Sean McGrath Fund announces Sean's birthday memorial grant recipients

Today, on what would have been Sean's 41st birthday, the Sean McGrath Fund is happy to announce our newest round of grants: $500 each to International Rescue Committee and to HiTOPS.

IRC has been providing direct relief in zones of humanitarian crisis for over eighty years, and with the ongoing demonization of refugees from war-torn countries, their work certainly isn't getting any easier. We're glad to provide them financial support for the second time in the Fund's history.

HiTOPS is a youth services agency in southern New Jersey which provides age-appropriate, medically accurate sexual health counseling, trans and gay youth support services, relationship violence prevention, and peer-to-peer harm reduction education in schools, juvenile detention centers, and other community groups. This is the record-setting sixth grant they will have received from the SMcGF.

If you'd like to honor Sean's life and celebrate his birthday with a donation, it will help us continue supporting important charities in his memory during this very unpredictable year and beyond! Visit the site linked below, click the orange button, and specify "Sean McGrath Fund" as your designee fund.

Immense thanks for all of your past--and future--support! We seriously couldn't do any of this without the generosity of kind friends, family, members of the music community, and even a few perfect strangers.

Follow our grant recipients on social media for updates on all of their terrific work:

International Rescue Committee
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HiTOPS
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"I Found Some Ones" (plus a 20, a five, and a bunch of coin): the found money charity challenge!

Happy new year, doers of good! * 

As I've previously detailed here, for well over a decade I've begun each year by counting up the jar into which I chuck any money I've found throughout the previous year, so as to donate it to the Sean McGrath Fund in January. Here's a little refresher on the Fund for those of you not familiar already (click to enlarge):

Back to the main subject, though: more than a few strangers (and even some friends) look askance at me when I take a knee to scoop up coins or bills on city sidewalks, in store checkout lines, or at subway turnstiles, but this little annual tradition proves that all those random finds add up to something substantial. "Chump" change, my eye!

Speaking of eyes, I tried to "zazz" up the photo of this year's booty by anthropomorphizing it, with admittedly minimal success. Let's call it folk art, yeah? At least we know it's worth something. 

If you're bored, try to count up the bills (easy) and coinage (not so much) and make your own guesstimate before scrolling down for this breakdown:

20.00 x 1 = $20

5.00 x 1 = $5

1.00 x 7 = $7.00

.25 x 20 = $5.00

.10 x 43 = $4.30

.05 x 15 = $0.75

.01 x 268 = $2.68

 
On top of the domestic currency, I found a Canadian dime (worth $0.08), an Aruban dime ($0.06), and a two Euro cent piece ($0.02), as well as seven separate MetroCards (two in one day!) worth $17.09 in subway fare. Add it all up, and that brings this year's grand total to $43.38.
At first I was a little disappointed, since last year's tally was nearly three times that much, but then I looked through the past five blog posts and saw that it's not too out of line with some past years:

2011 - $49.23       2012 - $45.65       2013 - $17.55      
2014 - $63.13      2015 - $113.51

So '15 appears to be the outlier...let's just hope the year ahead doesn't mirror the fabled Found Change Crash of '13!

Because the bank will likely send some of these pennies to heaven, I wanted to give them one last moment in the sun. Many of them are so abraded that their dates are obscured, but that guy on the lower left has been hanging around since 1964, with his immediate neighbor minted in my birth year of 1972 (I like to think I've held up slightly better).

Farewell, little Lincolns!

Anyway, now that they check is in the mail for 2016's haul, I present my annual challenge: I beseech all of you to make a matching donation to the Sean McGrath Fund!

Any size of gift is much appreciated, but I'm hoping some of you reading this will embrace the true "matching" nature of the challenge and make a minimum gift of $43.38...but even if you can only afford ten or twenty dollars, your generosity will be genuinely appreciated, and will help us support great causes in the year ahead!

If you'd like to make a donation, hit the orange button on the PACF site and make sure you specify "Sean McGrath Fund" in your note.

Thanks for reading, for donating, and--I hope--for setting aside your own jar for found loot in 2017!

*Also, happy new year to any nefarious types who are just here to check out the opposition. 

Small Change = BIG Change: A Record-Setting Annual Found Money Donation!

It's a little late this year, but don't think for a moment that I forgot to post my tally of the filthy lucre (sometimes literally filthy) that I found throughout 2015 and earmarked for donation to the Sean McGrath Fund. Let's just say I found so much dough that it took me a month to count, OK?

A little refresher: Sean was a good friend and MTV colleague, who also played in the awesome bands Saves The Day, Hands Tied, and Mouthpiece. The Sean McGrath Fund was born in 2002 when some friends and I threw a benefit concert (featuring our friends Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Midtown, and The Movielife) for Sean's medical expenses after his diagnosis with advanced cholangiocarcinoma (bile duct cancer), and the Fund was officially incorporated as a charity through the Princeton Area Community Foundation after Sean's death in 2004.

In the dozen years since, we've given over $36,000 in grants to health and humanitarian causes locally, nationally, and internationally (most recently renewing our longtime annual support of the amazing New Jersey youth health organization HiTOPS).

