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?
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!
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’m not sure where you live, so you may approach it differently.
I’ve been donating for probably 15 years to various charities via regular donations to registered charities. I usually check donation websites to ensure that the charities I’ve picked are spending my money in a way I deem appropriate. This will depend on your country but I use charityintelligence.ca in Canada. Registered charities in Canada are great for donations, because you can claim them in your taxes and get back a significant amount of money on your tax refund. For example, I donate about $1000/year this way and including my donations on my taxes usually increases my tax refund by about $600-700, or at the very least it takes my taxes from owing to even. I can feel more comfortable about spending money on a good cause rather than having to pay money in taxes at the end of the year.
Additionally, I donate to more local causes occasionally (like your artist here) and to artists I enjoy. This doesn’t come with any tax refund usually, but sometimes artists will provide perks for it and at the very least I just know I am supporting someone I enjoy to continue creating things I enjoy.
I know you weren’t fully asking about this, but there are also non-monetary ways to donate that are excellent choices if you find yourself in a more difficult financial situation. You can donate your time (volunteer) as little as a couple of hours per month at local nonprofits/charities/whatever you want to support. You can donate blood or plasma. These are all nice ways to meet people and contribute to big changes in your community.
Good luck on your journey if you decide to continue donating! Don’t feel discouraged, even if others aren’t as generous as you, you’re still making a change in someone’s life.
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 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
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.
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 :)
This is really cool, thank you. I’ve noticed things like this anecdotally but it’s interesting to see there are actual studies.
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.
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.
I second this. I am in a similar position as OP and now I donate to a fund through GiveWell (which is used by many people engaged in EA) directly since the start of this year. If you want your money to do the most good, look into them. They research and audit all kinds of charities and publish their findings on their site.
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…
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.
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.
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.
