Carolyn McMaster | April 15, 2011
I’m really pleased to report that we’ve made our first contribution as a member of 1% for the Planet. We donated our 1 percent of our 2010 revenue to the very worthy San Francisco Baykeeper.
Making our selection was tougher than we thought it would be. There are a lot of wonderful nonprofits allied with 1% for the Planet. But we love Baykeeper for a number of reasons:
- They’re local, and they focus on preserving a resource—San Francisco Bay—that’s vital to our city, the entire Bay Area, and the state.
- Baykeeper uses a combination of science and consensus building to set goals, and then achieves those goals via advocacy, govenmental policy and legal action. We love that—it’s effective, and results in good policies and strong regulations that deliver lasting results.
- They’re genuinely transparent, with full disclosure of their finances and operations on their website.
- Finally, they are excellent communicators. Their website is full of news, research findings, stories about their successes and lots more. They know how to make their case and engage readers, using both information and online tools. No jargon (even though they are wonkish) and no fluff. They are completely credible.
What’s not to like?
[…] Size is something we considered with our donation—we wanted to give to a smaller organization so our support would feel meaningful. We also wanted to give to an organization working in our community and doing advocacy work that challenges the status quo. San Francisco Baykeeper, a scrappy organization that makes an outsized impact with a lean budget, fit our criteria so well we’ve been happy to support them year after year. (See more on our selection process here.) […]