The money that I find and pick up on the street throughout the year and set aside for the SMcGF is just a drop in that big ol' bucket, but when it comes to charity, every little bit helps...and this year's little bit was a lot bigger than usual! Let's look at the breakdown:

.01 x 310  =  $3.10

.05 x 13  =  $0.65

.10 x 44  =  $4.40

.25 x 19  =  $4.75

1.00 x 3  =  $3.00
10.00 x 1 = $10.00
 

Boosting that tally slightly is the foreign currency I came across in my wanderings (fifty-one Canadian cents and one Euro cent, worth thirty-seven American cents altogether); boosting it considerably is the value of seven separate New York City MetroCards I found, with a whopping combined total value of $87.24!

That raises this year's grand total to a record-setting (drum roll please...) $113.51!

As I do every year, I'm asking friends, readers, and supporters to match the donation in honor of what would have been Sean's 40th birthday in late January. Whether you match my donation at the $113.51 "challenge" level, or make a $40 gift to mark his 40th birthday, or even just throw a fiver into the hopper, your generosity will amplify the impact of this found change and help us support great causes through the Sean McGrath Fund in the year ahead. If you'd like to make a donation, hit the orange button on the PACF site and make sure you specify "Sean McGrath Fund" in your note.

And maybe that $100+ tally makes you curious about how much found money you run across yourself in an average year. If so, I hope you'll join me in designating a jar or jug and spend the next year filling it with any money you happen to find on the sidewalk, the subway, the bank, the checkout counter, the couch cushions, or anyplace else, and then join me in donating your grand tally next year.

When you add it all up, small change can really make a big change in the world! 

Petition Coalition, 1/14/15 - Environmental Edition

Join the "Petition Coalition" by following these links and signing those that you agree with!

One of the new Congress's biggest goals is to push through the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline, which would create only a handful of permanent jobs in the United States, while pumping a huge volume of one of the dirtiest fossil fuels through America's heartland (and using eminent domain to destroy farmland and grazing pastures for hundreds of property owners). Tell the House and the Senate that we have better things to do than help Big Oil transport Canadian fossil fuel to Texas refineries: https://secure.nrdconline.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=3638&s_src=TWOKXPETTKSC#.VKxhVriUL3k.twitter

Trains full of highly toxic, highly flammable petroleum products course through cities and towns throughout North America every day. Unfortunately, they all too often derail, leak, crash, and/or explode, killing residents (47 alone in one Quebec incident), polluting residential areas and wildlife habitats alike. Unbelievably, when Big Oil is making record profits, many states (including my own, New York) are subsidizing the costs of these dangerous “bomb trains.” Speak out against public money being funneled to support them: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/661/032/375

Hardly a day goes by that I don't see someone purchasing a single item and then putting it in a plastic bag instead of stowing it in their bag or pocket, or just carrying it home by hand. And never does a day go by that I don't see plastic bags floating down the street, sidewalk, or flapping in a tree here in New York City. It's high time that we disincentivized the reckless overuse of plastic shopping bags by implementing a ten cent surcharge on each one. Ask Mayor de Blasio to support the campaign: http://www.congressweb.com/nylcv/2

There's no arguing that Doritos are delicious, but unfortunately, that's also the flavor of deforestation: parent company PepsiCo buys almost a half million tons of palm oil every year, which is produced by cutting down rainforests even though there are plenty of vegetable oil alternatives. Watch the video below and then put the pressure on them to cut palm oil out of their products and make less of an impact on our global environment: http://action.sumofus.org/a/doritos-palm-oil/

Thanks for fighting the good fight, and for all the little ways you change the world!

Throwing away money that could help your local school? Well, cut it out...literally!

As a public school kid in the '80s, collecting Labels for Education from Campbell's soup and related brand products was a year-round endeavor. Parents and teachers liked it because it meant that the school system could cash in those labels for free educational and sporting goods; kids liked it because most schools turned the collection drive into a contest, with the winning classroom or grade winning a prize. Who doesn't want a pizza party or a field trip?!

My sister and I used to enlist aunts, uncles, neighbors, and family friends to clip and save their labels for us (and since my uncle brought a couple cans of tomato juice in his lunch bucket every day when he worked at General Motors, we always had a pretty epic haul for our respective classrooms). As an adult, I've always followed suit, saving my labels over the years first for friends' kids and now for my own nephew.

It's not just the Labels for Education program that I save for these days, though: since 1996, General Mills and their partners have been running the Box Tops for Education program, with snippable tokens worth a dime each placed on a panoply of products from a wide variety of food and home supply brands. In the nineteen years since its inception, their program has provided a whopping $600 million to schools, daycare centers, and libraries across the nation (compared with $114 million over the 40 year history of the Campbell's program).

I pulled the baggy of labels and box tops down from my kitchen cork board the other day so that I could ship them off to my nephew, and the tally since my last shipment was 140 snipped box tops (worth $14) plus a Pathmark bonus slip with another 50 box tops (a $5 value), along with 41 Campbell's points (which don't have a set monetary value, but I reckon are worth about $1).

