This past week Giving Tuesday came and went without a lot of fanfare, even though the need is great all over the world. The pandemic created an unprecedented number of people in the US who don’t have money to stay in their homes or feed their families. To add insult to injury, the pandemic causes isolation, depression, and violence. The continued divide in our country increases the hateful rhetoric to those who are different from ourselves or have different perspectives. Thus in this season of charity, I am trying hard to remember that physical gifts are not the only type of charity worth giving. Being kind means having charitable thoughts about those who, honestly, I have a very hard time thinking charitably about. Hopefully a new era will be sworn in and it will be easier to generate those charitable thoughts!

Last year in my blog I talked more extensively about the history of Giving Tuesday, but this year I decided to do a little research on charities or philanthropy and came across the following interesting facts:

• The Puritans of New England and the Quakers Of Pennsylvania were the pioneers before 1700 in establishing charitable institutions.
• The first ethnic group to establish a model for many others was the Scots Charitable Society of Boston started in 1657. I guess I am proud to have a little Scottish blood in me!
• The first charity designed to redistribute wealth, established in 1889, was the Andrew Carnegie Gospel of Wealth. This organization called upon the millionaires to distribute their wealth for public good. Around the same time, John D. Rockefeller also became a prominent philanthropist concentrating his efforts on higher education, modern medicine and scientific research. Rockefeller also put money into uplifting the poverty stricken south.
• One of the most noteworthy philanthropists in the early time of philanthropy was Madam C.J. Walker who was born on a plantation in Louisiana and the first in her family to be free. She opened a YMCA in a predominantly black neighborhood of Indianapolis. She went on to found the Benevolent Association in 1916, partnering with the NAACP and the National Association of Colored Women to fund anti-lynching initiatives. In 1919, Walker left nearly her entire estate to charity, which at the time was a whopping $600,000.

Stone Soup Community Press is a charitable press that I am proud to be a part of. We especially like to release books on Giving Tuesday and I am so excited to remind everyone of probably one of the best books I’ve read this year. By purchasing this book, not only will you have a wonderful book to read, but you will be helping charities like The Trevor Project and It Gets Better, two charities I am especially passionate about because they help LGBTQ+ youth who are increasingly more vulnerable in the times we now live in. I hope you will consider purchasing Slaying Dragons by McGee Mathews. Several of my other books and the latest Anthology from Affinity (a Holiday edition) also support various charities. You know the drill, just click the links below!

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• Love Forever Live Forever
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• The Book Addict
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• Compound Interest – Lesfic Bard Action/Adventure Finalist

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• Locked Inside (Goldie Winner)
• Out of This World
• Asset Management
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