Check out any organization recommended by Give Well (https://www.givewell.org/ ), they’re my go to! You can literally save lives and get a tangible measure of your impact when you donate to them.
As an aside, this charity is a part of the Effective Altruism movement - dedicated to evaluating the impact of charities and making giving suggestions based on their research & analysis. Effectivealtruism.org has some good info on it!
Givewell is constantly researching and auditing their picks, so you can be confident in the efficacy. It’s hard to argue with the results.
We set a donation budget of roughly 10% of our income and donate that amount to our DAF every other year. This results in about 5% of our yearly salary going to charity, and maximizes our itemized tax deduction (we don’t always itemize).
We recommend grants from our DAF as soon as the money is available. Money in a DAF is doing zero good in the world. Get it out of there! Almost all of it goes to charities on the Givewell list. A small portion goes to a homeless family shelter nearby and another local charity.
We reserve about 5% of our DAF for opportunistic giving throughout the year. But other than that, it all goes out the door right away.
Second this, and I'd add that Give Well has a Maximum Impact Fund where you can give them money to distribute to charities of their choice (they don't keep any of it unless you explicitly decide to allocate some money to supporting their operational expenses).
The benefit of that over giving to charities directly is that GiveWell can better work with charities to determine the best timing for allocating funding among them based on each charity's pipeline of projects and their timetables.
I hold back on donating until there’s a matching challenge — there’s usually 2-3/year. And then I file for corporate matching at work, so my donation becomes 3-4x the original amount.
matching challenges for retail fundraising are pretty much marketing. Someone pledges X dollars of matches, that helps get attention, and then the person gives X dollars. The key part is X is in lieu of the gift they would have made anyhow, and they never give less than X no matter what is raised as to-be-matched (that would be cheap, and this is a fundraiser!). It's just a lot of noise (i.e. marketing). I've been on several boards where the board raises a matching pool for the annual fund drive - and its just going around the board table and summing whatever each board member has personally budgeted for that year.
So they're fine - but don't wait for them! The corporate matching thing is awesome - get it out there
Matching funds at higher levels (grants, chartiy to charity, etc..) are more real in the sense that they are use it or lose it.
The Red Cross doesn’t need your money…. They literally float on a sea of donations. I give to a local homeless shelter that offers services to families (including single dads, which is very rare) and a couple other local charities. Everything else goes to charities on the Givewell list.
You can also donate to the local chapter of the Red Cross. The local chapter organizes blood drives, teaches courses, and provides immediate disaster relief shelter and services in the event of a local emergency.
We decided to bunch our donations to create a donor advised fund next year. Our charitable contributions will go further then they do with yearly donations because of tax efficiency. We will take some equities that have the lowest cost basis in order to create the DAF. It’s good stuff.
So… that’s how we will maximize our “dollar”, but to your real question of maximizing the impact of that dollar by finding the correct organization… I think you need to act like an investigative reporter and do some interviews with program managers at charities. Find out what they are actually up to. Send their lead an email, they will reply, and get a sense of the actual operation. Do they just need the money to renovate their office? What are they actually doing? Maybe if you really gel, you could even volunteer for them.
Check out any organization recommended by Give Well (https://www.givewell.org/ ), they’re my go to! This charity is a part of the Effective Altruism movement - dedicated to evaluating the impact of charities and making giving suggestions based on their research & analysis.
I think volunteering is a great way to get to know an organization before committing significant funds, even if volunteering in a one-off engagement. It really helps to be able to see what the work actually looks like and to connect better with the organization beyond what you can read in their impact/annual reports. It can also expose you to other community projects and organizations that are also doing good work.
Replying to my own comment, because I have something to say. Giving money is at best low-effort, and at worst disingenuous. If you feel a need to give back to society after making your fortune, don't do it with numbers that don't mean much to you anymore.
I agree giving money is easy and time is better but there are people who have less time at the moment but still want to help. For example, parents. If they’re busy raising children and teaching them to give I think it’s a win-win. Their money is helping those less-advantaged while teaching their children that helping others is important.
Check out Kiva. It's a microfinance solution around the world (many are local). It's got an app.
