Editor's Note: Earlier this month, I wrote an essay encouraging atheists to join the Foundation Beyond Belief, a new charitable group doing good for human beings and the world in the name of freethought. I also offered to write a front-page post interviewing anyone who agreed to join the Foundation as a result of hearing about it on my site. This is the next in that series of interviews, which will be posted each weekend. Please welcome TPO!

Tell us a little about yourself. Who are you, where do you live, what do you do?

I'm a happily married man in my late 30's who enjoys hiking, astronomy, earth science, science fiction and many other activities you may or may not care about. I live in lower Alabama just a couple of miles from the Florida State line and I am a network administrator for a local Air Force squadron.

If you're an atheist, when did you first become an atheist, and how long have you been one? If you're not an atheist, how would you define your beliefs?

I spent the most part of my first fifteen years going to a small Pentecostal church which exposed me to the whole speaking in tongues and flopping on the floor with the Holy Spirit spectacle on a weekly basis. I pretty much became an atheist over the summer of my fifteenth year when my church had a bible reading contest. Before this event, which I won, I was the type of kid who would admonish my peers and even older teenagers for cursing on one of the larger Baptist churches' basketball courts I frequented after school. Once I actually read through the "King James" version of this book, not once, but twice, I decided that I could not in good conscience worship the god depicted within its pages. I stopped going to church after this and studied up on several other religions over the next couple of years but I think I became an atheist that summer in 1986.

Do you have a blog of your own, or another site you'd like us to know about?

Yes, I run a blog titled "The Perplexed Observer" which focuses on Skepticism, Science, Environment, Religion and many other subjects from an Atheist/Secular Humanist perspective.

Have you given to other charities before joining the Foundation Beyond Belief? If so, which ones are your favorites?

Yes, some of my favorites are Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, Oxfam America and the Red Cross.

What membership level did you join the Foundation at?

I could only afford to join at the second level at this time.

How do you plan to divide your initial donation?

Equally among the different categories.

Is there anything else you'd like to say to atheists who are considering supporting the Foundation or other charitable groups?

Yeah, and you can read it here: http://theperplexedobserver.blogspot.com/2010/01/secular-charities-humanist-philanthropy.html.

Editor's Note: This past week, I wrote an essay encouraging atheists to join the Foundation Beyond Belief, a new charitable group doing good for human beings and the world in the name of freethought. I also offered to write a front-page post interviewing anyone who agreed to join the Foundation as a result of hearing about it on my site. This is the first of those interviews, which will be posted each weekend. Please welcome Daylight Atheism commenter Peter N!

Tell us a little about yourself. Who are you, where do you live, what do you do?

My name is Peter Nothnagle. I live in Iowa City, Iowa, USA, where I am a self-employed recording engineer specializing in recording and editing classical music CDs.

If you're an atheist, when did you first become an atheist, and how long have you been one? If you're not an atheist, how would you define your beliefs?

By a happy accident of birth, my parents seemed to have only the minimum socially-required religious leanings for educated people in the '50s and '60s. Thus, although I was dragged to the Catholic church on Sundays, I was never required to buy in to the teachings and traditions, and I never did. I was always interested in both history and science, and by my teens it was obvious to me that Christianity was just a mythology like all the rest.

Do you have a blog of your own, or another site you'd like us to know about?

Nope.

Have you given to other charities before joining the Foundation Beyond Belief? If so, which ones are your favorites?

I have sporadically donated to Doctors Without Borders, International Planned Parenthood, and various medical research foundations. I also get my long-distance phone service from CREDO, which overcharges shamelessly but remits the excess to worthy causes.

What membership level did you join the Foundation at?

I scrolled down the list of contribution levels until I hit one that hurts, just a little. But it's a good kind of hurt. I will work just a few extra hours each month, which is a ridiculously easy way to help people in desperate need, as well as supporting the cause of reason.

How do you plan to divide your initial donation?

I divided it among human services options: education, child welfare, and poverty.

Is there anything else you'd like to say to atheists who are considering supporting the Foundation or other charitable groups?

I am happy to support an explicitly nonreligious charity like this. Together we encourage other atheists to come out and stand up. I hope the Foundation has a lot of success and by their example, other atheist-themed public service institutions will be established.

