Welcome back, Shit Givers.

I hope you’re safely enjoying this week’s bizarre weather, wherever you are. I’m off for a couple days to hang with a buddy, play some Mario Kart, and generally eat peanut butter out of the jar for three meals a day.

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Originally published July 20, 2020, updated February 2023

Who do you want to be? And more importantly, why?

Exactly one thousand years ago in 2008, a beloved cousin was diagnosed with cancer, and after a tough conversation with myself where I reminded myself I had no practical or even really discernible skills that could assist with her treatment, but still desperate to find a way to “help” — I signed up for a triathlon.

Why? Well, I was just three years out of being a two-sport college athlete, and I’d recently discovered Team in Training, the fundraising arm of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

So I trained, and 

I ran/biked/swam/tore a hamstring, and I raised over $20,000 for cancer research and treatment from a wide swath of friends and family. It was an incredible experience. I was/am still a moron, but I felt like I was doing…something. It was addicting.

Many close friends gave immediately upon hearing about my mission and the organization I was raising funds for. But quite a lot of the money came from friends of friends, and even from several degrees further. 



How? Facebook (I know).

Way back in 2008, when triceratops were still around, using Facebook to get the word out about a cause was fairly novel — and I was struck by how incredibly effective it was. Of course, it’s no longer novel today, in 2023, when millions of strangers on GoFundMe are covering half our nation’s medical and bail bills.

That ubiquity is a double-edged sword: it’s never been easier to donate time, money, and other resources on the web, but it can be daunting — if not paralyzing — to sort through the countless worthy causes: donate to these presidential candidates, and these Senate races, and these House races.

Oh, but, don’t forget down-ballot races, like we did for the last 10 years, so here’s another twenty make or break races between people you’ve never heard of but who can either guarantee or take away bodily autonomy, you’re welcome.

And then of course there are all of the worthy and reputable non-profits and mutual-aid across health, politics, science, food, water, civil rights, and more.

 Thankfully, there’s tools to help corral all of those, to make it easier to strategize and then give.

But it’s still easy — and completely understandable — to feel pulled in a million directions at once.

Consider the “hammer and nail” story/proverb/myth/whatever, which I’ll thoroughly mangle here for your benefit: