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.

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.

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.

Absolutely not.

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.

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

No, because I’m selfish. I plan to retire early so I live frugally and invest all my savings.

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)

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 only donate to the Red Cross, too many others are scammers, and I don’t have time to filter. I also don’t donate blood anymore as most centers near me are for profit and I won’t promote actual blood money. I am still an organ donor on the basis of “I’m not using it anymore and the rest is getting burned”.

I am poor, I live in a country with a fraction of US average salary and high expenses. Although I have a house and car, I also have a family to support. I barely make it as it is, so no, I do not donate money.

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.

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.

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.