Over the past year or so, I've become increasingly aware that, for the atheist movement to make a difference, speaking out isn't enough. Speech is a valuable tool, but it isn't the only tool. Almost as important is our money and our effort - the way we spend it, and the causes we support. To build the world we want to see, we must be willing to act in concrete ways that advance the goal of creating a secular community.

This concern of mine is bolstered by surveys which show that evangelical Christians and other members of religious groups give more - not a lot more, but more - to charitable causes than atheists. This holds true even if you don't count donations to a believer's own church. (NB: I have serious concerns with this study's methodology, especially the way it lumps committed atheists in with infrequent churchgoers as "secularists". Nevertheless, I think the larger point has validity.)

Obviously, I don't think that this is because religious people are more generous or more caring than atheists. I think the explanation is much simpler, as I wrote in a post from 2007 which predicted this finding: religious believers give more because they have more opportunities to give.

If you're a member of a church that passes the collection plate every week, that regularly organizes blood drives, soup kitchens, after-school programs, and that regularly exhorts its members to volunteer and to participate, then of course you're more likely to give, simply because the possibility is always before your eyes. Atheists have no comparable social organization, and that makes charitable giving take more time and effort. When you do it yourself, you have to do all the legwork: remembering to make your donation, deciding on a cause, compiling a list of suitable charities, researching their background, and selecting criteria to choose a winner. It's just easier when all this work is done for you, and the only thing you have to do is sign on the dotted line.

The other advantage religious people have over us is that their donations are highly visible. When a theist gives to, say, Catholic Charities or Lutheran World Relief, there's no doubt about where that organization's budget is coming from and who's supporting them. By contrast, atheists often give to non-sectarian groups like Feeding America or Doctors Without Borders - and there's nothing wrong with that, but because people of all creeds support those groups, there's nothing to mark our charitable dollars as coming from atheists. This makes our good works invisible, which often leads ignorant religious apologists to claim that atheists have never done anything for our fellow human beings.

What we need is an option to give to charity in a way that does good for others, while also making it clear that atheists and nonbelievers are underwriting the effort. And there are already ways to do this - as I've mentioned before, there's Kiva, the microfinance site whose largest lender community is made up of atheists. But Kiva is a long-term effort, aimed at the eradication of poverty through capitalism, and there's still a call for groups that answer urgent needs.

Well, now there's a group that answers all these challenges at once. I'm happy to report on the recent launch of the Foundation Beyond Belief, a meta-charity helping atheists and freethinkers to do good (and I love that logo!). The Foundation was the brainchild of Dale McGowan, the secular parenting author whom I've interviewed before. There are some other familiar faces on the board of directors as well, including fellow blogger Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist.

The Foundation is not itself a charity. Rather, it has a list of major issues it seeks to address - environment, poverty, education, child welfare, and so on. Each quarter, it picks an existing charitable group serving each of those issues, one that has a track record of effectiveness and that doesn't proselytize. Foundation members' donations are funneled to those charities, divided among them according to the individual member's choice. You can choose to split your donation equally among all the charities, or give it all to a few or to one.

The Foundation's business model answers both of the challenges I posed above. As an explicitly secular organization which only supports non-sectarian charities, it makes our donations visible in the same way that religious charities are visible. As Dale McGowan puts it, through the FBB, our donations become "a positive collective expression of our worldview". And while the Foundation does accept one-time donations, that's not its preferred means of giving. Instead, it encourages people to sign up as members, committing to donate a fixed amount per month - as low as $5. This helps give atheists that regular reminder that we've been lacking until now.

I'm tremendously excited about the potential of this project! I became a member of the Foundation a few days ago, and I've started at $50 per month, but that's just a beginning. If I'm satisfied with how my money is spent, I plan to ramp up my contribution very soon, and I hope to eventually do the majority of my charitable giving through Foundation Beyond Belief. If the goals of this project are ones that you also share, I encourage you to join me there.

And to sweeten the pot a bit, I'm going to make a special offer. If you join the Foundation as the result of reading this post, and if you leave a comment and tell me about it, I'll do a front-page interview with you about yourself, your blog if you have one, and your reasons for joining. This offer may not remain open forever, so take advantage of it soon!

