Giving money to the ACLU is good, but if that's all you do then it seems more like paying someone else to fix the problem. Which isn't what you're saying, I know, but other than paying a political action committee like the ACLU or the EFF, what next?
Giving to charities can help releive people who are suffering from problems, but can it actually solve those problems? Whether it can or can't has no bearing on whether or not those charities are good things, in my opinion, but while putting a cold compress on a fevered patient can keep the patient from frying his/her own brain, you still need a way to deal with the sickness itself. So how do you deal with *that*?