That's right around an even $20 that'll help support my nephew's school this year. Bear in mind that I'm a bachelor who lives alone, so that's just one man's soup (Progresso, Campbell's), cereal (Cheerios, Basic 4), bread (Pepperidge Farm) and pasta sauce (Prego). Imagine if every household in every school district took a moment to clip and save their points before recycling the cans, jars, and boxes bearing them? In my building, that would amount to almost $400. On my block, $16,000. Get the picture? Then get on board!

If you don't already, I encourage you to set aside a baggy or jar in your kitchen and start collecting box tops and labels from participating brands. I'm sure you'll be surprised at how quickly they add up. Even if there's no child in your life to whom you can pass them along directly, you can find a local school participating in the Campbell's program by entering your ZIP code at this site (if a school collects the less-valuable Campbell's labels, it will almost surely also collect General Mills box tops). It will list your local schools, along with the name of the coordinator at each institution. Just pop them in the mail to their attention!

Can you think of an easier way to generate FREE money for a good cause? I sure can't...but if I do, I'll certainly share it with you here at Little Ways to Change the World!

Petition Coalition, 1/7/15 - Domestic Cornucopia Edition

Join the "Petition Coalition" by following these links and signing those that you agree with!

TLC (who are now a far stretch from “The Learning Channel”) are planning to air a special called “My Husband's Not Gay,” promoting the completely debunked idea that homosexuality is something that can be (or should be) “overcome” through prayer and/or the scandalous and widely banned “reparative therapy” that has damaged so many who believed in its ability to change their sexuality. Tell TLC that airing a special about something completely refuted by the medical and psychiatric communities is appalling: https://www.change.org/p/tlc-cancel-your-upcoming-tv-show-my-husband-s-not-gay

Cosmetics companies like L'Oreal promote their campaigns to fight cancer, but at the same time, they serve as a carcinogen delivery system to their customers, putting dangerous chemicals into many of their products—even baby products. Tell them that it they're going to talk the talk, they have to walk the walk, and remove all of these cancer-causing chemicals from their product lines: http://act.credoaction.com/sign/loreal_cancer

“The Volcker Rule” was passed to prevent banks from making the risky gambles that crashed the economy under President Bush and created the massive recession out from which we are still digging ourselves. Last month, the Federal Reserve announced that they were instituting a two year delay in implementing the law, allowing banks to act as hedge funds and put your—our—money at risk. Tell the Fed that this element of Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation must be implemented NOW: http://act.credoaction.com/sign/Volcker_Rule_fedreserve?sp_ref=93209231.4.11086.e.42969.2&referring_akid=.1276313.llp5N5&source=mailto_sp

92% of gun owners and even 86% of Republicans polled support expanding background checks to cover every gun purchase in the U.S., regardless of where and how it's bought. Rep. Mike Thompson of California plans to introduce a bill to expand background checks to cover the loopholes of online and gun show sales. Ask your member of Congress to stand with him and pass this sensible firearm safety legislation: http://act.watchdog.net/petitions/4804

Thanks for fighting the good fight, and for all the little ways you change the world!

Petition Coalition, 1/6/15 - Congressional Issues Edition

Join the "Petition Coalition" by following these links and signing those that you agree with! 

Suicide is a huge problem among both our active service members and our military veterans, with nearly two dozen taking their own lives every day. In December of 2000, when I was on a USO tour with Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in Eastern Europe, he and his wife told me how distressed they were at the problem then...and it's only escalated with the huge deployments of troops for our incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq. We need to provide the Department of Veterans Affairs with the funding the tools they need to effectively counsel our returning troops afflicted with PTSD or depression, so please tell your member of Congress to pass the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention Act without delay: https://www.change.org/p/pass-the-clay-hunt-suicide-prevention-for-america-s-veterans-sav-act 

Congress recently passed a law written by Citigroup which repeals many regulations that were protecting citizens from some of the biggest abuses practiced by the banking industry in the past, which have fleeced American citizens and had profound negative effects on the economy numerous times in the past. Demand a breakup of the “too big to fail” banks and passage of a 21^st century version of the “Glass-Steagall Act” to protect all of us little guys: http://act.boldprogressives.org/survey/survey_endtoobigtofail/?sp_ref=91950171.219.11029.o.1.2&source=c2c-sp 

Professional sports bring a lot of pleasure to fans and spectators, but there's absolutely no way to argue that they deserve the same tax-free designation as actual charities...especially when they rake in hundreds of millions of dollars every single year. Stand against the NFL's tax exemption and tell them to pay the fair share of taxes that every massively profitable corporation should pay: https://vk.rootstrikers.org/petitions/28?n=2653236.MsMH_h 

The right wing frothed at the mouth for months because of their relationship with the firebrand pastor whose church the Obamas frequented in Chicago. Now, however, the same people are unperturbed by the fact that one of the highest ranking Republicans in Congress spoke to a white supremacist group associated with former KKK grand wizard David Duke. Tell Speaker of the House John Boehner that it's an embarrassment to his party to allow Majority Whip Steve Scalise to continue in his leadership role in Congress: http://site.pfaw.org/site/PageServer?pagename=scalise 

Thanks for fighting the good fight, and for all the little ways you change the world!