No…I generally don’t buy food because life is too expensive. Now you’re expecting me to GIVE money to people??? You’re on crack.

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

I used to but I’m really over spam.

For example I considered donating to a political campaign this year but those are the worst for not leaving you alone. When they wanted my phone, email, and employer, I was out

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.

We are members of a few charitable organizations, and we have subscribed to a charity lottery (we have a chance to win something, but we are absolute OK with not winning, too, as we know where the money is going to)

I am really poor by UK standards, living on disability payments which are among the lowest in Europe. Sometimes I have to use the foodbank in winter. However, in summer I also donate to them and also give to local charities and homeless people. I know a lot of people say do not give directly to the homeless, but I think that is wrong.I have been homeless and found a community of folk just like everywhere else. Some do spend it all on drugs, but many more do not! It is not my place to judge.

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.

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.

A token amount, a few euro a month.

BUT. One day it will all be donated. Every last cent of it.

Money is security. It’s peace of mind. So I will keep hold of mine for now, thank you very much.

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.

Yes and no.

I feel it is important for the human condition - it’s also a part of my faith system but entirely separately from that it also seems to me to lead to the most “zen”, as in if we only focus on ourselves that seems like the fastest way to unhappiness? (Is Jeff Bezos happy? Is Elon Musk? Is Steve Huffman? money flows like a river and if it only comes in but never is given away then that leads to imbalance)

But so very many organized charities have been revealed to be frauds that I am extremely wary of giving to one that I had not vetted, especially one associated with organized religion. But that requires so very much effort… still it’s part of it and connects you to it.:-)

One thing I love to do is tip. I’m in America btw, so it’s an important part of what they need, and these are people who are WORKING for it - like, they aren’t just street beggers (although I’ve given to them too - I usually have quite mixed feelings about that one though, and tend to not). Especially if I’m ever in a southern state - 10-20% just barely does anything for a $6 meal at a Waffle House, so those rules should not apply. According to my way of thinking, it is just part of the cost of the service - like I could go to a grocery store and make my own food, but if I to “out” to eat then I want to do what I can to counteract the evil fuckwads who decided that $2.25 an hour or whatever it is before tips are counted towards their paycheck (so not minimum wage + tips but that amount instead).

And as others are also saying, don’t neglect the non-financial ways of “giving” as well - something as simple as offering to flip a mattress for an old person or trim someone’s yard for someone dealing with an injury, which may be trivial for one but exceedingly difficult for another.

Also compliments. I’m not good at this and virtually never do it actually - but it might just be more important than anything else you could do for someone, e.g. could you prevent someone’s suicide just by offering such a simple gesture of support? (possibly not entirely intentional too, like a fentanyl overdose) Maybe I’m being too naive here and inflating the power of such… or maybe I’m still underselling the importance here?

Anyway it’s more about you than it is them - who do you want to be, someone who takes takes takes or someone who gives gives gives? Like when someone sees you walking into the room, do you want them to cover up their wallet/purse or beam with an authentic smile?

But don’t be stupid about it. If you give away your paycheck and then cannot pay rent, then you’ll be the one needing help. Therefore, treat financial “giving” like any other budgeted amount - not a “I feel like it today so here’s a good tip”, and more of a “every single time I go out, this is what I expect to offer” (and if service is poor so you feel that you can’t give it to them, then find someone else to offer it to?). The vast majority of us really need so much less than consumer culture says that we do - and I for one find chasing the monetized dream to be a futile endeavor, but giving is one of the most sure-fire ways to produce, if not “happiness” (not every time) then at least a settledness/peace overall.

Dare to be different, especially if you know that you are doing a right thing, and “remember the human” very much seems to be that, for me.

I used to and still do, but I see it as an investment. In the past, I used to donate to various environmental organizations. Lack of money and disillusionment with the progress in environmental protection stopped this. Nowadays, I have a small monthly direct deposit to the armed forces of Ukraine. Living in Europe, I see this as investing into a peaceful retirement.

I don’t donate money because over half of my paycheck is already deducted from my pay. Germany does already a lot of welfare in my name and I’m proud of this and okay with this.

Also I’m aware of issues donations can cause, like material ones for instance, that can disrupt the economy of a poor country and prevent them from growing their own, so I don’t do that either.

I also believe it’s not good to keep another country depending on donations, because in the long run it will create more suffering when the donations can’t keep up. It’s a bit difficult to explain as a lot of processes interconnect here and it sounds heartless without explaining it in detail. Let’s say there are a lot of exceptions to the last part, as for instance a country currently at war should get as much donations a possible. However I personally also draw the line on countries who are at war constantly, as they seam to lack interest in stopping blood for blood conflicts and I’d rather not get involved into this, as it’s hard to tell who’s the good guys.

I thought about donating to local pet shelters and I might do that in the future, because they have a lot of pets suffering and not receive enough money to properly care for them. On the other hand I eat meat and where’s the differences between a dog or a cow? It almost feels hypocrite to eat one and trying to save the other. So probably reducing meat consumption is the best I could do. Much better than donations.

I accepted that I’m a human with needs and wants and therefore also egoism, else I’d donate all my money, as there’s always someone who’s life is worse than mine. But I don’t do that.

Most of the time I round up whenever I’m asked at drive-thrus, especially if it’s for St. Jude. And then there were a few times for some internet people who did me a solid.

• Planned Parenthood - Gave my wife quality routine medical care when were broke.
• Pfblocker - fuck ads
• Physics Girl - I gave hospice care to my Dad for a couple months. That was literally the hardest most painful experience of my life. I can’t imagine surviving giving full time care to someone for years like her husband has. Me chipping in a couple bucks every month might help reduce money stress in a small way.
• Harris campaign - I would like Democracy to continue and the opposition seems directly against that happening.