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.
We are members of a few charitable organizations, and we have subscribed to a charity lottery (we have a chance to win something, but we are absolute OK with not winning, too, as we know where the money is going to)
No…I generally don’t buy food because life is too expensive. Now you’re expecting me to GIVE money to people??? You’re on crack.
I had some good fortune and more money than I was used to a while back. I tried to help good causes when they presented themselves, as my way of paying it forward.
Nowadays, things are a bit more tight. I’m asking homeless people for change. Ok, not that bad, but it’s definitely not my time to share.
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.
I am really poor by UK standards, living on disability payments which are among the lowest in Europe. Sometimes I have to use the foodbank in winter. However, in summer I also donate to them and also give to local charities and homeless people. I know a lot of people say do not give directly to the homeless, but I think that is wrong.I have been homeless and found a community of folk just like everywhere else. Some do spend it all on drugs, but many more do not! It is not my place to judge.
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.
A token amount, a few euro a month.
BUT. One day it will all be donated. Every last cent of it.
Money is security. It’s peace of mind. So I will keep hold of mine for now, thank you very much.
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.
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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.
- 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 and still do, but I see it as an investment. In the past, I used to donate to various environmental organizations. Lack of money and disillusionment with the progress in environmental protection stopped this. Nowadays, I have a small monthly direct deposit to the armed forces of Ukraine. Living in Europe, I see this as investing into a peaceful retirement.
Wikipedia, ACLU, EFF and my company matches.
Most of the time I round up whenever I’m asked at drive-thrus, especially if it’s for St. Jude. And then there were a few times for some internet people who did me a solid.
Those round up things are a scam. The business collecting the money takes a huge tax break, even if they do pass it on to the charity. Just donate to the charity and take the tax break for yourself.
I believe that’s misinformation that was spread. I’ve read discussions on this before and the conclusion was that it’s not true. The restaurants don’t get the tax break and customers can actually claim the tax break if they have the receipt.
Yep donate to a lot, but I make sure it’s out of my planned donation budget or out of my (set amount) “feel like it” budget categories. I consider patreoning creators / journalists / FOSS seperate from charity, but I try to pay a fair subscription amount I’d give to paywalled stuff. Political donations I do occasionally as well but that too is not charity.
CharityNavigator is important to vet charities, and a good starting place to look for charities in causes you care about.
I try to focus 50/50 on local vs international stuff, which amounts to 10/90% impacts due to wealth discrepancies. I donate typically to organizations doing the work, but also do a smaller amount to UnitedWay (which if you are too tired, stressed, or distracted to do charity research is worth the lost efficiency as they do a lot of charity vetting for you).
I don’t donate monetarily to strangers on the street, but I do donate (time and money) to shelters and assistance programs who can bring a lot more aid per dollar than I can.
If you work for a corp, be sure to check if they have a matching program, you can double your impact.
I highly recommend using a email alias provider as you’ll get a lot of spam. I block most charity calls/text attempts to my phone number if they get it (I don’t understand how that is effective at all, but they all seem to do it).
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.
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.