We now interrupt your regularly scheduled flame war for this important announcement.

As everyone has no doubt heard, Haiti was hit by a colossal earthquake last night; the city of Port-au-Prince is in ruins, and tens of thousands of people may be dead. If you're able to help, please consider making a donation to the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders. And if simple human compassion doesn't move you, consider it doing it to spite that wicked, heartless old fraud Pat Robertson, who said that the people of Haiti got what they deserved for rebelling against slavery. His religion made him evil; now, for Haiti's sake, I hope that our atheism makes us good.

UPDATE: I'm proud to see that atheist organizations are joining the effort. As commenters have mentioned, there's the Foundation Beyond Belief. The American Humanist Association also has a relief fund, and the FFRF has made a donation to Doctors Without Borders.

Since I often write about charitable works done by atheists, I'm happy to be able to report on a new one. Joe Zamecki informs me of a new Austin-based charitable group, Atheists Helping the Homeless.

I'll let Joe explain his group's purpose and mission:

Atheists Helping the Homeless is a new, and still very small group of Atheists who are helping the homeless here in Austin, Texas, by giving them free items that fall into the category of toiletries. Not food, mainly because that's already well covered by other help groups. Very few groups around here give out free toiletries, so we focus on filling that gap in help.

We've received donations of money and items to give away from all over the nation and beyond, but we need more. We need to let more Atheists know about this project, so we can help more homeless folks. (One need not be an Atheist in order to help us, but obviously it helps.)

The goals of this project are, in order of priority:
1. To help some folks in need,
2. to show by example that the idea that Atheists don't care and don't help people in need, is very very false, and
3. to have fun.

The location of our work is always the same, under I-35 at 7th Street. We've already succeeded with all three of our goals with the five giveaways we've done so far. We're now doing them once per month, and the biggest challenge has been to spread the word about this all over, so we can get more donations, and help more people in need. 100% of all donations go to paying for these items we give out. We've also added some non-toiletries items to our list of things to give out, like gloves and socks, which are both VERY popular with the folks we help. Our next giveaway to the homeless will be on Sunday, December 20 at 8am.

Also we videotape each giveaway to show our donors what we do with their donations, and to show the world that we are well received in this effort by the folks who gather under that bridge. Here's the link to the playlist I've created with videos of our giveaways: http://www.youtube.com/user/aajoeyjo#grid/user/109D143A6C9F7204

I'm glad that this group videotapes their giveaways and invites people to attend, as this is an important way of providing transparency and giving donors the assurance that their gifts are being used for good ends.

As atheism becomes more popular and influential, we can expect more atheist-driven charitable efforts to arise. This is undoubtedly a good thing, but it also means that we atheists who want to do the most good be increasingly vigilant about where we direct our efforts - that we make certain to support the groups that will do the most good, rather than those that spend our money unwisely, or those that are outright scams. Atheists Helping the Homeless, though it's still in its startup phase, has taken important steps toward providing that assurance, and I applaud them for that.

Charitable efforts like this one offer tangible evidence that atheists are moral and compassionate human beings who care about the welfare of our fellow people. The knowledge that we have only one life should be the strongest possible motivation to do good for each other, and I'm glad to see Atheists Helping the Homeless putting this principle into action, by reaching out to those who are too often shunned or neglected by society. If you feel the same, I invite you to chip in a few dollars - because even a few can make a great deal of difference to people who have so little - and to support humans helping humans out of rational ethics and compassion, not because of superstition or religious dogma.

Since I've endorsed Kiva in the past (and I stand by that endorsement), for transparency's sake it's worth linking to this post from David Roodman (see also the related article from the Times).

The quick summary is that the connection between Kiva lenders and loan recipients isn't as direct as you might have thought. Although the individuals listed on the site are real and their business proposals are genuine, their loan requests don't necessarily sit in limbo until they're funded by Kiva users. (This would, as the article rightly notes, be both demeaning and inefficient.) Instead, Kiva's partner MFIs often make the loans out of their own funds, then post the information on Kiva's site so that users who donate money end up reimbursing them for that amount. This wasn't exactly a secret - Kiva does say that loans may be disbursed before they're fully funded by users - but it also wasn't being made as clear as it could have been. I can personally attest to this, as it took me by surprise.

