Posted By Jenn
This year marks the fourth annual Giving Tuesday, a national day to reject the crass consumerism of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. #NotOneDime, a grassroots movement to boycott both consumer-based “holidays”, is credited with a projected loss of $1 billion dollars in revenue this year compared to previous years. Instead, Giving Tuesday encourages charity and goodwill through small (or large) donations to any non-profit organizations.
Giving Tuesday typically publishes a database of non-profit organizations that will receive your donations, but I’ve found in the past that AANHPI were woefully underrepresented. So, for the last several years, I have published my own (long, but not comprehensive) list of quality AANHPI non-profit organizations to support for Giving Tuesday. This year is no exception: after the jump you’ll find 2015’s updated list of great AANHPI-focused non-profits.
Before we get to the full list, however I’m going to give you my personal top five picks for 2015. This is, of course, a tough list to make since I think every organization in the larger list deserves our charitable support.
Reappropriate’s 2015 Giving Tuesday Top 5:
- CAAAV: Organizing Communities is one of my favourite local-level, community organizing non-profit groups. Founded in 1986 in response to a spate of anti-Asian hate crimes, the group has metamorphosed into a powerhouse for NYC-area community organizing, with a specific focus on interracial and interethnic coalition-building for fair housing and tenants’ rights. Not only does CAAAV do essential grassroots work, but I’m particularly struck by their unapologetic framing of their work as part of a larger fight to combat institutionalized anti-Blackness and anti-Asian racism.
- APIA Vote is one of the nation’s foremost non-partisan AANHPI groups focused exclusively on civic engagement. The AANHPI community has notoriously low voter registration rates, and the mission of APIAVote is to do something about it. As the all-important 2016 presidential election approaches — and in a field where Rightwing xenophobia and (anti-Asian, among others) race-baiting is par for the course — APIAVote’s work is particularly necessary, and a donation to them right now will have enormous impact.
- The Sikh Coalition is one of several groups that have done stellar work this year highlighting instances of anti-South Asian (and, often, anti-Muslim) hate crimes, and advocating for victims and their families. I choose The Sikh Coalition for particular attention given how I have personally relied on their campaigns this year to keep me abreast of news on this front; other noteworthy groups also doing this work include SALDEF and SAALT.
- NAPAWF is a national organization that focuses specifically on advocacy for AANHPI women, with one of their primary interest areas being reproductive rights. They have been very active in elevating the voices of AANHPI women in the current fight to defund Planned Parenthood, and even in the fierce urgency of the moment with regard to the fight to preserve abortion access, NAPAWF has done an excellent and necessary job injecting race into the national conversation.
- Boggs Center was given a place of honour in my 2014 Giving Tuesday list, but I feel it necessary to once again include it in this year’s Top 5, in memory of Grace Lee Boggs whom we lost earlier this year. Boggs’ legacy of social justice and activism indelibly changed the modern Asian American Movement, and the Boggs Center continues to do important community work in the Detroit area.
I encourage you to make a Giving Tuesday donation this year to one or more of the listed organizations in this post. You can either join me in giving to one of my 2015 Giving Tuesday Top 5 (above), or you can pick any of your favourites from the larger list of equally deserving organizations (after the jump)!
Don’t see your favourite organization on the list? Please leave a comment to have it added!