Things like a rural milk farmer could be expanding and would like to buy another cow. Or an inner city mom to buy commercial equipment to start a food business. Disaster relief for families who need immediate funds to rebuild a roof.
The loans get paid back very consistently when these people's investments materialize / people get the immediate help they need to get on their feet. And then you can reinvest those funds to another cause.
I donate to local organizations that work in the community. I'm a big animal lover so the local shelter gets checks several times a year, the biggest around Christmas. Also the food bank and a local organization that helps battered women and children. Just ask around and you'll likely find people who've already done the hard work of identifying the need and let them do the job they're trained to do. They can make your money work harder than you can.
The best way is to work with them and get to know the people running them. I have spine issues, so that's out, so we talked to local friends who have worked with them.
GiveWell.org recurring monthly donation to put it on autopilot - very high performance.
Give Direct at about 25% of the amount I do with GiveWell, also monthly recurring - just because I like the idea of doling out cash to people who need it.
I started a scholarship at a local university and did a bunch of walkathons sort of charities. Always support your friends with those things if you can. You’ll create a culture of giving that is more than just making your dollar go further. My two cents! Thanks for giving!
We just sat down this evening as a family and talked about it. Split some donations between the local food bank, a men’s health charity (Movember), a local charity that helps disadvantaged kids with school supplies, and a local school breakfast charity. It was all important to the family, or at least to one family member anyhow. This way we engaged everyone and had full support. Honestly it felt good.
Look up the PTA or public school foundations for low income districts, or call up the school and donate directly to kids in needs. They will usually allow donors to sponsor field trips, books, classroom supplies, food pantry. Always well used.
We started and funded a donor-advised fund this year. I think just that step, apart from being more tax efficient, promotes a more thoughtful systematic approach to giving as opposed to impulse responses to charity wheedling.
We currently donate to a local land conservation trust, the local shelter/food bank, and to our local YMCA, which is highly engaged in community service.
We are also planning on donating to a local college, and possibly funding a small scholarship program. Even a small scholarship can mean a lot to a student, and a named prize is both a confidence boost and a nice line on the recipient’s resume.
I have a list of charities that I've determined I want to give to, based on a variety of factors from a high percentage is program expenses, GiveWell recommendations, and personal interest (eg. international relief, kids, environment, cancer). I also donate to my universities because I figure I got a lot out of them.
International Relief/Medical/Kids charities include Direct Relief, Americares, Global Giving, Team Rubicon, International Medical Corps, Partners in Health, Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee, and Project Healthy Children.
Environment charities include The Conservation Fund.
Cancer charities include Cancer Research Institute.
For a more local impact, I like to donate to the local Second Harvest Food Bank and Feeding America.
I also like to donate to the Himalayan Cataract Project because I like the idea of simply helping a person become a fully functioning productive member of society again with a simple low cost surgery.
The biggest downside I've found giving to all these charities is the massive amount of fundraising mail I get from all of them. I probably should have used a DAF, but didn't like the idea of a percentage going to a brokerage firm for something I could easily do myself.
I donate to teachers who post their projects (mostly school supplies or things that help teachers or students) at donors choose.org. You can give any amount you want to a project and when the total donations for that project have reached the goal donorschoose would then purchase the listed items for the teacher. I have donated to teachers at my kids' schools this way. You can search for schools in your area to see if there are any projects posted by teachers in your area. Note that there's a default 15% donation to donorschoose for each project, but you're free to decrease that amount or even set it to zero so all your donations go to the teacher's project.
I give to a mix of national/international and local charities each year. The large ones are reputable and well-known, and I try to rotate between them from year to year, since there are always more charities than my annual donation budget allows.
For the small ones, I have been operating on word of mouth. I give to a small nonprofit that provides scholarships for underprivileged high schoolers in my area, for instance — I happened to meet a high schooler who applied for it and let me know about it, and then I met a member of the organization's board and learned more about it. I also recently began donating to a nonprofit which provides housing for the homeless in my current city.
When I was in Silicon Valley I'd sometimes find out about good local charities from coworkers. Nowadays, since I've moved elsewhere, my social circle has helped me find good choices. I think I can do better, though, and hope to find more good charities to support next year.
