75% of techies don’t give regularly to charity. Here’s why.

I would argue that, nowadays, many young people expect the government to take care of necessary social work, making charity less relevant. Here's my theory, which admittedly has no data to back it up:

Older people, who skew Republican, believe in small government, and believe in private charity. (They're also more religious, and remember that a lot of charity is really donating to your church.)

Whereas younger people (especially techies), who skew Democrat, tend to believe more in active government, and believe that democratic participation will ultimately lead to effective social use of their tax dollars.

And it's not an unreasonable position, necessarily. If you support higher taxes and more political activism, there are many good arguments as to how government policy is a vastly better conduit for doing social good, than private charity.

If the core issue is one of trust, I don't at all understand why people would trust you more than the charities they're already suspicious of. What am I missing? What assurances can you provide that the charities themselves don't?

If the other core issue is vetting & curation, isn't that what United Way (and many other meta-charities) have been doing for decades? How is your approach better?

10% for administrative costs is huge - how much costs per user can you possibly incur? surely at most about a couple of percent per user?

Furthermore, you state "I worry the donation isn't going to charity as advertised." is the number one reason. For me this reason is really "I worry the donation isn't really going towards the supposed aims of the charity". Therefore I'm only really going to be interested if you show me some measure of the "efficiency" of each charity, ie how much money goes on supporting their cause directly, and how much gets spent on administration, marketing, sending coins in the mail etc?

I've often often thought about the feasibility of a charity where 100% of funds are spent directly on the cause, and administration costs are covered by interest incurred between the time donations are collected and the time suppliers are paid (and whether you could run a lottery on the same principle).

From my own experience, many don't give because they don't want to. Oh, they will use the excuses presented here or make them up as they go. Never met more selfish people than I have in this industry, remember working my way through school at a grocery store and those people were more willing to contribute.

How I found my charity? A radio show many years ago highlighted Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. I give nearly two percent of my gross salary to these people through automatic credit card payments.

Does Omakase leverage research[1] to find out which charities are putting their donations to work?

[1] http://www.givewell.org/

If this sounds interesting you should also check out GiveWell: http://www.givewell.org/ They have a great blog.

The US Government uses a program called Combined Federal Campaign for this. CFC is an organization that funnels money to charities and acts as a one-stop shop for the contributors taking the choice largely out of their hands if they want to. CFC takes a cut of the money as part of the service. Apparently they do pretty well because they are still in business and "CFC contributions" are a core metric for many federal workforces (which is terribly misplaced in my opinion). So there is precedent for this type of service.

Why don't I use it? Because it takes a cut out of my contribution and doesn't give me any indication that my money is being used towards good purposes. They have percentages of administrative overhead for each charity listed, but we all know that those are gamed.

In Sum, you aren't solving the problem of making contributors feel as though they are a critical factor in making a change unless they see EXACTLY where their money is going - just like any business person. So charitable giving is always going to be low for people who want a high level of control and don't have enough money to just blindly throw at a cause and/or do it for the tax benefit.

Giving to charity makes you happy.

http://www.livescience.com/2376-key-happiness-give-money.htm...

Statistical analyses revealed personal spending had no link with a person's happiness, while spending on others and charity was significantly related to a boost in happiness.

"Regardless of how much income each person made," Dunn said, "those who spent money on others reported greater happiness, while those who spent more on themselves did not."

n another experiment, the researchers gave college students a $5 or $20 bill, asking them to spend the money by that evening. Half the participants were instructed to spend the money on themselves, and the remaining students to spend on others.

Participants who spent the windfall on others — which included toys for siblings and meals eaten with friends — reported feeling happier at the end of the day than those who spent the money on themselves.

Having to filter the scams from the genuine charities may be the excuse, but I have doubts. Any metropolitan area has a number of local charities you can check out for yourself. Animal shelters would love to have potential donors swing by for a visit, as would local homeless shelters (serve some dinner while you're there). Keep it local if you wonder about the credibility of the "Penguins with Cleft Palates Foundation".

Yes, swinging by your local Boys and Girls Club takes a bit more effort, but I don't think that extra effort accounts for all of the 75%. So what does? Speaking for myself, I think a lot of times we just don't think about it. Or I see a worthy charity I like and I'll, umm, do that later (and later never comes).

Regardless, omakasecharity.org is bookmarked, and a reminder added to my phone that will go off when I'm home so I'll click the site's "buy" button.

I only give to the EFF and specific cases[0] where I know 100% of my donation is going directly to the person I intend it to go to. I have no desire to have even a penny of the money I give go to support the people whose job is charity.

I want to see someone wipe out the for-profit charity fundraising industry [1]. These are jobs that should not exist. IMHO these companies are committing fraud. When I get pestered on a street to give to charity by someone who is in fact working for one of these for-profit charity fundraising companies, they should be legally obligated to disclose what percent of the money I am donating is actually going to the charity in question. If I donate $20 to a charity with the expectation that the entire $20 is going to that charity, and any amount less than $20 is actually given to that charity then it is fraud.

Furthermore, if a charitable organization doesn't know enough to put up their own donations page where they can reasonably expect to get near 100% of the donations (minus small processing fees like credit card fees and whatnot), then I can't trust them to be smart enough to use the money wisely. I would love to see a future where the technically competent streamline charitable giving via open source projects so we get to the point where an organization can set up a page to receive charitable donations and the person managing the process can direct the money directly to the final individuals or expenses the money is going to. i.e.

website/app endpoint for receiving money => bank account => people doing actual charitable work (not administrative) || equipment, materials and other expenses necessary for said said charitable work.

The site/system should open up and make public the books of the charitable organization in question. If you want trust, you need trust and accountability.

[0] Ladar Levison for legal defense. Open source projects where the money goes directly to to a developer (i.e. Marijn Haverbeke and Joey Hess).

[1] http://www.tampabay.com/topics/specials/worst-charities1.pag...

"Techies" believe they know better how to allocate their money than do charity workers. Why give now when they could wisely invest and give 3x as much at a later time?

Then maybe at that later time their internal generosity dries after years of toiling and smaller than expected payback.

======

How do we balance this? What if an organization employs non-technical people that pay 3x as much as necessary for tech services because they don't understand what's necessary.

Looks cool. I don't give to charity because I'm still establishing myself, and I don't think I'd give to charity in the future because it's such a cop out.

I'd much rather kick someone with an idea a bunch of money, or put it towards something that benefits my community. But when it's this easy, who really cares about 50 bucks here and there?

It's actually easier than that. Techies are more likely to be atheists or not attend church. That's where most of the "charitable" giving in the US goes. A replacement for that would be fantastic, but there just isn't anything pounding into techies week after week that they should put 10% of their income towards charities.

looks like this solves the #2 reason, but adds to the #1 reason.

There is already a fairly useful tool https://www.charitynavigator.org/ to ascertain the validity of a charity. You can also type in a keyword and attempt to filter by category to narrow down the options.

Because they are open source hackers and have themselves never received any merrit?

This is a great idea, but I don't know if I'm comfortable with outsourcing empathy. I donate when I (or someone I trust and like) come across a cause worth supporting. I have very few recurring donations.

I contribute to the poor every year. It's called taxation.

Red Cross is a multi-billion dollar charity. That money could literally end homelessness.

I would rather pay more in taxes.