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.

Just feel it should be pointed out that money isn’t the only way to contribute. Time is another. Volunteer hours are important for many charitable organizations too.

No, but I donate time and sometimes items. I’ve seen how wasteful so many “charities” are. When less than half of what is donated actually goes to the end user that’s a problem. So I donate things that have to go to the end user, or at the very least in support of the end user.

4$ a month to wikipedia. It’s the most valuable thing the internet has spawned hands down

I donate to food banks and educational charities. I grew up with little and now I’m better off thanks to charities and scholarships that supported me, and I want future generations to be given the same chances I was.

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.

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

Kinda, I go overboard on tips, I cover night out bills for friends, I round up on receipts, biggest charitable act I participate in is helping my dad out with an org his church is a part of (normal “doing the good works” kind of church that doesn’t do weirdo evangelical shit), and recently supporting the org my GF works for because I like bein’ a cheerleader for the schtuff she gets excited about :3.

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.

I try to donate a few bucks to FSF, GNU and Linux every year. Sometimes other projects as well. I don’t work, so I can’t do monthly donations.

My wife and I contribute to a few local organizations on a regular basis. They all offer donations on their websites. There’s a clinic we donate to. The shelters where we got our cats get regular small donations. We also donate to the local food panty plus warming centers in the winter.

We also exchange donations in lieu of gifts with our parents at the holidays. We’re all in positions where we don’t need more stuff, and it’s a nice way to still exchange something. My mom encourages donations to the rescue where she got her dog. I ask that she makes a donation to an organization that maintains and protects a local river basin.

I used to but I don’t anymore. I can’t afford to give money away when I can’t even pay for my own bills.

Yes. I donate to various open source projects (e.g., KDE, Sunshine, Dark Reader), the conservation fund, the ACLU, and the EFF.

As for how, I try to do it via their preferred platform on an annual basis instead of monthly (if possible) to minimize fees.

Why? I believe charity is a path towards shaping the world for the better (and I can afford to). Rule #1: take care of yourself before taking care of others.

I donate to quite a few people close to me, as many are much worse off than my family and I are. I help them with projects, car repairs, house repairs, and dinners when things are tight. They never ask, I offer, and they’ll accept maybe 50% of the time. I keep good company.

I’ve also put a few hundred dollars this one election cycle towards a few select political campaigns I care about, especially now that I’m in a good paying job. Not something i’ve done before, and it’s not much but enough to at least feel like I’m helping get rid of fascists.

Lots of wealth hoarders are donating money to avoid taxes. A lot of charities profit from this and aren’t actual charities and it’s all down to syntax of what a charity is.

And supermarkets that ask you to donate is for their own PR(and why should a money monger benefit from anyone else’s good deed when they have plenty to donate or even pay their staff a living wage instead?)

So much of life is a layered lie and a scam.

Just save up your loose change and give it to someone outside the liquor store. At least then you know where the money is going. And it’s possibly the more ethical option.