Why Plus One?

With Seattle’s GiveBIG tomorrow, a lot of people are being bombarded with emails and their Facebook newsfeed is overrun with news from all the non-profits in the Seattle area. Thinking about GiveBIG and all the non profits raised some questions for me. Considering there are more than 1,400 non-profits participating in GiveBIG, what is a non-profit? And how do you choose who to give to for GiveBIG?

This is what I found for a basic definition:

A nonprofit is a tax-exempt organization that serves the public interest. In general, the purpose of this type of organization must be charitable, educational, scientific, religious or literary. The public expects to be able to make donations to these organizations and deduct these donations from their federal taxes.

As I was going through the 1,400 non-profits I found some that I had never heard of and just stood out to me. Such as the Plumbers Without Borders, this is not to help plumbers as I originally thought when I read that but to help people suffering from the lack of access to safe water and sanitation. Another was the Grandmother Project which is an international development organization working to improve the health and well-being of women and children. And another is Urban Sparks, a nonprofit that enables high performance volunteer leaders to bring their vast talents to public projects. These are just some non-profits amongst over a thousand. So this raises the question to which non-profit should you donate to during GiveBIG?

Well Plus One, DUH! Who did you think I was going to say? The Plumbers?

I do have a reason as to why Plus One is deserving of your donations. Let’s look at what Plus One does. We fund grants to individuals with neurological disorders, injuries, or disease. There are over 600 different documented neurological disorders worldwide and this list is always growing. Now let’s compare our goal to some of the other the non-profits, such as the Northwest Parkinson Foundation or the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.  There is one thing in common between these two large neurological non-profits; they both focus on ONE neurological disorder. Plus One’s goal is to help everyone in the list of 600+ neurological disorders, not just a portion of it. Now here is another way to think about it, there are approximately 1 billion people worldwide who are affected by a neurological disorder. Compare this to Multiple Sclerosis which affects 2.5 million people worldwide. As you can see we have a lot more work on our hands than the MS Society.

So tomorrow when you get up and think “hmmm who should I donate to today, the Plumbers Without Borders? Or Plus One Foundation?” The answer is simple, Plus One Foundation, because we have a lot of work to get done and we cannot do all that work without your help. So please donate to Plus One Foundation for it is thanks to you that we can to work on our goal to help 1 billion people.

To check out more information about GiveBIG and to donate go to http://www.seattlefoundation.org/Pages/Default.aspx

Or to see the list of non-profits go to http://www.seattlefoundation.org/npos/Pages/FindANonprofit.aspx

Also no offense to the Plumbers! I’m sure you do amazing work too!