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.

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.

I took a break from this donation project for the first few months of 2015, when I was taking a break from blogging and the Internet and just from work generally. I feel bad about this, though — I made a commitment which I should have kept. So this catch-up donation isn’t just 10% of my Coming Out Atheist income for the period in question — it’s 10% of all my income from that period.

The recipient for January – April 2015, chosen by Heina Dadabhoy, is Secular Avenue.

Secular Avenue is a 501(c)(3) organization formed to help secular people in need to achieve safety, stability, and autonomy. The initial focus of Secular Avenue is SAFE, a program to assist people who are unsafe at home due to leaving religion, religious extremism, domestic abuse, or coming out as LGBTQ. Services include financial assistance, counseling, legal assistance and resource coordination. As Secular Avenue grows, additional programs will be created to serve other groups of people in need within the secular community.

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