That said, this knowledge doesn't disturb me. There's really no reason why it should: after all, money is fungible. It doesn't make any difference whether I'm donating money directly to an entrepreneur in the developing world, or giving it to an MFI that's funding that entrepreneur, thus freeing up an equivalent amount of capital for that MFI to make other loans. If the amount being given is the same and the end recipients are the same, then the outcomes are identical. (One thing that did surprise me is that MFIs will sometimes repay lenders out of their own pocket when a loan recipient defaults - but this is just good business practice, and there's certainly no reason for us lenders to object.)

This news doesn't make any difference to my intent to continue lending through Kiva, but since I've invited other atheists to do likewise, I thought it worth passing on. If it matters to you, please take this into account.

I've written in the past about Kiva, the microcredit site that fights poverty by funding economic entrepreneurs in the developing world, and about how the largest lender community on the site is made up of atheists (and I'm happy to be one of them).

Well, we've reached a new milestone. As you can see from Kiva's community page, the atheist team has just passed the $1 million mark in total dollars loaned, becoming the first team on Kiva to do so. Kiva's official blog has commemorated the occasion with a very nice post, First Kiva Team to Reach $1 Million! As of this writing, the Christian team is a distant second, with a little over $600,000 raised.

It's important to bear in mind what this does and doesn't prove. It doesn't show that atheists are morally superior to Christians, or any other religious group. I doubt that any single number or result could accurately measure as broad and sweeping a conclusion as that. What it does show, however, is that atheists don't lack generosity, compassion, or concern for the welfare of others. Contrary to those who insultingly and ignorantly claim that atheism leads only to misanthropy and selfishness, there is ample evidence that atheists care about making this a better and more just world - as well we should, since we believe it's the only one we have. We don't yet have the infrastructure and the institutions that make religious charity efforts highly visible and organized, but on an individual level, I firmly believe we have as much concern for the human condition as anyone else.

Although I'm very pleased by this accomplishment, we should keep it in perspective. $1 million is nothing to dismiss lightly, but far more is needed to make a meaningful difference in world poverty rates. In terms of alleviating global poverty, this is only a small achievement - a drop of human kindness in a sea of need. Granted, the atheist Kiva group has been around for only a little more than a year; arguably, we're just getting started. And no one should expect that atheists and freethinkers will solve this problem all on our own. Truly ending poverty will be a massive effort that will require effort from every sector of human society. But even the longest journey has to begin somewhere, and this is as good a starting point as any. Let's do what we can to see that we get to $2 million even more quickly!

How much money do you give away each year?

For the sake of full disclosure, I'll start by answering my own question: I try to give at least $200 a month to nonprofit educational and charitable causes. I think it's a reasonable amount, although I know I could (and should) be doing more.

Speaking out as nonbelievers is well and good. There will always be a need for forceful, effective advocacy for atheism. But I've come to realize that, if we really want to build a secular and enlightened society, speech is not enough. It's even more important that we offer material support - our money and our time - to organizations that do good by advancing the values that atheists hold dear. We don't have to copy the example of the churches that demand an astonishing 10% of their members' income, but I think every atheist who can afford it should donate at least a few percent to groups working to uphold the causes that make this world better. Call it a secular tithe.

In this post, I want to suggest a few worthy candidates for those donations. I won't mention secular, non-controversial causes like Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF or Feeding America, all of which I also donate to, but to groups that specifically advance atheist goals, in one way or another, even as they do good in the wider world. This isn't a comprehensive list, of course. If you know of other worthy causes, post a comment and tell us about them!

Kiva: A microcredit organization that I've written about before, Kiva connects donors with entrepreneurs in the developing world who want to take out small loans to start or expand a business. By spurring economic growth, microfinance groups like this are one of the most effective means of reducing global poverty. Bonus: The vast majority of Kiva's loans are paid back, and your seed money is returned to you in time - which multiplies your donation's effectiveness by enabling you to lend the same money out over and over again.

Added bonus: Kiva's lenders can organize into communities, and right now, far and away the largest lender community on the site is made up of atheists! If you join this group, not only will you be doing good for humanity, you'll be contributing in a very visible way to dispelling the stereotype that atheists lack generosity or charitable impulses. (If you do join, tell them I sent you!)

