Now that I’m in an age and income bracket that can afford it, I’ve been trying to be more liberal with donating to causes that seem worthwhile. Yesterday my partner and I were walking around a large cultural event thing in Kiel (Germany) - thousands of people, lots of overpriced food trucks, lots of local bands and artists.
One artist had a workshop in a little glass cube and was making wooden sculptures all day. Huge crowd all around watching him. He had a sign up front explaining that he had been struggling financially because art is a luxury and one of the first things people stop buying when the cost of living goes up. The sign also had a QR link to his Gofundme, so I tossed him 5 bucks with no second thought. Kind of assumed that he’d be getting plenty of little donations like that, just because there were so many people and the event overall was very “12€ avocado toast” coded.
But once I got home I checked the donation history and it turns out I was the only one who donated at all that day:
Ngl, I was kinda upset about that and even checked the Url from different devices to make sure it wasn’t a website caching thing. I definitely will be upping my donation once I get home tonight, but in the meantime I’d be curious to learn about the average consensus on donations - How much and under which conditions do you donate (or would donate if you could afford it)? Do you do rare but big donations or small ones spread over lots of causes?
Local community radio, monthly.
A little towards anything I read or listen to, not often but as I can I do.
Towards disasters if work is doing a fundraiser, we have a charity arm and I know where the money is going as I work in accounting.
Directly to people, again as I can. This is the biggest $ category probably. If I have cash I will give it, don’t think about trying to sort out who “deserves” it, that’s not something I can or will do. Will pick up an extra meal occasionally if there is a homeless person around. And have given space in my house occasionally, though at least once did not when I really should have, there is an occasion I regret not offering that to someones I know - I think it would have helped them get back on their feet much faster but I was worried for my safety (from my ex not the people who needed).
I don’t consider myself generous in light of what I have, but still digging out from being poor myself.
I keep track of my online donations and will show a portion of it below. But first, my philosophy and a story explaining it.
When I was in my early twenties, my dad came to visit me and a guy approached asking for money. My dad gave him $20. I asked how he felt comfortable giving so much not knowing how it would be spent. He answered in two parts.
“First, if he’s going to humble himself enough to ask, he clearly needs it more than I do.” And second, if he spent it on drugs or booze, “if that’s what he needs to get through the night, who am I to judge?”
This stunned me. And I’m happy to say that it shaped my model going forward ever since.
I will never decline someone who asks me to buy them food out of principal. I will give cash when I don’t get a bad feeling about someone and will not when I do; I trust my gut when someone feels off. I don’t give cash in person very often because I usually don’t carry cash, but I do at times. I try not to let the person see the amount because I usually do either $20 or, in rare cases, $100. I fold the bill while they can’t see it and give it to them and walk away before they can have a look. I’m not doing this for clapping.
I’m in a financial position to be able to treat it this way. I’m not suggesting that anyone is a bad person if they can’t be this loose with donations. When I had much less financial security, I gave less often and at lower scale.
Online donations:
$100 1x CCF Fund, Disaster, Los Angeles - Wildfire Recovery Fund $100 1x Mastadon via GiveButter ($118 total after fees) tax-exempt $100 1x Luigi defense fund $100 1x Ukraine $100 1x Trans-inclusive vagina museum $50 1x Ultraviolet (Andrew Tate petition) $50 1x Internet Archive lawsuit music labels $100 1x woman tortured and paralyzed found in storage bin $100 1x Michigan Pro Palestine defense fund $200 1x former software engineer with major depressive disorder $100 1x Kshama Sawant for Congress $100 1x food gift card lemmyuser@email.com $100 1x SF Bay Area Bench Collective
I donate about 12k a year. 4k of that is fixed and recurring because of tax efficiency.
Nowadays most of it goes to Ukraine, biodiversity, local food bank and homeless shelter. And more recently I’ve been donating to FOSS and democratic charities.
Taking into account the tax returns it’s about 20% of my nett income. Some of my friends work 4 days a week, I basically work 4 for myself and 1 for charity.
To be honest I don’t think I would’ve donated to an artist at a food truck festival. I’m much likelier to donate to organisations than to individuals, and I don’t have art/culture high on my priority list. But it’s good that different people are wired differently!
My wife buys gift cards to restaurants with quality food (usually fast casual without table service) and hands them out to the homeless. We also donate razors, feminine products, etc. to a local house that gets supplies out to the homeless.
All my non profit/charity donations are informed by Effective Altruism. I’m very much against inefficient or highly bureaucratic organizations where 2c of your € goes to maintaining a monolith.
EA’s recommendations are based on: Extreme effectiveness, Research based practices, and Third-party evaluation.
Strongly recommend them as a way to make sure your donations impact the most lives.
There’s actually research on this. There are groups of people that donate more than others. There are two groups of people that really matter for this: people who have protection values and people who have democratic values.
People with protection values care about themselves and their people (their family, their clan, their tribe, their religion, their nation). People with democratic values care about humans in general, regardless of their religion, nationality, what family they come from, etc.
So, who donates more money? People with democratic values.
You can check out Christian Welzel’s Freedom Rising for more on this :)
That’s interesting, I’ll check it out! I’m actually not sure which category I fall into, most of my donations go to animal related causes, second place are to groups I feel affiliated with, so mostly artists and gay-ish people.
I have heard that small recurring donations are more helpful in general than larger one-time donations, so that’s what I tend to do - small recurring donations to services I use or creators whose content I consume. I tend to only do this when the service or content is primarily donation-supported, though.
This is also easier for me to manage, because it becomes a monthly recurring cost and I can see easily how much I’m spending on donations and adjust them as needed, whereas with larger one-time donations, I tend to lose track of how much the total is in a given period.
That makes sense! I usually stay away from anything that automatically renews on a monthly basis since I’m very paranoid about forgetting to cancel, but I guess that might actually be a good thing for donations haha
Donate locally, to smaller organizations doing important work in your area. Your money will be so much more meaningful than a few extra dollars to a national organization or a politician. Mutual aid organizations are a good example.
Volunteer firefighters (USA), those guys do important work and do not get tax money.
When I was poor, I couldn’t donate. Now that I have a tiny bit better salary, I donate 50 to 100 euros (as much as I can) every month to an organization that I trust.
I honestly belive that donations are like savings. For people who do then this is the first expense out of their income. People who try to do it out of what’s left after all important stuff is covered really do it, becouse we all spant “all” every month. What’s different, is the definition of “all” if you manage to hide important stuff there buy “paying yourself first” it’s much easier to cover thing you truly care about.
I give to politicians I really believe in. Occasionally, I give to nonprofits I support. My biggest gripe about giving is getting put on some stupid mailing list, where they send you junk mail. If I could give without telling them my identity, I would be more likely.
I don’t give to politicians. The state gives them money to campaign. Over here giving money to politicians is considered to be highly dodgy.
If I ever get expendable income, I might donate. But I don’t see that happening. I do buy some luxury stuff occasionally, because I just want to support the creator, like a calendar from Kurzgesagt or a book from Tibbees.
I am not sure but I am guessing in Germany we love cash and mostly do not donate via apps. As far as I am concerned, we donate via monthly bank transfers…
