A year of charitable donations
I don't exactly remember why I decided to make a £50 donation to a different charitable cause each month in 2025 other than everything seemed pretty bleak in January and I was looking for a small way to feel a little more optimistic.
Anyway I decided to do it publicly and to post the receipts to keep me honest and this is what I ended up supporting -
January - North Bristol Foodbank
My local food bank which was and is feeling the strain with high demand.
February - Internet Archive
It feels like the Archive (and Way Back Machine) are under constant attack from Big Tech and the forces of misinfo and it has been such a vital tool for me over the years.
March - GoFundMe for Mike W. Barr
Bit of an outlier - Barr is a comic book writer who was popular in the 1980s and wrote some books I loved and his health travails got me in my feels.
April - Diabetes UK
I continue to have a pretty bumpy ride with my diabetes so this was a bit of a selfish no brainer.
May - Caring in Bristol
It really saddens me how much homelessness there is in Bristol and how much worse it has gotten in recent years and this charity do great work locally. I usually donate at Christmas to them but I suspect most people do the same same so went with the Spring donation.
June - Wikipedia
One of the last bastions of the open web and something that annoys the Muskrat to his core so this feels more important every year. In fact I might make a monthly contribution in 2026.
July - DEC Middle East Humanitarian Appeal
Gaza.
August - Aidbox Community
A really lovely local charity that gives practical support to refugees and asylum seekers in Bristol.
September - GB Deaf Football
I don't know how I became aware of this campaign but the fact a sport as wealthy as football could not find 250k to send the GB teams to the Deaf Olympics seemed tragic.
October - Full Fact
Now I do have close friends at Full Fact (past and present) so I am biased but the work they do is incredibly important and the backlash against fact checking and the abandonment of it by Big Tech is bad for society.
For November and December I donated early to four Christmas campaigns -
Booktrust - because I love the idea of giving children the gift of books for Christmas.
Marmalade Trust - because honestly I worry I might end up one of those people lonely on Christmas in my old age!
Action for Children - I was just looking for a way to support someway of helping kids get gifts if their families were struggling.
Centrepoint - it is bad enough we have so much homelessness but it is every worse when it is young people. Breaks my heart.
Additionally to all of that I also donated my Camp Digital keynote speaker fee to 1625 Independent People - which thanks to the folks at Nexer Digital was a tidy sum!
So that is it for 2025 - I suspect next year I will do something different - probably just two charities but donations every month.