I was thinking about it. I donate to quite a few charities, but they specifically mean something to me. Others I don’t really think about, though they’re good. I guess we all have a threshold or we’d be broke and for many that could be no donations at all or just a fiver the the street guy.
I’ve given money to both charities and people. Here’s the thing about donating, though: you’ll get on all sorts of mailing lists and shit, and you’ll get lots more begging letters, emails, phone calls and texts. You know those PBS/NPR donation drives, where they’re like “We just need ten more donors this hour, it doesn’t matter how much!” or those charities that send you pre-printed labels and say “Hey, just send us five bucks, that’s all we need”? Yeah, they’re harvesting your information. If you even send them a penny, they’ll be back for more, and they’ll sell or trade your information to other charities.
I give money to our local volunteer fire/ems department every year, but I don’t use their pre-printed mailer; I hand them cash when Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny come through on their trucks. I have one of those pre-paid Visa gift cards that aren’t tied to an actual person; if I do an online donation, I’ll use that and give them fake information. The money is legit, the information is good enough to pass, but they can’t come harass me for more.
This includes all donations, by the way - political, religious, civic, charity, social, whatever. Do it in cash or by an anonymous Visa gift card.
Yeah. I gave Kamala $46.50 the day Biden dropped. It was my first political donation (even though I’m old) and i was pretty excited about it. Now i get at least 4 emails per day. I finally started unsubscribing today. Seriously, I’m voting for you, but you’re gonna need to back the fuck off.
I deleted 148 mostly political spam emails that I got from Saturday to Tuesday. I’m glad to have donated a few bucks, but fucking Christ. I hear from a dozen people daily (or more) plus “guest solicitors” like half of Hollywood.
I gave money to Berney in 2016 and I’ve been on mailing lists ever since.
Just feel it should be pointed out that money isn’t the only way to contribute. Time is another. Volunteer hours are important for many charitable organizations too.
I prefer to donate time. I’m now president of one local non-profit (in addition to my paying job), and a regular participant in another. Sometimes I’ll donate supplies that we need, but never money.
If a time comes when I have little time and a lot of money, maybe I’ll switch. Donors are necessary. But I know that we need hands more than dollars.
- Planned Parenthood - Gave my wife quality routine medical care when were broke.
- Pfblocker - fuck ads
- Physics Girl - I gave hospice care to my Dad for a couple months. That was literally the hardest most painful experience of my life. I can’t imagine surviving giving full time care to someone for years like her husband has. Me chipping in a couple bucks every month might help reduce money stress in a small way.
- Harris campaign - I would like Democracy to continue and the opposition seems directly against that happening.
I used to but I don’t anymore. I can’t afford to give money away when I can’t even pay for my own bills.
4$ a month to wikipedia. It’s the most valuable thing the internet has spawned hands down
i used to give them money, until i saw their finances. they have become dependent on donations increasing year over year even though the running costs roughly follow inflation.
This should really be more widely known. It’s a case study of mission creep and bureaucratization. The cost of keeping the servers running, and even dev work, is at this point a smallish fraction of what they’re pulling in. The is rest going to various forms of outreach and activism. That’s fine, and the money is probably well spent. But they really should be more honest about why they’re asking for it.
Yes, mostly to research charities.
No, but I donate time and sometimes items. I’ve seen how wasteful so many “charities” are. When less than half of what is donated actually goes to the end user that’s a problem. So I donate things that have to go to the end user, or at the very least in support of the end user.
Yeah, it’s tricky that, especially with international stuff. When something kicks off internationally and suddenly a bajillion charity groups appear, it’s troublesome.
And it’s my rule of thumb to just disregard anything from a religion, I won’t even bother checking into them. Whenever there’s been a charity called out for being evil, it’s ironically Christian-based.
Lots of wealth hoarders are donating money to avoid taxes. A lot of charities profit from this and aren’t actual charities and it’s all down to syntax of what a charity is.
And supermarkets that ask you to donate is for their own PR(and why should a money monger benefit from anyone else’s good deed when they have plenty to donate or even pay their staff a living wage instead?)
So much of life is a layered lie and a scam.
Just save up your loose change and give it to someone outside the liquor store. At least then you know where the money is going. And it’s possibly the more ethical option.
Not all charities are like that, there are many that operate very transparently and actually make a difference. Just because some people take advantage of the system behind it does not make donating less impactful if you do a bit of research.
What would the internet be without the no true Scotsman argument?
Oh that’s right: scammers with no vitriol.
Not sure what you mean. What would the No True Scotsman argument be in this case? It would need to make the same generalization while excluding the ones I mentioned, I dont see how that would work.
