Jumpstart (helps kids to enroll in sports) $500/year
100 women - $400/year various local charities
SO’s baseball organization - $500
Terry Fox Run - $100 plus help fundraise
Dog Guides- $100
Random stuff - charity silent auctions (stupid cupcakes lol), legions, poppy/daffodil/cadets/girl guides maybe $300 a year?
We also play in a few charity golf tournaments to also help raise money, which didn’t happen at all this year.
I really prefer organizations that provide tax receipts but of course still give to other things
I’m curious: A lot of us have mentioned how stability/scarcity affects our ability to feel like giving is fiscally responsible. For people who’ve navigated that, what do you, individually, need in order to be assured that you’re being fiscally responsible?
For me, it was a combo of a job that paid me enough to save for retirement AND pay my bills that made me feel comfortable at all. After that, it’s been about balancing my spending: What percent of my income goes to charity in comparison to other things?
For me it’s a massive (1+ year spending) emergency fund. That allows me to be aggressive in stocks and attempt to be aggressive in giving too. I was always taught to give to charity, and we were on the receiving end at various points so it’s something I’ve always felt was necessary for me to do. Dave Ramsey gets a bad rap on the Other Site because he tells people to always give (even in debt etc.), but I do think there’s a psychological (and spiritual if you believe that stuff) thing that happens inside us when we give and the idea has merit.
This flailing also influenced my attitudes towards giving. I greatly appreciate you doing your flailing out loud.
My kids and I decide together what causes and organizations to donate to. This year it’s the food bank, an environmental cause, the GLBT+ shelter, and the women’s centre. Plus all year long I participate in fundraisers for things and deliberately spend locally instead of the more convenient, often cheaper big corp options. I don’t track the price differential for buying small/ local or the fundraiser participation because I don’t want to be able to cop out of proper donations.
I have a few monthly donations and give additionally for special causes
Monthly:
Doctors Without Borders
local homeless org (feminine hygiene product for homeless women)
local homeless shelter
support a family via https://sharethemeal.org/en/index.html
local foodbank
Other:
Helping Hands, local group, doing campaigns for different causes, in 2020 mostly corona related
different share the meals campaigns
Feed the vote
In the dark
Christmas gifts for children (through a local org supported by the mayor)
I will do one additional bigger donation in December but have not decided now,
maybe be for Doctors Without Borders
I don’t know, because I haven’t gotten there yet I might be like @rocklobster, i.e. need liquid savings, and much of my net worth growth the past 1.5-2 years has been in retirement accounts.
I’m also dealing with a thing where we did not have a culture of charity giving growing up. We had a culture of community and generosity, but for people you knew (eg watching and/or feeding a friend’s kids, we had to share treats with our siblings, etc). So, although I have intellectually embraced the idea of supporting causes and my community through donations, it still feels irresponsible/like throwing money away for nothing.
I’m noticing that there are two types of people in the world: those that give spontaneously/situationally (work drive, mailer, current events, etc) and those that prefer to give larger sums to fewer causes and just stick to them. I think I’m more of the second. I will give smaller sums to ACLU or wiki or PBS/NPR as more of a fee-for-service kind of…process? But beyond that I want to throw a lot of support into causes I feel strongly about, and then not think/worry that I’m not doing my part when I don’t do the gift drive/food drive/etc. But I also see a value to responding to needs on the fly and I’m glad there are people more open to that than I.
For me, the angst was about savings rates. I was (still am) heavily involved in the Mr. Money Mustache forum. In that place, having a 50% savings rate was the way to win the game. I am deeply competitive, but I couldn’t get to 50% while still giving to charity. So, in the end, I took charity out of the calculations by removing it from my income. So, savings/(income-charity)=savings rate.
Yesssss to fighting the overhead myth! As another example, our local bike advocacy org. They have an impressive, not-grossly-paid staff and generally good employee retention. But they’ve lost some good people due to mediocre health insurance coverage. The nuts-and-bolts of advocacy can be surprisingly dependent on longstanding personal working relationships with lawmakers, so losing people is a big drag on an advocacy org’s effectiveness.
We are currently in a building security/ growing children phase of our lives, and we’re finding balance by giving a small amount regularly to a small number of groups, budgeting a bit extra for ad-hoc donations, and increasing a little bit when we feel like we can. It won’t be anything significant compared to our income for years, but we’re paying more attention to make up for it and so that when we do have money to gift, we can do it confidently instead of feeling like we don’t know anything about it.
If anyone is looking for places to donate, the Navajo and Hopi nations are seeing a huge second wave of cases and the relief fund from the first wave is almost out of money and support efforts are at risk of being shut down. If you are interested in giving, here is a link to the GoFundMe site:
Part of the support is to provide water! Many of those in the reservation(s) don’t even have running water - something I was thinking about as I realized I was lingering during my hot shower today. There are a lot of things I know I take for granted, like potable running water and indoor plumbing.
I still have to make my donation to Khan Academy - the donation will be matched if done by December 1st.
Clearly non-profit fundraisers have not been doing their jobs then, lol
Locally in Portland if you give thorugh the Give Guide today, you get entered to win really cool stuff (like big stuff), get a bunch of free coupons like ice cream and coffee, and you can just give to a bunch of orgs at once
It turns out I have a scarcity mindset when it comes to charitable giving. While I’ll be around 10% of total spending this year, I haven’t been able to get myself to do recurring donations. I know regular monthly income is better for the organizations, but I have that feeling of “but what if I need it later?”. Then at the end of the year (i.e., now), I make a big flurry of donations.
But it sure is a nice feeling to be able to check the box / press the button for the largest suggested amount:
I might be like 
