some activists' call to pay a "land tax" to the groups on whose land I'm living. (More info here: https://nativegov.org/news/voluntary-land-taxes.) In essence, it recognizes that, if they had truly retained their sovereignty, theirs would be the government to which I would be contributing to social support services. It also helps redistribute some of the wealth generated from my enjoyment of this land to help them afford health care, community services, cultural activities, and--maybe most importantly--buying back their land. In my (and your) case, these people are the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, and I support them via Through Piscataway Eyes (http://www.throughpiscatawayeyes.org/#/) and Native American Lifelines (https://nativeamericanlifelines.org). Readers who don't live on Piscataway Conoy land can start researching the Indigenous groups on whose land they're living at https://native-land.ca, although I would encourage them to treat that as a starting point for further research about the history and current status of those peoples and their institutions.
3) On screening nonprofits, I'd caution your readers against looking only or primarily at executive compensation. (I think you have that nuance, but I want to amplify it.) A more significant metric on which I've heard donors focus is overhead ratio, but even that can be misleading and counterproductive. A high overhead ratio may be unavoidable for certain nonprofits' labor-intensive missions, and a low overhead ratio often means low pay for the workers who do socially valuable work. Not only is that completely backwards in terms of social priorities--shouldn't society value the labor of someone fighting for human rights more highly than that of a corporate lawyer working to suppress those rights?--it also discourages many good folks with families, student loans, high health costs, etc. from getting involved in or staying in nonprofit work. While nonprofits certainly shouldn't be slush funds for self-enrichment and should devote a lot of their assets toward their mission, let's not begrudge places that might have legitimate overhead needs and/or that don't stint their workers to appease funders. Let's not inflict on our favorite nonprofits the same punitive austerity-for-its-own-sake philosophy that hedge funds have used to impoverish our utilities and international lenders our governments!
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, suggestions and links. I agree that neither executive compensation nor overhead are be-all-end-all measures of a nonprofit's effectiveness or worthiness. Ratio of assets to expenditures is another thing to look at - at least one DC-area nature-oriented nonprofit that solicits donations pays its executives reasonably (IMO) but has many years' worth of operating expenses in reserve, so I see no reason to give to it. To some extent, giving seems to be as much about generating social ties and feelings of meaningfulness as it is about rational calculations of how much "good" one's money can do.
Thank you Gabe for your local actions! Practicing responsible stewardship in your watershed builds community. People working together to address a problem has immediate social and environmental benefits. This reduces the anxieties imposed by large scale reports by the big greens who have high priced lawyers to pay. Despite huge accomplishments of reaching consensus across nearly 200 nations, they always report the COP meetings have failed and with calamity imminent, their need for more of our money is greater than ever before.
I live in Somerville MA. At 19,000 residents per square mile, we are the most densely inhabited municipality. Cambridge MA is second with 16,000.
We are organizing and planting pollinator corridors across the city on public and participating private properties. Wildlife thrives here because we do not use chemicals or quick-release fertilizers on lawns (kills soil microbes and beneficial nematodes). Lots of turkeys, rabbits and birds forage the ground.
Three thoughts:
1) Especially for those of us in the watershed of the U.S.'s largest estuary, I would add the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (https://www.cbf.org). They do a wide range of fantastic work to improve the entire bay ecosystem: planting lots of oysters, planting lots of trees, helping farmers keep cattle and animal processing waste out of streams, bringing lawsuits against polluters, lobbying to protect streams and marine life, running a small farm that models bay-friendly organic practices (and that donates much of its produce to local food banks), and educating lots of youth about the importance of improving and protecting the Bay. Not only are they highly effective, their work affects a large region of the U.S. and has benefits for generations into the future--as well as for us watershed denizens in the here and now. According to their 990 data on ProPublica, their top executives are paid around $300k, which is on par with the top executives at federal agencies and hence strikes me as reasonable.
2) As someone who has spent a lifetime living on and profiting from land ultimately stolen or cheated from Indigenous peoples, I'm very moved by Indigenous activists' calls to give back land and/or recognize their right to sovereignty over it (https://landback.org/manifesto). While I'm not prepared, at this point in my life, to uproot my family and cede my land back, I can at least heed some activists' call to pay a "land tax" to the groups on whose land I'm living. (More info here: https://nativegov.org/news/voluntary-land-taxes.) In essence, it recognizes that, if they had truly retained their sovereignty, theirs would be the government to which I would be contributing to social support services. It also helps redistribute some of the wealth generated from my enjoyment of this land to help them afford health care, community services, cultural activities, and--maybe most importantly--buying back their land. In my (and your) case, these people are the Piscataway Conoy Tribe, and I support them via Through Piscataway Eyes (http://www.throughpiscatawayeyes.org/#/) and Native American Lifelines (https://nativeamericanlifelines.org). Readers who don't live on Piscataway Conoy land can start researching the Indigenous groups on whose land they're living at https://native-land.ca, although I would encourage them to treat that as a starting point for further research about the history and current status of those peoples and their institutions.
3) On screening nonprofits, I'd caution your readers against looking only or primarily at executive compensation. (I think you have that nuance, but I want to amplify it.) A more significant metric on which I've heard donors focus is overhead ratio, but even that can be misleading and counterproductive. A high overhead ratio may be unavoidable for certain nonprofits' labor-intensive missions, and a low overhead ratio often means low pay for the workers who do socially valuable work. Not only is that completely backwards in terms of social priorities--shouldn't society value the labor of someone fighting for human rights more highly than that of a corporate lawyer working to suppress those rights?--it also discourages many good folks with families, student loans, high health costs, etc. from getting involved in or staying in nonprofit work. While nonprofits certainly shouldn't be slush funds for self-enrichment and should devote a lot of their assets toward their mission, let's not begrudge places that might have legitimate overhead needs and/or that don't stint their workers to appease funders. Let's not inflict on our favorite nonprofits the same punitive austerity-for-its-own-sake philosophy that hedge funds have used to impoverish our utilities and international lenders our governments!
Thanks for the thoughtful comment, suggestions and links. I agree that neither executive compensation nor overhead are be-all-end-all measures of a nonprofit's effectiveness or worthiness. Ratio of assets to expenditures is another thing to look at - at least one DC-area nature-oriented nonprofit that solicits donations pays its executives reasonably (IMO) but has many years' worth of operating expenses in reserve, so I see no reason to give to it. To some extent, giving seems to be as much about generating social ties and feelings of meaningfulness as it is about rational calculations of how much "good" one's money can do.
Thank you Gabe for your local actions! Practicing responsible stewardship in your watershed builds community. People working together to address a problem has immediate social and environmental benefits. This reduces the anxieties imposed by large scale reports by the big greens who have high priced lawyers to pay. Despite huge accomplishments of reaching consensus across nearly 200 nations, they always report the COP meetings have failed and with calamity imminent, their need for more of our money is greater than ever before.
I live in Somerville MA. At 19,000 residents per square mile, we are the most densely inhabited municipality. Cambridge MA is second with 16,000.
We are organizing and planting pollinator corridors across the city on public and participating private properties. Wildlife thrives here because we do not use chemicals or quick-release fertilizers on lawns (kills soil microbes and beneficial nematodes). Lots of turkeys, rabbits and birds forage the ground.
I really like how you did this, Gabe. Right on.