Why I Donate Paid Substack Subscriptions to Charity
Using Substack subscriptions to support a cause I love, hospice ❤️
I enjoy writing on Substack. It’s a simple platform for writers and readers, and I admire its mission to help writers earn a living. But I don’t write for money. My writing on Substack is free. If you choose to subscribe for a small fee, I will donate all of it to charity. This post explains why.
Why Write?
I write because I love to write, and it’s how I learn. I’m fortunate to have a job where I stumble upon new ideas, and I enjoy sharing them. Substack provides a home for my writing, and they deserve to be paid for that service.
Here’s my plan. I post my articles for free on Substack. I also enable paid subscriptions. Substack requires a minimum of $5 a month, but you can contribute any amount you wish. I donate all proceeds, after Substack’s fees of about 12%, to hospice. Why hospice?
Why Hospice?
Fifteen years ago, my wife died of cancer. She was 43. My children were six and four. The North Shore Hospice in Massachusetts, now called Care Dimensions, gave my family incredible support. They offered art therapy for my children, a free camp for families who had lost a loved one, and many other services.
Since then, my family and I have volunteered with hospice programs. After I moved to Long Island, I began to support a similar program, Bob Sweeney’s Camp Hope, which runs a free two-day camp for children who have lost a family member.
I wrote about our experience with hospice in an essay called Cancer is Love. You can read it here on Substack.
Thank you for reading. And thank you to those who have already subscribed. It feels good to write for a good cause.
Cancer is Love
I wrote the original version of this essay When You Suddenly Become Mom and Dad, for P.S. I Love You on Medium. It went semi-viral for a post of this kind, and I’ve been touched that so many people shared it to help friends get through tough times with cancer and loss. I hope it does the same for you.
To Learn More
Here’s more about the organizations your donations support:
North Shore Hospice in Massachusetts (now called Care Dimensions) provided art therapy to my kids, a free camp for kids and adults who had lost a family member, and numerous other generous services.
Bob Sweeney’s Camp Hope of Long Island, provides a free 2-day camp for kids who have lost a family member.
Cancer is Love The essay I wrote about our experience called about the lessons we learned during our hospice experience.
FYI: I just donated the first set of donations to charity. Thanks to you, I've already generated hundreds of dollars help out cancer. The one I've chose this time is NICK GOES BALD, fundraising that my new friend Nick Psaris, the author of two books and an incredible human.
Nick wrote Q Tips: Fast, Scalable and Maintainable Kdb+ based on his years of practical experience developing production trading systems in q. His second book, Fun Q: A Functional Introduction to Machine Learning in Q, uses the expressive q language to guide readers through implementing twelve machine learning algorithms from scratch.
Nick's web site: https://nick.psaris.com
Nick's passion for cancer research and support comes from his personal experience, which you can read about here:
Nick Goes Bald: https://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/nickgoesbald
Thanks again to everyone who has supported the Substack for Good cause already!
Welcome to the mix! It's good to have you and I look forward to reading your work! One of the best ways to grow substack is to elevate those authors around you as well! What's great about substack is that they are building this collaboration into their system. It's more of a network, or a family of writers that complement each other than competing which I've found valuable. I've benefited more from my authoring peers than I anticipated and I'm driven to do the same.