Phil

The charitable organizations I give to. Ten of them, in no order that means anything — the wheel picks one at random if you would rather be handed somewhere to start than choose.

Each card carries the organization's EIN, because several of these names belong to more than one organization and the number is the only part that is unambiguous. Every one was checked against the IRS record before it went on this page, and the EIN links to that organization's Charity Navigator page where it has one. Logos are each organization's own and appear here to identify it; nothing on this page implies any of them endorses anything.

Spin for one at random, or just read the list below.

All of them

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Fisher House Foundation

Rockville, MDEIN 11-3158401 (opens in a new tab)

Builds houses and then gives the stay away. When a service member or veteran is being treated at a military or VA medical center, their family sleeps minutes from the ward at no charge — up to twenty suites around a shared kitchen, for as long as the treatment takes. More than 570,000 families have stayed, 13.4 million lodging days, roughly $690 million that did not have to go to hotels. Donated airline miles and hotel points cover the gap when a house is full.

IRS name: Fisher House Foundation Inc.

fisherhouse.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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Los Angeles Regional Food Bank

Los Angeles, CAEIN 95-3135649 (opens in a new tab)

Since 1973, the organization that moves food at county scale: sourcing and acquiring it, then distributing it across Los Angeles County through a network of partner agencies rather than handing it out itself. It runs three distribution centers — Los Angeles, City of Industry and Long Beach — against an estimated two million food-insecure people in the county, and reckons $25 covers the equivalent of up to a hundred meals.

lafoodbank.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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Foundation for the National Institutes of Health

Rockville, MDEIN 52-1986675 (opens in a new tab)

Established by Congress in 1990 to do the thing the NIH cannot do from inside government: put the academics, the drug companies, the patient groups and the federal scientists at one table and fund what they build together. It is less a grantmaker with a cause than a neutral venue — where a shared biomarker consortium or a common trial platform becomes possible because no single party owns it.

IRS name: Foundation for the National Institute of Health Inc.

fnih.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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Marijuana Anonymous World Services

Hollywood, CAEIN 95-4348989 (opens in a new tab)

The service arm of a twelve-step fellowship for people trying to stop using marijuana. There is nothing to sell and nobody to bill: World Services keeps the meeting directory current, approves and publishes the literature, and runs the annual conference — so that somebody looking for a meeting at two in the morning finds one. The fellowship itself is free and runs on what its own members put in.

marijuana-anonymous.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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Music Center Foundation

Los Angeles, CAEIN 23-7298290 (opens in a new tab)

The endowment behind the Music Center in downtown Los Angeles. Founded in 1973, its business is holding and growing capital — largely through planned giving — and distributing it to the Music Center, its arts education programs, and the four resident companies: the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Center Theatre Group, LA Opera and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. It funds the century rather than the season.

Distinct from The Music Center itself, which is a separate organization with its own EIN and its own website at musiccenter.org.

musiccenterfoundation.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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Second Amendment Foundation

Bellevue, WAEIN 91-6184167 (opens in a new tab)

Founded in 1974, and it litigates rather than lobbies — its own description of the work is "winning firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time". It sponsored the plaintiff in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the 2010 Supreme Court decision that applied the Second Amendment to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment and struck down Chicago’s handgun ban. The rest of the budget goes to public education on the amendment.

saf.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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Return to Freedom

Lompoc, CAEIN 06-1484961 (opens in a new tab)

A wild horse sanctuary on the California coast, founded in 1998, caring for more than 350 horses and burros — some of them from bloodlines rare enough that geneticists help decide which bands stay together. The other half of the work is argument: keeping wild horses on the public land they already live on, and contesting the roundups that take them off it.

IRS name: Return to Freedom Inc.

returntofreedom.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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St. Labre Indian School

Ashland, MTEIN 81-0244542 (opens in a new tab)

A Catholic school system in southeastern Montana, on the edge of the Northern Cheyenne reservation, educating Northern Cheyenne and Crow children. It sets out to graduate a generation that is "proud, prosperous and free" — proud of their own heritage, economically self-sufficient, and out from under the limits the school says have held its students back.

The only one here not listed in IRS Publication 78, which is expected rather than a gap: the Business Master File classifies it as a church under 170(b)(1)(A)(i), and churches are deductible without having to appear on that list. Its IRS ruling dates to March 1946.

stlabre.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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Jewish National Fund-USA

Rockville Center, NYEIN 13-1659627 (opens in a new tab)

The American organization that has been buying, planting and building in Israel since 1901: 250 million trees, some 250 reservoirs and dams, infrastructure for more than a thousand communities. The current program list runs to water technology, housing for young families and new immigrants, parks built to be accessible, heritage sites and firefighting equipment.

The US entity, distinct from KKL in Israel despite the shared name in the IRS record.

IRS name: Jewish National Fund -Keren Kayemeth Leisrael- Inc

jnf.org (opens in a new tab)Charity Navigator (opens in a new tab)

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United States Soccer Federation

Chicago, ILEIN 13-5591991

The national governing body for soccer in the United States, and a nonprofit — more than a century old, responsible for upwards of twenty-five national teams from the under-14s to the senior men and women, and for the coaching licenses and referee certification that every level of the sport beneath them actually runs on.

IRS name: United States Soccer Federation Inc.

ussoccer.com (opens in a new tab)