Ask HN: Which charities do you donate to?
Dear community, As the title suggests, I wonder if you: - support a charitable initiative. If so, which one(s)? - do not support any nonprofits. If so, why not?
Being both inside and outside the charitable giving sector, this topic fascinates me: why and how does a person start their giving journey? As well as: why not?
Looking forward hearing your thoughts! I dont donate to any charity. I worked for many years as a volunteer within the charity sector. In my case offering free psychotherapy to local communities. I did this for 10 years, three evenings every week, providing psychotherapy to those who could least afford it. I do not financially donate to any charity because I have seen first hand the abuse that seems prevalent, of donations collected by charities being used to pay for corporate offices in central London and paying senior staff CEO wages. Charity for me is using every penny that is collected via donations for the benefit of the people for whom the charity claims to support. An recent example is of my 84 years old friend who lives in an Almshouse, The almshouses here in the UK are houses for the poor. You have to meet strict criteria to be deemed poor. you are not considered a tenant or given a tenancy agreement so you have no legal protections. you are given a letter of occupation, sounds like something from world war 2. A few years ago her home was taken over by another Almshouse charity. Upon taking over the Almshouse the CEO gave himself a congratulatory pay rise of £40,000 per annum on top of his already abscene annual salary. Thanks a lot for your input and the 10 years you have put into volunteering.
It is definitely quite often way more important than giving money, especially with your particular skill. Would you mind elaborating on your take about the salaries of people working in the nonprofit sector?
Do you believe their salaries should be covered by the government, or a separate donor pool covering overhead specifically? Or otherwise? There is a brilliant book about the charitable sector of the UK called “Our common good. if the state provides less, who will provide more?”. It gives a good insight into UK’s art and education institutions, as well as healthcare. > I worked for many years as a volunteer within the charity sector. I consider that donating to charity. From what various organizations have told me, that kind of giving is even more precious than money. Following my first successful business, I realized that no business can be successful without the support (knowing or not) of the community the business is part of. So I started a kind of tithing, giving 10% of my gross revenue back to my local community as a form of repayment and thanks. From years of doing this, I have evolved rules about it in order to avoid various problems. 1) The organization must be one that is usually overlooked for giving. So no big guys. 2) The organization must be local. 3) The organization has to have an obvious and tangible public benefit. 4) The organization must not ask me for money or engage in splashy fundraising. 5) The organization must keep my identity a secret. If they can't promise that, no donation. If they break their promise, no further donations. That's about it! Thank you so much for sharing your approach. It’s incredible that you are donating 10%, I do the same percentage as it doesn’t really affect your way of living and enjoying life. I wonder how do you usually find out about your local, overlooked but impactful organizations? > I do the same percentage as it doesn’t really affect your way of living and enjoying life. Exactly. It's an extension of the "pay yourself first" principle (which I also do). > I wonder how do you usually find out about your local, overlooked but impactful organizations? These days, I'm active in my local community in various ways, so I'm pretty aware of the various organizations in it by default. That also helps me to choose: I have a good idea of which ones are good and which ones are dubious. When I started, though, I chose organizations that had helped myself or people that I know in the past. That gave me the confidence to get going, and things evolved from there. “Pay yourself first” is 100% a way to a sustainable giving. The moment you start sacrificing your basic needs to help others, you are on the path to become the next one needing help, imo.
Curious about your “good charity” indicators: do you take a close look at their financials? Read their impact stories? Or is it more intuitive, based on your experience? I don't do a deep dive into financials, no. I focus more on the smaller operations that don't have large budgets or complex finances, so I tend to go by reputation, "smell", and my personal knowledge of the people running the operation. Part of the reason why I want to see them providing tangible services (and why I don't want to see a lot of money being spent on fundraising) is so that I can see that at least a significant amount of the money is going toward their purpose. I'm talking things like free clinics, food banks, etc. There's certainly a nonzero chance that some of my donations are wasted (in my view), but I've chosen not to worry a huge deal about that. If I spent too much energy on that sort of thing, I wouldn't donate at all.