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The James Randi Educational Foundation is proud to announce its annual fundraising campaign running from November 15, 2010 through January 15, 2011. 

Last year’s Season of Reason campaign raised thousands of dollars, which was used to help establish the JREF’s new Education Department and get a number of new programs off the ground. This year, we’re asking you to help us raise $100,000 to support the further development of the educational programs that will be the backbone of the JREF’s work in 2011. Such support helps the JREF to continue to extend the important work of James Randi, influential skeptic and social critic who has for decades stood against the prevailing cults of nonsense and supernatural charlatans of every stripe.

The JREF needs your help to improve critical thinking and science education in schools and communities throughout North America and around the world. Your donation will increase our efforts to promote skepticism to new people through the expansion of JREF’s educational and outreach work, such as through:

  • Educator Grants

  • Scholarships for Academics

  • Regional Skeptics Workshops

  • The new JREF in the Classroom Program

  • Digital Publishing

  • Smartphone Skepticism Apps 


Donate today to help us reach our goal!


Our Gift to you 

Make an ongoing monthly pledge of $25 or more, or make a one-time donation of $100 or more during the 2010 Season of Reason: A Bright Future campaign and you will receive this limited-number Surly-Ramics holiday ornament, especially hand-made for the 2010 Season of Reason. Surly-Ramics have long been a popular fashion staple of the skeptical community, and we are both proud and honored to have this special three inch diameter Surly-Ramic ornament available to a limited number of our supporters this year. The image on the ornament is James Randi flying a JREF sleigh pulled by a flying pigasus, a design which Randi himself enjoyed immensely.

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Make a monthly pledge of $25 or donate $100 or more and get this beautiful ornament.

 

Anonymous Donor’s Matching Gift

JREF is extremely fortunate that a generous anonymous donor willing to give $1 for every dollar donated during the Season of Reason to the JREF—up to $100,000! Yes, that’s right. Your donation will be doubled!

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Click Here to Donate

 

More about JREF’s educational work:
 
 

Educator Grants

JREF Grants for Educators provides financial and other resources to K-12 teachers, and are intended to help offset the cost of developing or improving critical thinking and scientific skepticism programs in the classroom and beyond. Project proposals are accepted throughout the year, and grants are awarded as funds and relevant projects allow.

The James Randi Educational Foundation awards a limited number of grants of up to $1,000 to help teachers with the following:  

  • Materials and equipment for the classroom, school or community for use in skepticism and critical thinking education.

  • Begin new school or community skepticism and critical thinking outreach and educational programs.

  • Enhance and expand existing skepticism and critical thinking educational programs.

  • Attend courses, workshops or conferences related to scientific skepticism that will significantly enhance teaching activities.


Scholarships

The James Randi Educational Foundation awards $10,000 in academic scholarships every fall. Four scholarships in the amount of $2500 are awarded to deserving students in potentially any field of study: two at the graduate level and two more at the undergraduate level. A committee composed of a physicist, a social scientist, a physician, and a professor of philosophy select the winners, with the awards being announced in the spring/summer each year.

  • Applicant’s Academic Potential

  • Current or Past Critical Thinking Contributions

  • Most Importantly, a Plan for Building Critical Thinking Skills in Chosen Field


JREF in the Classroom

This free program for educators provides free curricular modules that expose students to concepts identified in the national science content standards and AAAS science literacy benchmarks related to the scientific process: Science as Inquiry, and Science in Personal and Social Perspectives. JREF in the Classroom uses the investigation of pseudoscience and the paranormal to promote critical thinking, and focuses both on the methods of science and the best scientific data on such paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.
 

Education Advisory Panel

The James Randi Educational Foundation recently announced the formation of a new education advisory panel made up of individuals with broad experience in areas at the intersection of skepticism, critical thinking, and education. Its primary function is to provide the Foundation’s president and director of educational programs with informed opinions and recommendations related to the JREF’s efforts in the educational arena, focusing on resources for teachers to advance critical thinking in their classrooms.


Digital Publishing

The JREF is working to make leading-edge skeptical books of the past, present, and future, including all of Randi's influential titles, available through digital media mediums such as the iPad and the Amazon Kindle. Our mission is to make these texts as widely available as possible so that students of critical thinking and skepticism—young and old—have access to this important information in the exciting realm of digital publishing.
 

JREF Smartphone Apps

Currently in development are a number of JREF smartphone apps for iPhone and Android, which will include text and video, and focus in a hands-on way on the exploration of a number of topics such as dowsing, E.S.P, complementary and alternative medicine, astrology, skeptics history, and many more!
 

Your Support is Needed Now!

With the decline of our economy, the JREF has been impacted. While we have worked hard over the last year to cut our expenses even while expanding our programming, some of our supporters have found that they are unable to give like they have in the past. Unless we can increase the number of people who support the JREF, we can not advance skepticism and critical thinking as we have worked hard to do with recent new programs. 

Our funding comes 100% from our defenders of reason like you. We do not receive any government funding, nor any corporate sponsorship. 

Again, a generous anonymous donor will give $1 for every dollar donated during the Season of Reason to the JREF—up to $100,000! If you supportthe JREF during the Season of Reason campaign, your donation will be doubled!

We are depending on you to support the important mission of the JREF. Won't you help make this a Season of Reason today?

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Click Here to Donate