Montgomery County police did the unthinkable last week: They pulled over Batman for driving without properly fastened license plates. Today, we learned his real name: It's Lenny. more ›

Drop everything and start thinking about that boysenberry syrup. Tomorrow is National Pancake Day, so forget your lunch appointment and break out the extra roomy jeans, because IHOP will be serving up free short stacks. more ›

If you missed it yesterday, we opened up voting in a little contest to help design a DCist t-shirt and choose a charity that will benefit from the sales. more ›

DCist t-shirts at last, with profits going to charity! The logo appears on the front, with optional slogan or graphic on the back. Vote for your favorite slogans and charity now. more ›

If you've been thinking about giving to a charity or non-profit but haven't gotten around to it yet this year, there's no better day than today -- it's Give to the Max Day. more ›

Good news: philanthropist William E. Conway Jr. donated $1 million to the Capitol Area Food Bank yesterday, ensuring that the metro region's main provider of food for the poor would not have to start charging its clients for produce. more ›

D.C. Central Kitchen is less than $1,000 from their fundraising goal of $25,000 to build an additional kitchen facility. Donations before August 20 will be matched up to $25,000. more ›

This morning, the District is expected to announce the donation of $3 million from the charitable arm of Walmart to establish job training programs around the city -- another in a series of donations which will serve to market the store as a stakeholder in the District. more ›

Earlier this month, we posted a call for volunteers for a collection effort conducted by the D.C. Central Kitchen at the conclusion of the Summer Fancy Food Show. Some 150 people ended up pitching in -- and it's a good thing, since the Kitchen needed every ounce of manpower they could get. more ›

The 2011 Summer Fancy Food Show -- "North America’s Largest Specialty Food & Beverage Event," which features 180,000 products from 2,400 exhibitors and 80 countries -- is in full swing at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. But what happens with all the leftovers once the Show is over? D.C. Central Kitchen is hoping to give most of it a good home. more ›

Last weekend, we noted that the city's main provider of meals to home-bound elderly had abruptly declared bankruptcy, leaving the city scrambling. But here's good news: D.C. Central Kitchen has stepped up to fill the void. more ›

On Friday, Bread for the City -- a nonprofit which provides residents of D.C. with comprehensive services like food, clothing, medical care, and legal services -- opened up a rooftop garden on top of its new 1525 7th Street NW headquarters. more ›

Last year, DC Central Kitchen teamed up with the 9:30 Club to start what will hopefully continue as a traditional kick off to summer: the first-ever Sound Bites. The event brings local chefs and bands to the iconic club to prepare food and provide jams for those in attendance -- and all the proceeds benefit DCCK. Soundbites returns on on May 22 this year with a new lineup, including local acts (Ra Ra Rasputin and DJ lil'e) and fare from 25 District restaurants and food trucks. DCist caught up with DCCK's William Neuheisel, who gave us the details on this year's event. more ›

Yesterday, Domaso in Rosslyn played host to the Top Dog Half-Smoke Challenge. Ten chefs offered their variations on D.C.'s signature chili half-smoke from Ben's Chili Bowl. Entries ranged from broad interpretations with foie gras and sliders to more traditionally flavored sausages. more ›

We're off and running with our Servathon 2011 registration. As of Wednesday morning, nine people have registered with Team DCist and we've raised $305 to support Greater DC Cares. It's a nice start. But nice isn't good enough. We're striving to be, uh, really nice. Sign up now and be our 10th or 20th painter. Spots are limited, so quit your dawdling. more ›

We love Carla Hall. (We're a sucker for the "hootie hoo," what can we say.) We also love the D.C. Central Kitchen. (We're also a sucker for charities that aren't afraid to stand up to bullies.) So it's a good day when the two join forces: according to the charity's blog, Hall has joined the Central Kitchen's board of directors. more ›

Because D.C. Councilmember Jim Graham's got two -- and they can be all yours, if the price is right. Graham, who has been complaining about the way that the Council's tickets to events at the Verizon Center were being doled out by Council Chairman Kwame Brown, put his Council tickets for tonight's Gaga concert up for auction on eBay. more ›

Food and Friends -- a local charity which delivers food and groceries to HIV/AIDS and cancer patients around the Washington region -- is still in need of volunteers with four-wheel drive vehicles to help them make their rounds today. more ›

Following Giant's bah humbug decision to severely limit the Salvation Army's Red Kettle bell ringers time outside of their grocery stores, the charity has seen a significant drop in donations this holiday season. Salvation Army spokesperson Ken Forsythe says bell ringers raised $270,000 this year compared to $667,000 last year. Yup, that's a 59.5 percent drop. more ›

Bread for the City, which recently unveiled a huge $8.25 million, 11,000-square-foot expansion at its 1525 7th Street NW headquarters, got some national love from CNN on Christmas Day this year -- a nice little piece which highlights just some of what BFTC does on a daily basis. more ›