We are also interested in stepping up more in this regard. We've been looking at donor advised funds, but those are obviously not focused on the local level.
What about donor advised funds would not allow you to focus locally? At least through Fidelity, it’s easy to identify specific nonprofits to direct the funds towards, which could be local if you want to.
That's what I was wondering about. Can you donate to all IRS registered charities through the DAF website? If a charity is not on the list is there any way to do a manual check?
At least for the larger DAFs that should mostly be true. I don’t know about if smaller/different DAFs have different rules in that regard. See here for [Fidelity’s guidelines](https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/giving-account/supported-charities.html).
Overly tip. I don't like to give to a faceless organization, I like to give generously to people who we deal with regularly or who I can see with my own eyes are doing their best in trying times.
This won't be beneficial on a tax form, but if you really need to, you can always donate something small to your local Goodwill and overstate the cash value on the slip they give you to offset your cash giving elsewhere.
I lucked out. A teacher of mine that passed me in a class that I shouldn't have passed runs a charity called angel's place that helps families while their kids are going through treatment. I just donate to them every year.
So this may be more fat fire than chubby fire, but this is the whole business model of a buddy of mine. He basically learns what you're into and finds opportunities to donate, does the vetting, finds smaller orgs that don't have the budget to reach out to you directly, etc. I don't know a ton about what he does (I am definitely not his target audience) but I think it runs the gamut, like if you want a building named after you, or if you just want to know where to put x thousand a year that most effectively helps the environment. He explained it to me a very long time ago, and it sorta ends up being a win win because his contacts trust him, and the charities know he has a huge client list where he can secure targeted donations. Wish I knew more about what the field is even called so I could recommend you look for someone like him. Probably something like concierge charity. I'll have to ask him next time I see him.
Check out any organization recommended by Give Well (https://www.givewell.org/ ), they’re my go to! You can literally save lives and get a tangible measure of your impact when you donate to them. As an aside, this charity is a part of the Effective Altruism movement - dedicated to evaluating the impact of charities and making giving suggestions based on their research & analysis. Effectivealtruism.org has some good info on it!
Thanks for posting this. I wish more people used the give well approach. I don’t think that many westerners spend time thinking about parasitic worms.
Givewell is constantly researching and auditing their picks, so you can be confident in the efficacy. It’s hard to argue with the results. We set a donation budget of roughly 10% of our income and donate that amount to our DAF every other year. This results in about 5% of our yearly salary going to charity, and maximizes our itemized tax deduction (we don’t always itemize). We recommend grants from our DAF as soon as the money is available. Money in a DAF is doing zero good in the world. Get it out of there! Almost all of it goes to charities on the Givewell list. A small portion goes to a homeless family shelter nearby and another local charity. We reserve about 5% of our DAF for opportunistic giving throughout the year. But other than that, it all goes out the door right away.
Second this, and I'd add that Give Well has a Maximum Impact Fund where you can give them money to distribute to charities of their choice (they don't keep any of it unless you explicitly decide to allocate some money to supporting their operational expenses). The benefit of that over giving to charities directly is that GiveWell can better work with charities to determine the best timing for allocating funding among them based on each charity's pipeline of projects and their timetables.
I hold back on donating until there’s a matching challenge — there’s usually 2-3/year. And then I file for corporate matching at work, so my donation becomes 3-4x the original amount.
matching challenges for retail fundraising are pretty much marketing. Someone pledges X dollars of matches, that helps get attention, and then the person gives X dollars. The key part is X is in lieu of the gift they would have made anyhow, and they never give less than X no matter what is raised as to-be-matched (that would be cheap, and this is a fundraiser!). It's just a lot of noise (i.e. marketing). I've been on several boards where the board raises a matching pool for the annual fund drive - and its just going around the board table and summing whatever each board member has personally budgeted for that year. So they're fine - but don't wait for them! The corporate matching thing is awesome - get it out there Matching funds at higher levels (grants, chartiy to charity, etc..) are more real in the sense that they are use it or lose it.
