Ask HN: How do you give back?

I pay my taxes.

Help others, eg volunteer, support with a little cash and/or time, contribute to open source, help moderate forums, advise if you can and are asked, ...

I donate to Riseup[0], TailsOS[1], and The EFF[2]. They all do great work, and I use their services too, so I'm not just a leecher!

[0] https://riseup.net/en/donate

[1] https://tails.boum.org/donate/

[2] https://supporters.eff.org/donate/join-4

Are you interested in making the biggest possible impact or interested in feeling good about yourself?

For an idea I'm working on that touches medicine, I'm working through the details of a compassionate care program (free/extremely reduced price for paid features) for those it would help the most.

Other than that I just try to do small things daily to make the world a better place. Holding the door for someone, thanking them for doing something, etc... may not add up to a lot but I'm hoping that I can help everyone a small amount.

I'm here nicknaming 'Little Pantry' as a parallel to the 'Little Library' book boxes you see distributed here and there. I've got three examples, two personal and one aspirational for me.

Do you ever waver about what to do when you see someone standing on the side of the road with a sign asking for some kind of help? I'll skip the internal and external debates to tell you what my wife and I currently do.

1. At the smallest scale, we keep a handful of $10 McDonald's gift cards in the driver's side pocket door of our cars, suitable for handing out our windows quickly when we are moved to do so. [Reference Chris Arnade and his book 'Dignity' and various articles he's written about Mcdonalds, eg. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mcdonalds-as-america-a-c...]

2. One step up from there, my wife puts together gallon zip-loc bags with basics, e.g. water bottle, socks, toothbrush/paste, protein bars, etc. Sometimes also McDonald's cards. These get handed out in the same fashion as above.

3. I've got friends who do this at the scale of keeping 50lb bags of rice, beans, and other staple foods, binning them out in 1-2 week portions, and delivering them, along with similar-sized portions of e.g. potatoes, carrots, onions, etc to needy families they know. They deliberately cultivate not only the giving of things, but the development of relationships with those in need (which is all of us, sooner or later.) We're looking at how to step up to this level.

I dislike people, most of my money is going and will go to the local animal shelters. Cats and dogs can’t help themselves and are not responsible for their situations.

From my perspective, the pressures of capitalism are responsible a lot of the suffering that people help with (in heroic ways) at the margins by volunteering.

It makes more sense to me to address the problem at the root, so I’m a member of several socialist organizations that are trying in various ways to build towards an alternative mode of organizing society.

I created and fund a scholarship at the university I graduated from.

As a software engineer: can you help/participate at hackathons, tech talks, teach valuable lessons that you have learned (this even counts at work)

As a lawyer, look for a volunteer lawyer association near you; this could be very meaningful, you can help with less skil required tasks like case intake.

More generally; do you have hobbies you can teach others how to do, likely fun for you too.(ie, teach, advise, or be involved at a local school, college, special needs, or veterans program)

--- For me --

I'm a software engineer, so I've worked tech talks, conferences, and take extra initiative to teach best practices at work or when doing open source development.

but love to change the pace by working physically. This is building, gardening, or moving heavy objects. I'm also the car guru in my extended family, I advise and sometimes assist repairing.

I'm athletic. I used to advise a college club I graduated from (I also help fundraising efforts). I play tennis once a year with a special needs program.

Volunteer and Charity. I target volunteering once a month and contributing 10% of my income to charity (and yes, I tax deduct them l

As a front end dev, you could set aside a few weeks for diving deep into accessibility technologies. Once you apply what you have learnt to your future projects, you will make quite a difference down the road. For some of us, assistive technologies are more or less the only way to take part in this modern society.

I donate about 15% of my income to various organizations, all focused on animal advocacy. If you prefer to focus on humans, I'd suggest donating to Givewell (https://www.givewell.org/) or to some of the charities they recommend.

If you're a software engineer in the US, you're earning _way_ more than most people in the world, and you can comfortable donate a large chunk of your income to help people (including non-human people) who are much worse off than you.

I give money to Givewell's top charities (i.e., mostly Against Malaria Foundation in recent years) and would encourage it.

Donated blood for the first time a few days ago.

I am considering volunteering for Celebrate Recovery through my church. I also focus far more time on my kids and wife than I did last year. I was selfish and I owe them a lot.

I really just try to be nice to people and to use my skills to make this world marginally better. I try to orient my life around giving, I'd give anyone the shirt off my back...

Of course we all have selfish behaviors, but I think it's good to generally put others before yourself.

And don't just give food or money to the homeless; give them your time. Take them out to eat. Cultivate a relationship with the underbelly of your city. Look out for your friends as well; make sure you understand their needs and desires, and find ways to help them be successful in meeting those needs.

The most important thing you can do with success is share it with others.

Loving others as yourself, with all kindness, compassion and understanding.

I would investigate spiritual matters and if you are willing to believe, love God.

I trained to become an EMT and became a volunteer search and rescue medic. In the end, it's not really giving much back as I get a _lot_ more out of it than I put it.

Teach people your skills for free.

I donate 10% of my net income to charities.

Having a budget for donations is really nice because it makes giving away money much easier. In my mental model this is simply not my money, but I can decide where it goes. This also makes spontaneous donations much easier. When the Ukraine war broke out and my employer set up a donation matching program, giving away 2000€ didn't require second thoughts from me.

Scaling your donations with your salary is nice because it gives you a reason to ask for higher salary besides becoming even richer.

With a software engineering salary, this is also enough money to support multiple organizations with a significant amount of money each. Discovering new organizations that do cool stuff and reading the occasional newsletter with positive news, knowing that your money supported that outcome, is really nice.

I give the bulk of it to the Against Malaria Foundation, drawing from the effective altruism idea. They distribute mosquito nets and score very high in the (years of "healthy" life saved)/dollar metric. The rest goes to various NGOs around human rights, civil liberties, environmental protection, journalism, and the FOSS/donationware that I use.

I used to be an after school mentor for an organization called BUILD here in the Bay Area. BUILD is an entrepreneurship program for underserved high school students that teaches them how to build their own business while also preparing them for college.

Most, if not, all of these students come from a home where no one holds a college degree or even a stable source of income. I didn't comprehend the impact I could have just by showing up every week, being present, and taking an active interest in who these teens were as people.

If you have the time, I would highly recommend volunteering with organizations like this. It changed my life.

I'm a doctor (retired neurosurgical anesthesiologist x 38 years). When I am grateful for someone's help I give them my business card — which includes my email and phone# — and tell them to feel free to contact me 24/7/365 for anything, no matter how small. If nothing else I can advise them whether or not they need to go to the ER.

So many ideas:

* Fix bugs on open source projects.

* Donate to open source projects that mattered to you.

* Donate to reputable nonprofit.

No good deed goes unpunished.

About a year and half ago I decided to start volunteer with Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation. (I been out of the Marines for about 10 years.) For reason out of my control I'm now the President of the Colorado chapter.

Let me know if any wants to come to the Gold Tournament or volunteer. ;)

Money is great, but volunteering is really giving back.

http://www.mcsf.org