Planned Parenthood: Founded by Margaret Sanger (whose motto was "No Gods, No Masters"), Planned Parenthood is on the front lines of the battle to protect the reproductive rights of women, providing medically accurate information about pregnancy and access to safe, effective birth control and abortion. This, of course, makes them absolutely loathed by the religious fanatics who think that women's bodies should be made the property of their church and the elderly, male clerics who run it.

In addition to the endless protests, threats, harassment, and burdensome laws from right-wing legislators, Planned Parenthood has often been the target of terrorist violence from militant Christianists. They haven't buckled, and they deserve our support to help them carry on the fight. In few other areas is your giving so effective in pushing back against the religious right. Even if you can't donate money, you can always volunteer a few hours escorting patients at your local clinic.

The American Civil Liberties Union: The fact that Christian conservatives so despise the ACLU ought to be reason number one for politically aware atheists to support it. But if you need more persuasion, consider how many groundbreaking civil-rights victories the ACLU has been involved in - including some that are very valuable to atheists, such as Abington v. Schempp (striking down teacher-led prayers in public school), U.S. v. Seeger (a ruling that the nonreligious can be conscientious objectors), and Epperson v. Arkansas (bans on evolution violate the First Amendment).

Even today, the ACLU is hard at work challenging unconstitutional entanglements of religion and government, as well as battling excessive government secrecy, intrusive police power, laws that restrict free speech, and generally defending the principles that benefit all citizens in a free society. Every American ought to be thankful that they exist, because they're not afraid to defend unpopular causes in the name of protecting the Constitution, and in the long run that benefits all of us.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation: If you want to support an explicitly atheist organization, you couldn't do better than the Freedom from Religion Foundation. An educational and advocacy organization based out of Madison, Wisconsin, the FFRF represents the views of the rapidly-growing segment of the American population that is nonreligious. Like many other groups, they wage legal battles across the country to protect the constitutional principle of separation of church and state; but possibly even more importantly, they work to educate the public about the views of nontheists.

Through atheist billboards, bus ads, and speaking engagements and TV appearances by co-presidents Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, the FFRF brings the message of freethought to a public that needs to hear far more of it. They also have an annual convention; a radio program, Freethought Radio, that's broadcast weekly on Air America; and a monthly newsletter, Freethought Today, that publishes essays from members, reports on the FFRF's legal work, and lists arrests and convictions of clergy in a section called the "Black Collar Crime Blotter" (a full-page spread, in small type). I know of no other group that does more to speak out on behalf of atheists and publicize our viewpoint. If you're an atheist and an American, and you're not already a member, what could possibly be keeping you?

My recent post encouraging readers to join the atheists' group on Kiva stirred some controversy in a comment thread on Reddit. One commenter, whose sentiments were echoed by several others, writes:

You should give because you believe in something - not just to prove a point and rig this like it's some kind of game.

With respect, I say that these are not mutually exclusive options. I believe that Kiva is an excellent idea; I wouldn't have recommended it if I didn't. But at the same time, our giving through Kiva does prove a point, and I see nothing wrong with that.

As a strategy, targeted microfinance is a brilliant idea. It can't replace charities that provide necessities like vaccinations, food or clean water for those in urgent need, but those types of charitable giving can at most sustain life. Kiva, meanwhile, is a way for people to improve their lives and add to the wealth of their community and their nation. In the long run, this is the only way to lift people up out of poverty and help developing nations join the industrialized world. And Kiva adds an additional innovation - the ability to see, on a personal level, the people whom your loan is helping - which gives donors a more personal connection to the recipient of their loan, and that can only make them more likely to participate again.

At the same time, lending through Kiva benefits us in a different way. As I wrote in my previous post, atheists are often accused of being selfish or lacking in charity, and our status as the largest group there provides strong evidence that this is not the case. This isn't just a matter of scoring points in a debate. Anything that we can do to push back against the false stereotypes that are spread about atheists will improve our public image and make people more likely to give our position more consideration. And that's not a small thing, not when the world is beset by warring fundamentalisms and badly needs a dose of cool reason. The more people listen to the atheist message and abandon the religions that cause them to tyrannize their neighbors, the better off we will all be. If our involvement on Kiva, or any other charity, is an opening that we can use, then it is all to the good.