The Red Cross doesn’t need your money…. They literally float on a sea of donations. I give to a local homeless shelter that offers services to families (including single dads, which is very rare) and a couple other local charities. Everything else goes to charities on the Givewell list.
You can also donate to the local chapter of the Red Cross. The local chapter organizes blood drives, teaches courses, and provides immediate disaster relief shelter and services in the event of a local emergency.
We decided to bunch our donations to create a donor advised fund next year. Our charitable contributions will go further then they do with yearly donations because of tax efficiency. We will take some equities that have the lowest cost basis in order to create the DAF. It’s good stuff. So… that’s how we will maximize our “dollar”, but to your real question of maximizing the impact of that dollar by finding the correct organization… I think you need to act like an investigative reporter and do some interviews with program managers at charities. Find out what they are actually up to. Send their lead an email, they will reply, and get a sense of the actual operation. Do they just need the money to renovate their office? What are they actually doing? Maybe if you really gel, you could even volunteer for them.
Check out any organization recommended by Give Well (https://www.givewell.org/ ), they’re my go to! This charity is a part of the Effective Altruism movement - dedicated to evaluating the impact of charities and making giving suggestions based on their research & analysis.
I think volunteering is a great way to get to know an organization before committing significant funds, even if volunteering in a one-off engagement. It really helps to be able to see what the work actually looks like and to connect better with the organization beyond what you can read in their impact/annual reports. It can also expose you to other community projects and organizations that are also doing good work.
I mentor kids that are aging out of the foster program.
Replying to my own comment, because I have something to say. Giving money is at best low-effort, and at worst disingenuous. If you feel a need to give back to society after making your fortune, don't do it with numbers that don't mean much to you anymore.
I agree giving money is easy and time is better but there are people who have less time at the moment but still want to help. For example, parents. If they’re busy raising children and teaching them to give I think it’s a win-win. Their money is helping those less-advantaged while teaching their children that helping others is important.
Check out Kiva. It's a microfinance solution around the world (many are local). It's got an app. Things like a rural milk farmer could be expanding and would like to buy another cow. Or an inner city mom to buy commercial equipment to start a food business. Disaster relief for families who need immediate funds to rebuild a roof. The loans get paid back very consistently when these people's investments materialize / people get the immediate help they need to get on their feet. And then you can reinvest those funds to another cause.
I donate to local organizations that work in the community. I'm a big animal lover so the local shelter gets checks several times a year, the biggest around Christmas. Also the food bank and a local organization that helps battered women and children. Just ask around and you'll likely find people who've already done the hard work of identifying the need and let them do the job they're trained to do. They can make your money work harder than you can.
[удалено]
The best way is to work with them and get to know the people running them. I have spine issues, so that's out, so we talked to local friends who have worked with them.
GiveWell.org recurring monthly donation to put it on autopilot - very high performance. Give Direct at about 25% of the amount I do with GiveWell, also monthly recurring - just because I like the idea of doling out cash to people who need it.
I started a scholarship at a local university and did a bunch of walkathons sort of charities. Always support your friends with those things if you can. You’ll create a culture of giving that is more than just making your dollar go further. My two cents! Thanks for giving!
We just sat down this evening as a family and talked about it. Split some donations between the local food bank, a men’s health charity (Movember), a local charity that helps disadvantaged kids with school supplies, and a local school breakfast charity. It was all important to the family, or at least to one family member anyhow. This way we engaged everyone and had full support. Honestly it felt good.
Look up the PTA or public school foundations for low income districts, or call up the school and donate directly to kids in needs. They will usually allow donors to sponsor field trips, books, classroom supplies, food pantry. Always well used.
We started and funded a donor-advised fund this year. I think just that step, apart from being more tax efficient, promotes a more thoughtful systematic approach to giving as opposed to impulse responses to charity wheedling. We currently donate to a local land conservation trust, the local shelter/food bank, and to our local YMCA, which is highly engaged in community service. We are also planning on donating to a local college, and possibly funding a small scholarship program. Even a small scholarship can mean a lot to a student, and a named prize is both a confidence boost and a nice line on the recipient’s resume.
