Have you ever heard of rule 34? It stands for: if something exists, there is a porn about it. I think there should be a similar rule for charities: if even one person cares about a ‘cause’ there is a foundation for it. Let’s call it: rule 43.

People often approach charitable giving quite emotionally; they go for causes that pull on their heartstrings or speak to personal concerns they have. For most of us, these concerns range from the destructive effects of climate change, to global poverty, from human rights, to children’s lives and so on. But for others, the causes they care about can be oddly niche. How niche you ask? Here are three charities that have very specific audiences. It’s up to you to decide whether they are useful because they're helping someone somehow or harmful because they dilute the charitable space.

1) Tall People Foundation

The first one, I have particular beef with (I’m 162cm). As you might guess from their name, this is a foundation for tall people; because they encounter a lot of difficulties in life… I guess? Before you start thinking about people who actually have medical problems related to their height (because that is indeed a 'thing') this foundation is not about that. It’s about ‘promoting causes that benefit tall people'. Even Grammarly tried to correct 'tall' for 'all' in that last sentence but nope; this is a charity for tall people. In their case tall is defined by 5' 10" (178 cm) for women and 6' 2" (188 cm) for men. The foundation mainly focuses on giving scholarships to tallies under the age of 21, so at least some people are getting an education from it.

2) 501st Foundation

If anything in the world doesn’t need any promotion it’s probably Star Wars. Yet the main goal of the 501st Foundation is to “to promote interest in Star Wars through the building and wearing of quality costumes, and to facilitate the use of these costumes for Star Wars-related events”.
The Legion thinks it’s very important to keep costuming alive and they only do costumes of villains of the Star Wars enterprise. Talk about a niche cause. In the foundation’s own words: “[it] was founded to simply provide a collective identity for costuming fans with similar interests” (the similar interest being Star War villains) but they do put their force to good use in the form of volunteer work and fundraising

3) Order of The Azure Rose

Think the 501st foundation but make it medieval, there you have the Order of The Azure Rose. The foundation is a reenactment guild who dress up in renaissance era costumes and participate in historically themed events. According to their website it was founded upon a “need to bring the ancient ideals of Chivalry into 21st century society”. I mean who doesn’t need some benevolent sexism dressed up as an honorable tradition in their lives. From what I can gather from their website The Order focuses on educating people about medieval values through hands-on experience. Which I interpret to mean that they mainly attend renaissance fairs; although who am I to judge, I too love a good period drama and am a proud finisher of BBC’s 8 hour rendition of Tess of D’urbervilles.

As you can see from the three brief examples above, there is something for everyone in the charitable space no matter how niche your interests. However, if you, like me, are into more mainstream stuff like climate change and ending animal farming: you can donate to ProVeg below. ProVeg is a leading food awareness charity that focuses on minimizing the negative impact of the animal farming industry on the lives of animals, the lives of people and on the planet.