A volunteer serves food at the Bowery Mission in 2022.
Photo: John Lamparski/Getty Images
Don’t think of Giving Tuesday as a soft, passive donation to worthy causes; it’s also an active argument, a chance to fight back against the foes and forces that are doing so much damage in the world. It bothers me that thousands of people are seeing their lives disrupted every day by a cruel, clumsy deportation campaign that often operates in blatant violation of the law. I hate the fact that so many New Yorkers go without adequate food month after month and that people struggling with substance abuse don’t get enough help. I worry about the ongoing attacks on a free press that make it harder to sound the alarm about these and other injustices. And I really want to see young New Yorkers develop their artistic talent, which enriches us all. Here are a dozen charities I’m donating to this year that are trying to make a difference on these and other issues. The leaders of these charities assure me that even a small donation of $25 or so will be of great help to them, so go big or small as the spirit moves you.
While some New Yorkers are organizing street protests against ICE raids and actively interfering with summary deportations and other heavy-handed tactics of the Trump administration, students and faculty at the CUNY School of Law have been challenging the constitutionality of government actions through a clinic called CLEAR, which has taken on the high-profile cases of foreign students such as Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Yunseo Chung. The clinic’s founding director, Professor Ramzi Kassem, who grew up under dictatorships in Iraq and Syria, told me he considers recent detentions “directly reminiscent of the security services of these authoritarian regimes. I’m not saying that that’s where we are, but I’m saying that this administration, to me at least, looks like it is flirting with those possibilities. It’s pushing the envelope. It’s testing the limits. It’s flexing.” Donate here.
Those who prefer a less combative approach to the immigration issue should check out Immigration Law & Justice New York, whose mission is to “welcome immigrants into our communities with compassion, dignity and love by providing free, high-quality immigration legal services” with lawyers who help with everything from asylum claims to visas, naturalization, and deportation defense. “We are rooted in the United Methodist Church faith tradition of welcoming our neighbor,” the group’s website says. “Each of our Church-based legal clinics is an opportunity for local congregations to ‘open their doors’ with a safe, warm and hospitable welcome for newcomers in their midst.” Donate here.
The indefatigable Adama Bah is the founder and CEO of Afrikana, a Harlem-based organization that specializes in helping Black, Arab, and Muslim immigrants get settled in New York, which can be extra challenging in a city where not many people speak African tongues like Wolof, Pulaar, Hausa, and Amharic. “I’m a former asylum seeker myself, so I’ve been through this journey already,” Bah told me. “So I guess it is my calling, and because I have the lived experience, I can help them navigate a system that’s really not created for them.” Donate here.
The Trump administration has cut more than $1 billion from public broadcasting, which will translate locally into a $3 million-a-year hit to the budget of WNYC, part of a $57 million statewide cut that will be especially hard on far-flung rural areas. “You can’t defund the truth” is the motto of the station’s latest fundraising drive; your donation will help ensure access to quality programs like “The Brian Lehrer Show,” “All Things Considered,” and “On the Media.”
New York has many pay-it-forward opportunities to help young people; my favorite is Belongó, an arts organization that provides free music education to 2,200 city kids every year in partnership with Arturo O’Farrill, the Grammy Award–winning leader of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Our latest project (I’m a board member) is to create a cultural hub and performance space in East Harlem, where the music began. Donate here to preserve and expand one of New York’s homegrown cultural treasures.
For the past 15 years, the Stars of New York Dance has hosted friendly competitions in the style of Dancing With the Stars that pair local judges, preachers, businessmen, nonprofit leaders, and politicians with professional dancers, all to raise money for dance scholarships. Past winners include Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Laurie Cumbo and State Senator Kevin Parker with stiff competition from Attorney General Letitia James, Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, and others. Your donation helps provide dance lessons for more than 400 kids.
The Orchard Project provides labs, workshops, writer retreats, and other creative spaces for artists working on new plays, new musicals, new television shows, and new forms of dramatic storytelling. Through a competitive process, more than 1,700 proposals get whittled down to 40 or so cutting-edge projects that might not otherwise ever see the light of day. Invest in upcoming artists here.
When the Brooklyn Kindergarten Society started 134 years ago, the idea of placing young children in a school setting was still considered an experimental way to help Irish and Eastern European immigrant families get settled. More than a century later, your donation will help the organization continue its mission by serving young kids in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and Crown Heights.
More than 60 years ago, Samaritan Daytop Village pioneered ways to help individuals reclaim their lives through personalized addiction and mental-health services. Today, the organization helps 38,000 people every year, including the kind of folks you see on the street, in obvious distress, whom the rest of us walk past every day. I’m always happy to send Samaritan another $500. Donate here.
Citymeals on Wheels brings meals to nearly 22,000 elderly and homebound New Yorkers, including an estimated 500 who have passed their 100th birthday. “Older New Yorkers are living on tight salaries. Sixty-five percent of the people we surveyed a year and a half ago are living on $15,000 a year or less,” CEO Beth Shapiro told me the day before Thanksgiving. In addition to food, the group provides daily contact to seniors encountering an epidemic of loneliness. All donations go directly to providing food for the elderly, and the group welcomes volunteers.
By the time this year ends, the Brooklyn Rescue Mission will have served over 160,000 meals in 2025 thanks to the hard work of Robert Ennis Jackson and his staff and volunteers, who operate an urban farm and combine a traditional food pantry with discussion of lifestyle changes and better nutrition. “Healthy food can be better for people’s health than a bag of medications needed due to eating processed foods instead of fresh foods,” Jackson told me. Donate here.
The good men and women of the Bowery Mission have been doing fantastic work since 1872, but times are especially tough this year. “We’ve seen a significant rise in demand for our services,” president and CEO James Winans told me. “We’re projecting to serve 27,000 more meals this year and sheltering 25 percent more men and women each night compared to this time last year. At the same time, corporate donations have declined as companies tighten their budgets.” Donations will be matched through the end of Giving Tuesday.