Regardless of what motive moves you, I don't think giving money in support of a worthy cause is ever a bad thing. I didn't join Kiva, or recommend that my readers do likewise, because I want to "beat the Christians" - but if other people do feel that tinge of competitive envy, and if it spurs them to join and contribute when pure-minded appeals to altruism wouldn't have worked, then so much the better. I'd even be happy if a Christian site saw this post and urged their readers to join so that they could beat the atheists! Regardless of who "wins", the result of this competition is more money flowing through a worthy secular charity to help lift people up out of poverty.

This is another of those situations where atheists can't win. If we don't organize and give to charity in a visible way, we're accused of lacking generosity and compassion. If we do organize and make a show of being charitable, however, we'll be accused of being holier-than-thou, or doing it just because we want to impress people or show off. Clearly this isn't an argument we can win, so there's no reason even to try. My attitude is that we should ignore the perpetually disgruntled and do what we know is right. Donating our time and effort to charity, whether through Kiva or any other organization, and doing so as atheists, is a win-win situation: help for the needy and good publicity for our cause.

An accusation that's often leveled against atheists is that we lack charitable impulses, that faith-based organizations do the hard work of caring for the needy and atheism only promotes selfishness. This is a hateful slur, and to counter it, I've discussed outstanding acts of charity by individual atheists in the past. Evidence like this shows that, as a group, we do not lack compassion. On the contrary, we know that this life is the only one we'll ever have, which gives us the strongest possible motive to improve the welfare of our fellow human beings in the here and now.

Another rejoinder to this accusation is that, if there's any discrepancy between atheist and religious charitable works, it's because many theists donate to explicitly religious organizations, making their contributions highly visible and easy to tally up, whereas atheists generally just give to secular charities and feel less need to advertise their acts of philanthropy as specifically arising from their atheism. But while this is true, it feels unsatisfying. It would be better if there were a way to count just those contributions made by atheists, so we could present definite evidence of how we measure up.

Well, I'm happy to report that such a way has come to my attention. This evidence comes by way of Kiva, a philanthropic organization that helps impoverished communities in developing nations. Kiva does good through "microfinance", a strategy which consists of making small loans, typically $1000 or less, to local entrepreneurs who use the money to launch or expand a business. These business plans can be as simple as buying livestock, so that rural farmers can add meat, milk, eggs or skins to their marketable commodities; or they can go toward the purchase of tools or machines so local people can start a machine shop or a clothing store. (Another microfinance organization you may have heard of is Bangladesh's Grameen Bank, whose founder, Mohammed Yunus, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work.) When intelligently targeted, microfinance can help impoverished communities break the cycle of poverty and become self-sufficient.

On Kiva, anyone can sign up to be a lender and give to entrepreneurs listed on the site. If they're asking for more than one person can give, multiple lenders can join together to fully fund a proposal. If the business plan is successful, your seed money is repaid. Kiva has already loaned out over $24 million and claims a default rate of just 2.2%.

What does this have to do with atheism? Only this: Kiva's volunteers can join together into lending teams, keeping track of the total amounts that everyone on a team has given out. And when you view all the teams, the largest - with the most members, the largest number of loans, and the largest total amount of money loaned - is a team named "Atheists, Agnostics, Skeptics, Freethinkers, Secular Humanists and the Non-Religious", with over 3,000 members and over $300,000 loaned so far. This is a potent counterexample to any claim that atheists lack concern for the common good. (This was originally posted by 2[Y] and came to my attention via Lynet, who submitted it to the next Humanist Symposium. I hate to steal the host's thunder, but this was too good to not report on sooner!)

This is a great achievement, but we can do better. I've joined Kiva and become a member of the atheists' lending team. With my first donation, I've supplied the last piece to fully fund a loan request from a grocery store owner in Tajikistan. Kiva makes the process easy: donations can be as small as $25, and there's a reasonable expectation that your money will be repaid. If you're a nonbeliever who cares about the welfare of the world, join me there and let's do some good!