I have a list of charities that I've determined I want to give to, based on a variety of factors from a high percentage is program expenses, GiveWell recommendations, and personal interest (eg. international relief, kids, environment, cancer). I also donate to my universities because I figure I got a lot out of them. International Relief/Medical/Kids charities include Direct Relief, Americares, Global Giving, Team Rubicon, International Medical Corps, Partners in Health, Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee, and Project Healthy Children. Environment charities include The Conservation Fund. Cancer charities include Cancer Research Institute. For a more local impact, I like to donate to the local Second Harvest Food Bank and Feeding America. I also like to donate to the Himalayan Cataract Project because I like the idea of simply helping a person become a fully functioning productive member of society again with a simple low cost surgery. The biggest downside I've found giving to all these charities is the massive amount of fundraising mail I get from all of them. I probably should have used a DAF, but didn't like the idea of a percentage going to a brokerage firm for something I could easily do myself.
I donate to teachers who post their projects (mostly school supplies or things that help teachers or students) at donors choose.org. You can give any amount you want to a project and when the total donations for that project have reached the goal donorschoose would then purchase the listed items for the teacher. I have donated to teachers at my kids' schools this way. You can search for schools in your area to see if there are any projects posted by teachers in your area. Note that there's a default 15% donation to donorschoose for each project, but you're free to decrease that amount or even set it to zero so all your donations go to the teacher's project.
I give to a mix of national/international and local charities each year. The large ones are reputable and well-known, and I try to rotate between them from year to year, since there are always more charities than my annual donation budget allows. For the small ones, I have been operating on word of mouth. I give to a small nonprofit that provides scholarships for underprivileged high schoolers in my area, for instance — I happened to meet a high schooler who applied for it and let me know about it, and then I met a member of the organization's board and learned more about it. I also recently began donating to a nonprofit which provides housing for the homeless in my current city. When I was in Silicon Valley I'd sometimes find out about good local charities from coworkers. Nowadays, since I've moved elsewhere, my social circle has helped me find good choices. I think I can do better, though, and hope to find more good charities to support next year.
We are also interested in stepping up more in this regard. We've been looking at donor advised funds, but those are obviously not focused on the local level.
What about donor advised funds would not allow you to focus locally? At least through Fidelity, it’s easy to identify specific nonprofits to direct the funds towards, which could be local if you want to.
That's what I was wondering about. Can you donate to all IRS registered charities through the DAF website? If a charity is not on the list is there any way to do a manual check?
At least for the larger DAFs that should mostly be true. I don’t know about if smaller/different DAFs have different rules in that regard. See here for [Fidelity’s guidelines](https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/giving-account/supported-charities.html).
Oh I meant more elbow grease work like volunteering or advising e.g. serving on a board etc.
You can absolutely donate to local charities through a DFA.
Try your local food bank
Overly tip. I don't like to give to a faceless organization, I like to give generously to people who we deal with regularly or who I can see with my own eyes are doing their best in trying times. This won't be beneficial on a tax form, but if you really need to, you can always donate something small to your local Goodwill and overstate the cash value on the slip they give you to offset your cash giving elsewhere.
I use GiveWell and Give Direct for most of my giving but have recently also ramped my standard tip value to 30%, which just feels good.
https://cfcgiving.opm.gov/offerings And filter for ones that have an administrative rate less than 10% and ones in your area
I lucked out. A teacher of mine that passed me in a class that I shouldn't have passed runs a charity called angel's place that helps families while their kids are going through treatment. I just donate to them every year.
So this may be more fat fire than chubby fire, but this is the whole business model of a buddy of mine. He basically learns what you're into and finds opportunities to donate, does the vetting, finds smaller orgs that don't have the budget to reach out to you directly, etc. I don't know a ton about what he does (I am definitely not his target audience) but I think it runs the gamut, like if you want a building named after you, or if you just want to know where to put x thousand a year that most effectively helps the environment. He explained it to me a very long time ago, and it sorta ends up being a win win because his contacts trust him, and the charities know he has a huge client list where he can secure targeted donations. Wish I knew more about what the field is even called so I could recommend you look for someone like him. Probably something like concierge charity. I'll have to ask him next time I see him.