Here's your chance to enjoy a holiday classic and do some good for the community at the same time. The National Symphony Orchestra is partnering with Capital Area Food Bank during its performances of Handel's this weekend (December 16 to 19). if you attend the performance — and even if you do not — you are encouraged to bring cans of food to the lobby of the Kennedy Center Concert Hall between Thursday and Sunday. We already tipped the NSO's performance as likely to be the most interesting one of a work that is performed way too much for its own good. Rinaldo Alessandrini, known for his fast-paced, hard-edged recordings with the Italian early music ensemble Concerto Italiano, will conduct, and he has four soloists of considerable promise. As reported before Thanksgiving, the Capital Area Food Bank has been hit by a double-whammy this year: the combination of much higher demand and far fewer donations. Give what you can! more ›

Not to depress the whole lot of you, but this story in USA Today -- about how the United States Post Office is receiving more letters to Santa from children asking for basic needs instead of toys -- is one of the most melancholic news blasts I've read in some time. more ›

If you happened across Bread for the City's headquarters on Seventh and Q Streets NW yesterday, you likely witnessed a crane hoisting a big, shiny sign onto a new building. more ›

For this editor, the presence of Salvation Army bell ringers manning change tins outside of supermarkets and retailers is just as much of a sign of the upcoming holidays as turkey, tinsel, lights wrapped around lampposts or maniacal traffic on those days when every single person in this city is trying to get out of town. But NBCWashington.com reports that those bell ringers might not be around as much this season, at least not outside of one major D.C. grocery chain. Giant Foods has apparently instituted a new policy which will slice the amount of time charitable groups can solicit outside its stores. This holiday season, you'll hear bells at the Giant on only six days in both November and December, and for just four hours on each of those days. Previously, the Salvation Army and other groups were able to collect donations ten hours a day, six days a week throughout both months. Why the change? Giant said that they don't want the bells to "hinder their [customers'] shopping experience." Nothing in the NBC story about whether Giant's statement actually included a "bah humbug" or not. more ›

The D.C. Central Kitchen had several of its vans vandalized last night, and, understandably, many people were flabbergasted. Why would anyone want to vandalize vehicles belonging to a group whose wide-ranging missions include job training, feeding the less fortunate and supporting better nutrition among children? more ›

As someone who benefited immensely from numerous people encouraging me to write as a young man, I will shamelessly plug this: 826 -- author Dave Eggers' youth writing program -- will finally be opening a D.C. branch at 3233 14th Street NW in Columbia Heights this fall, and are looking for volunteers for writing workshops and drop-in tutoring sessions. Those familiar with 826 know that each local branch has a themed storefront to help support the work being done. D.C.'s does not disappoint: the "Museum of Unnatural History" will sell "Confused Wood and Existentially Distraught Wood (from the makers of Petrified Wood), a selection of tools for budding unnaturalists, and evolutionary supplements for those who want to develop bipedalism or opposable thumbs." Awesome. 826DC has already been working in D.C. schools (continuing the good work that our friends at Capitol Letters had been doing in this town for some time), but the new building will allow them to serve even more young people. If you like the idea of helping, you can volunteer here. more ›

They might be 3-8-1 as Major League Soccer nears the end of its two-week hiatus for the World Cup, but one feels like D.C. United's best soccer is still ahead of them. The club welcomed the El Salvador national team to RFK Stadium on Saturday night for a friendly which benefitted the Spanish Catholic Center Langley Park medical clinic and United for D.C. The Black-and-Red looked decent too, winning 1-0 on Adam Christman's 51st minute goal and stretching their unbeaten run in all competitions to six games in front of what was a largely pro-Salvadoran crowd. more ›

Over the weekend, we shared the efforts of local parents Indira Lakshmanan and Dermot Tatlow, who have been desperately seeking a bone marrow or blood cord match for their 4-year-old son, Devan. Devan has been battling a rare form of high-risk leukemia, and due to his genetic makeup, the odds of finding a match were rather long. But thanks to an extraordinary PR push that reached all the way from local blogs and TV news to Paris Hilton's Twitter account, there's a glimmer of hope today on matchdevan.com. A message posted by Devan's parents last night says that they may have found a blood cord match, and are awaiting final confirmation. We'll be keeping our fingers crossed. more ›

We don't do a whole lot of PSAs here at DCist, but there's something about a kid with life-threatening cancer that finds us making an exception. more ›

The skies smiled upon us on Saturday. Thousands of volunteers participated in Servathon 2010 over the weekend, volunteering at sites across the city. Team DCist—made up of an event-leading 54 registered participants—braved a rainy forecast to pick-up litter as we worked our way from Petworth down to Howard University. Grabber tools in hand and trash bags in tow, no empty bottle of Mad Dog 20/20, take-out pizza menu or gum wrapper was safe from our readers and writers. more ›