It's almost 2019 which means it's the end of the year again. Continuing on the tradition of donating a pro-rated post-tax paycheck a year, here are the organizations I donated to:

ACLU/EFF/ProPublica: I put these in the "questionably effective" bucket. I think what these organizations do is important but I am not very sure that giving them money is the best way to achieve the outcomes that I want. On top of that I tend to think first world problems aren't the biggest problems that the world have. However I do live in the first world and I can't always ignore my self-interests.

GiveDirectly/GiveWell/IPA: These are the more "effective altruism" type of organizations and I've been donating to them for a few years now. This year I also looked into DonorChoose per Adrian's suggestion, but decided not to donate. I looked through hundreds of projects on the site and many of them were for giving out iPad to kids or "flexible seating". It's also difficult to tell if the teachers tried to fund the projects through their schools and got turned down because the schools didn't have the money or if the schools thought they were bad ideas. In the end my time was more valuable so I didn't spend more time doing research on this.