Terrible, no-good, cynical, nihilist take. If everybody took your advice, the world would be a worse place in short order. Sorry to be so blunt.
Your apology assumes I care about your opinion way too much.
If you can, donate to your LOCAL non-profits or the local branches of larger non-profits. Get to know the people in those organizations (volunteer, visit organization open houses/orientations, go to a hosted event) and you’ll feel a lot better about where your dollars are going.
I used to be on the board of a local domestic abuse shelter and now I’m on the board of a local food pantry. Both are amazing organizations, both have incredibly passionate people working for them, and the board is filled with mostly normal working people who have or want to have good community connections.
My partner has a little with big brothers big sisters and that turned into a board position for him because he was super enthusiastic and active. That’s a bigger organization but his contributions are at the local level and we’ve gotten to know the local “ceo” as well.
Also, 501©(3) orgs must publicly list their tax returns and you can find out the salaries of the executives on those tax returns. So even tho in my experience, the executives of the orgs at the local levels earn every damn penny (and it’s def not enuf) you can also find that info out for yourself. But please remember that if a non profit doesn’t have an excellent, passionate and well paid staff, they will NOT be able to get the donations and funding they need to fulfill their actual purpose. I’m talking specifically about local orgs tho, some of those giant orgs with executives making millions definitely should take a closer look at their priorities.
And finally…if you can’t donate money of course there is always volunteering but there is ALSO serving on a board. Every non-profit ive been involved with has had problems filling their board seats with active, enthusiastic individuals. Sometimes there are monetary asks of board members but no one is going to kick you out if you truly only have time and no money. And if u experience that, find a better board, they are out there and they are working really really hard to make things better.
I donate small amounts to open source projects and content creators that .make stuff for everyone because I really believe it’s a great way of fighting capitalism and many of the problems it’s caused.
I try to donate a few bucks to FSF, GNU and Linux every year. Sometimes other projects as well. I don’t work, so I can’t do monthly donations.
I started donating to the local animal rescue. None of them get any public funding whatsoever, so all the money is going to the animals’ care.
They’re pretty open with what it costs to take care of the various animals, and I feel it’s a critical job they do.
Haven’t gotten any spam so far either, so that is respectful.
I donate to food banks and educational charities. I grew up with little and now I’m better off thanks to charities and scholarships that supported me, and I want future generations to be given the same chances I was.
We allocate money for the kids to donate to charity. Some loose rules around what does and doesn’t count but generally the kids get to decide.
Not technically charity but I’ve made a push to support OSS and other small-tech projects this past year. Regular contributions of a few dollars a month each to things like the maintainer of my linux distro and the guy that makes Kodi plugins I use, and pushing to financially support commecial OSS such as Proton Mail and Bitwarden. I’m just realising I don’t actually have a list, I should probably work out exactly where my money is going.
Yeah and my rationale for deciding how much is a little involved… Essentially, carbon offset markets are either straight up scams or over hyping the impact. Instead I donate directly to charities doing good work related to the environment or the fall out from the climate crisis. The U.S. EPA estimates that each metric ton of CO2 emitted costs society and the environment around $200 in damage from things like natural disasters, civil unrest from displacement, extinction of species, etc. the average US household emits about 17 MT/year.
So around tax return season I go to FootprintCalculator.org and estimate how many MT of CO2 our household emitted the year prior. Then I set monthly recurring donations to the charities to roughly equal the amount of $200 times MT spread across the year. So it’s fairly automated/low effort, and just comes out a little bit each month.
The types of charities vary, but they’re all doing incredible work, here’s some of them:
Coalition for Rainforest Nations (the operate globally with indigenous and local communities to do everything possible to protect rainforests and reforest areas. The donations really stretch far because they predominantly work in low income areas)
ProPublica (no paywall investigative news organization that has really hard hitting reporting that holds polluters accountable by government agencies)
Lahaina Community Land Trust (supporting Native Hawaiian victims of the Lahaina fire and trying to prevent their land from being bought up by private equity and billionaires)
World Wildlife Foundation (great work with preserving biodiversity and raising awareness of nature with the public. It’s hard to care about something if you don’t know about it)
Union of Concerned Scientists (political advocacy org)
Local food bank, urban green space advocates, and housing support orgs (the most vulnerable people in our communities experience extreme weather much differently than those of us with AC and a solid roof)
Also agree with the other commenter about giving time
I check administrative and fundraising costs. 90% of my donations are local organizations that directly impact my community, mostly the food bank, animal care and shelters, and school or student groups.
