T-Shirt Charity Fundraiser!
Available to order now through Friday: the first (and possibly last) Daily Nous t-shirt! It’s a black shirt, all-cotton, that features a design with a quote from Socrates — one that captures the heart of the philosophical disposition — along with some of the surrounding text. I am selling it to raise funds for a charitable cause. No, the charitable cause is not to supply me with pre-cage style death match discussion in the comments. More on that below. You can check out the shirt in more detail and order it here.
If my calculations are correct, I have priced the shirt so that about $5.00 of what you pay will go to the charitable cause (the “about” is because the unisex shirts cost a few cents less than the women’s cut ones to make, but I didn’t want to bother with different pricing). The rest of the money goes to the company that is making the shirt and handling the shipping, Paypal fees, and local sales tax—no money is going to me—for a total of $19.80. That price includes shipping on domestic orders (shipping to destinations outside the U.S. is extra).
The shirts are high quality, and the printer, Threadbird, is reputed to put out a much better printed shirt than the kinds you see offered from places like Cafe Press and Zazzle. This is my first time doing a shirt order along these lines. I have timed it so that there’s a good chance the shirts will arrive by Christmas, but I cannot guarantee that, as there may be some bumps in the road for this novice. The initial batch of shirts will be available to purchase starting now and continuing through Friday, at which point I’ll submit the whole order to Threadbird and they’ll make and ship out the shirts. I’ll also make an accounting post here that will include how many shirts were sold and how much money was raised, and then, later, a confirmation from the recipient that the funds were, in fact, delivered.
After the initial order, if it is successful, I may keep the shirt for sale, but why chance it? Best to order now.
So, decision-time, people. First, order a shirt! Second, where should the raised funds go? I am inclined to select Oxfam but can also see the value of contributing to a more philosophically-oriented organization, too. Or perhaps there is a more creative charitable way to put the funds to use? Once some suggestions are out there, the plan is to put it to a poll, so please let me know what you think.
I recommend Project Healthy Children if you’re looking for a poverty related charity: http://projecthealthychildren.org and the Southern Center for Human Rights if you want something timely with respect to the current national conversation surrounding race, civil rights and police brutality: https://www.schr.org
I’m also love to know where and under what conditions the T-shirts will be manufactured and printed.
I suggest that we all be good utilitarians and choose one of GiveWell’s top charities: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities.
Having worked in the screen printing industry, I also share anon’s question/concern about manufacturing and printing. And if you want a recommendation of a unionized, excellent, conscious company (that also donates much of its time and money to charity) that will source shirts not made with exploited labor, get in touch! This is not to take away from this being a good idea, but I can see why people might have qualms about purchasing a shirt for charity if the majority of money is going somewhere that isn’t necessarily doing so much good in the world.
Anon, my understanding is that the shirts are printed at Threadbird in Florida. The person I dealt with there was very helpful and was able to advise me on setting up the sales, and they are able to handle the packing and shipping, which of course I do not have time to do. I don’t know about the manufacturers of the shirts (there are two different brands), but I would imagine that, like most large apparel manufacturers, they do not have spotless reputations. To be honest, I did not look into these matters. My priorities were trying to keep the quality good while keeping the price low enough so as to increase the likelihood of more funds being raised. I was happy to be able to keep the shirt’s price under $20, including shipping (in the U.S.), with quality material and printing, and still have $5.00 of each purchase go to charity. Between figuring that out and making the design, I have already put quite a bit of time into this project. That said, since it seems important to people, I will look into the costs of having the design printed on American Apparel or Alternative Apparel shirts, which the printer apparently is able to work with and which, I understand, have better than average reputations. It may require too much fiddling with to make it happen, though. I’ll report back when I have a chance. In the meanwhile, let’s try not to let the better be the enemy of the good.
Thanks to those who have made suggestions about who the charitable funds should go to and to those who have ordered!
UPDATE: Changing things up is going to be too complicated. I will keep these concerns in mind for next time around.
I second the suggestion of one of GiveWell’s top charities.
We should donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
I’d also encourage the choice of Against Malaria Foundation, currently one of GiveWell’s top recommendations.
For those of us who don’t remember our Plato quite as well as we should, could you share the Stephanus number and translation used?
It’s Gorgias 458a. I don’t know the translation.
It’s based on the Jowett translation. I changed some of the wording here and there just a little bit. I figured I could get away with that. Because it’s a t-shirt.