Scared Straight is a well-known program that has been well-studied and found to cause significant harm. "In 2004 the Washington State Institute for Public Policy estimated that each dollar spent on Scared Straight programs incurred costs of $203.51."[0]

It was based on an intuitive idea: if teenagers see how bad jail is, they'll want to do anything they can to avoid it. That turned out pretty poorly - they instead built social connections with criminals, and were substantially more likely to get involved with crime themselves.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scared_Straight!

A lot of attempts at charity have backfired, often due to cultural differences between the benefactor and those on the receiving end, or a lack of oversight or poorly-thought-out plans. See: PlayPump [1], UNICEF's Cluster-bomb-colored food drops [2], etc

[1] http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2010/07/01/the-playpump-what-we... [2] https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/02/UNICEF-Rations-b...

> Can you explain to me why you believe the benefit to society from donating to charity is often negative?

For one thing, the fact that it is tax deductible itself results in it being the focus of self-serving tax dodges that aren't really charitable. If charities remained tax exempt but donations weren't tax deductible, the abuse incentive would be removed.

There's also, of course, well meaning but counterproductive charities, but the subsidy also probably increases the share of donations that goes to those, since it reduces the incentive for donor diligence.

A ton of reasons, but a big one is that external involvement weakens local infrastructure. Eg. dumping free food in poor countries seems like a lovely idea from a distance, and is the sort of thing people like to donate to, but in practice it undermines local producers and sabotages the local food economy.

Charities range from high-impact, through useful, mostly useless, to ones having good intentions but really causing damage, and at the very end of the spectrum, outright scams.

It probably doesn't take much work to ignore the latter, as long as you ignore emotional appeals and use a little bit of reason instead. But it takes some work if you want to go up the spectrum, if you want to find the more effective charities. If saving lives is your primary concern, then GiveWell does great jobs in rating charities by their effectiveness (in dollars per life saved). If you're interested in different types of social impact, then you'll likely have to do this work yourself.

I can't speak for the parent, but I've personally known people with parents who ran charities and political campaigns for the sole purpose of collecting donations and spending 100% of the donations on "operations"; paying their salary while they do nothing other than the occasional fundraising as the well dries up.

Also see: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences, specifically the Indian cobras.

Even with good intentions, predicting outcomes is difficult. When you donate to a charity(or any organization), you are giving them more influence while delegating decision making. The best option seems to be: find something you really care about and get your hands dirty.

There can be unintended consequences like here: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/world/africa/mosquito-net...

Some also feel that donating has a risk of creating dependency.