The “Coming Out Atheist” Donation Recipient for October 2014: Foundation Beyond Belief!

Coming Out Atheist cover
As some of you may already know, I’ve pledged to donate 10% of my income from my new book, Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why, to atheist organizations, charities, and projects.

Here’s why. I got lots of help with this book, and working on it felt very much like a collaboration, a community effort. (To some extent that’s true with any book, but it was even more true with this one.) Because coming out is really different for different atheists, it was hugely important to get detailed feedback on the book, so my personal perspective wasn’t completely skewing my depiction of other people’s experiences. So I asked lots of friends and colleagues to give me detailed feedback on the book: either on the book as a whole, or on particular chapters about atheists with very different experiences from mine (such as the chapters on parents, students, clergy, people in the U.S. military, and people in theocracies). Many people were very generous with their time helping out: they put a whole lot of time and work and thought into a project that wasn’t theirs, because they thought it would benefit the community. And, of course, I had the help of the hundreds of people who wrote in with their coming-out story, or who told their coming-out story in one of the books or websites I cited, or who just told me your coming-out story in person.

Foundation Beyond Belief logo
I want to give some of that back. So I’m donating 10% of my income from this book to atheist organizations, charities, and projects: a different one each month. Each month, one of the people who helped with the book gets to pick the recipient. The recipient for September 2014, chosen by Catherine Dunphy, is the Foundation Beyond Belief.

The mission of the Foundation Beyond Belief is to demonstrate humanism at its best by supporting efforts to improve this world and this life, and to challenge humanists to embody the highest principles of humanism, including mutual care and responsibility.

Since their launch in 2010, their members have saved a children’s home in Nepal from dissolution, funded science education in India and in US public schools, and supported efforts to fight global warming and protect biodiversity. They put textbooks in Uganda’s humanist schools and funded peacebuilding teams in Uganda’s conflict areas. They supported efforts to improve access to health care for marginalized populations on four continents and in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake and Japanese tsunami, as well as lifesaving work in the recent drought and famine in East Africa. They’ve helped open a new school for girls in Pakistan and funded a four-year college scholarship for indigenous Guatemalans. They’ve added humanist voices and dollars to the fight for LGBT rights, empowered adoptions, helped feed the hungry, and worked to protect the most vulnerable – refugees in war, victims of torture, women under threat of religious violence, political asylees, people struggling with addiction, and those seeking dignity at the end of their lives.

The Foundation Beyond Belief is a 501(c) nonprofit, and donations to them are tax-deductible. If you want to support them too, here’s their donation page!

Coming Out Atheist
Bending
why are you atheists so angry
Greta Christina’s books, Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why and Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, are available in print, ebook, and audiobook. Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More is available in ebook and audiobook.

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The “Coming Out Atheist” Donation Recipient for October 2014: Foundation Beyond Belief!
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