Now that I’m in an age and income bracket that can afford it, I’ve been trying to be more liberal with donating to causes that seem worthwhile. Yesterday my partner and I were walking around a large cultural event thing in Kiel (Germany) - thousands of people, lots of overpriced food trucks, lots of local bands and artists.
One artist had a workshop in a little glass cube and was making wooden sculptures all day. Huge crowd all around watching him. He had a sign up front explaining that he had been struggling financially because art is a luxury and one of the first things people stop buying when the cost of living goes up. The sign also had a QR link to his Gofundme, so I tossed him 5 bucks with no second thought. Kind of assumed that he’d be getting plenty of little donations like that, just because there were so many people and the event overall was very “12€ avocado toast” coded.
But once I got home I checked the donation history and it turns out I was the only one who donated at all that day:
Ngl, I was kinda upset about that and even checked the Url from different devices to make sure it wasn’t a website caching thing. I definitely will be upping my donation once I get home tonight, but in the meantime I’d be curious to learn about the average consensus on donations - How much and under which conditions do you donate (or would donate if you could afford it)? Do you do rare but big donations or small ones spread over lots of causes?
I donate about 12k a year. 4k of that is fixed and recurring because of tax efficiency.
Nowadays most of it goes to Ukraine, biodiversity, local food bank and homeless shelter. And more recently I’ve been donating to FOSS and democratic charities.
Taking into account the tax returns it’s about 20% of my nett income. Some of my friends work 4 days a week, I basically work 4 for myself and 1 for charity.
To be honest I don’t think I would’ve donated to an artist at a food truck festival. I’m much likelier to donate to organisations than to individuals, and I don’t have art/culture high on my priority list. But it’s good that different people are wired differently!