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I wanna write a rambling post about the weird emotions I have surrounding giving money to charity. So here it is.
I think for me the main issue is, I have this fear that I'll give money to something, and then it will turn out that it was a waste. That the charity ended up not doing any good- or they even made things worse. I've seen plenty of articles about how well-intentioned charity campaigns sometimes make things worse.
So I have this fear that I'll give a lot of money to something, and it will end up not doing any good, and that would just be so bad, would make me feel so bad, I can't bear to think about it- and part of it is feeling embarrassed about being "tricked"- and therefore I'm scared to follow-up and look for information on what actually happened after I donated my money. And, wow, you know something's wrong there, if I don't even want information on whether my donation did any good. Shouldn't I want to know that, because it can help me make better decisions in the future? But I just have this fear of how much guilt and regret I'll feel, if I find out "my" money was "wasted."
The way it would go is like this: If my decision about donating is very emotionally-charged, very guilt-driven, very motivated by "it's not right that I have extra money when other people in this world are starving" and therefore leads to the question "what's the maximum amount I can give and still be able to take care of my own needs?" then I end up too emotionally committed, and can't honestly look at what happened to my donation and whether or not it did any good. That was especially the case for me when I was in college- I had a part-time job, so I had some income, but I didn't need to use any of it because my parents paid for all my living expenses. All the money in my bank account existed in the guilt-inducing realm of "I don't actually need this money- so isn't it wrong that I don't donate all of it?" But when I entered the real world and had to pay for everything myself instead of relying on my parents, the situation is totally different- now I have an actual *feel* for how I do need to spend money to take care of myself, and I can't just keep the bare minimum for myself. This is a much better situation, in terms of how worrying about how much to give to charity affects my mental health.
The issue, I feel, is how I would go into those decisions weighing the two sides like this: there's the option of spending money on myself, for frivolous things, or donating it to a charity that's going to jump right in, where those hungry kids in their advertisements are, and fix the problem. Almost like the ratio of "the amount of good this money will do if I donate it" to "the amount of good this money will do if I keep it for myself" was infinite. I think this is the reason people make such a big deal about the "overhead costs" that charities have, and "what percentage of your donation actually goes to people in need" and treat that like it's the most important thing about a charity. Because we're sold this vision of how our donations are going to magically go solve these unthinkable problems, but then whoops there's a catch, the charity also needs to pay the heating bill for their charity office, or whatever extremely mundane thing they need to pay for. Some mundane thing which is actually relatable to my life, unlike those starving kids in their advertisements. Like, wait a minute, I also need money to pay my own heating bill. So the ratio is not in fact infinite, it's more like... the charity is going to pay their own heating bill, so I shouldn't give so much money that I'm left with too little to pay *my* heating bill.
Or, think of it this way: The charity isn't going to give so much to address the world's problems, that they're left without enough to take care of themselves. They need to pay their employees' salaries, they need to pay rent for their office space, etc. This shows something about how they prioritize their own needs vs the needs of those poor people they are helping. So I shouldn't give so much of my money that I'm left without enough to take care of myself- then I would be giving to a charity that is less dedicated than I am. Or, rather... my starry-eyed naive ideas of what it means to be dedicated to a cause don't match the grounded reality known to the people who are actually doing the work.
I usually try to organize my thoughts in my blog posts way better than this. I usually reword things to make it more clear what I'm talking about. But this is intended to be a long rambling post because these are questions I don't have good answers to, just some ideas. So, uh, I do apologize if you can't really follow what I'm talking about. (Why is she talking about giving so much money that she can't even pay her heating bill? Literally no one is asking her to do that.)
So, I don't think it's good for me, mental-health-wise, to calculate the maximum amount I can give, and then give that much, and feel like I'm morally obligated to do so. That would be a sacrifice. That would make my life much harder. And because it would cause so much difficulty for me, every single day, I would really need to believe that it mattered and made a difference. And so I wouldn't be able to hear factual information about whether my donations are doing good or not. I would avoid such information; I would fear it. I would sacrifice so much, constantly worry that I won't have enough money for myself, and at the same time, constantly worry that I was making bad choices, that maybe my donation money is being mismanaged and I'm making my own life harder for nothing.
(Oh, so maybe the actual issue is the high-pressure-sales-tactics style of charity appeals, which leads to me making an emotional decision I'm not really comfortable with, and then not letting myself be honest about whether I regret it.)
So I strongly advise against "giving sacrificially." Yeah in church I always heard we're supposed to "give sacrificially," that the important thing is your heart and your emotions around giving, and God won't really count it as doing a good thing if it doesn't feel like a big deal to you. I've even heard Christians claiming that your donations don't actually matter in terms of having an effect on the problem the charity is meant to address, because the whole world belongs to God, and if it's his plan, he'll make sure it gets done regardless of whether you donate. In this ideology, the only thing that actually matters is your feelings, as a donor. A donation that is emotionally difficult for the donor is "better", in God's eyes, than a donation that you didn't even notice you made because you just set it up to happen automatically every month. (Thinking about it now, I'm like "this is bonkers.")
I don't believe in "giving sacrificially" any more; in fact, I strongly oppose this idea. My strategy now is to decide, once a year, how much money I'm going to give to charity that year, and it should be an amount where I'm confident I can still have a good life and not be worried about how much money I have for myself. It *shouldn't* feel like a sacrifice. You just decide, "oh, my salary is X, and I'm going to donate Y, and so the money for myself and my family is X-Y," and you plan out how to give yourself a good life with X-Y money. I don't actually think there's much of a correlation between the dollar amount and how much it feels like a sacrifice. I think the emotions are a lot more tied to how much your giving is planned and how much it's spontaneous and therefore feels out-of-control. Feeling terrified when you give doesn't actually help anyone.
(I'm coming from the perspective of "my income is definitely high enough to give myself a good life and also donate to charity"- probably if your income is not even high enough to meet your own needs, you would have a different perspective on "giving sacrificially." In that case, *any* giving you do would be "giving sacrificially." So if you're in that situation, you'd have to think about this differently than how I am.)
Let's talk about effective altruism, because it's an ideology which addresses some of these hangups. I'm glad that the effective altruism movement exists. It has been helpful for me to read what they have to say. Particularly about things like measuring the actual good that charities do, rather than just how it makes you feel as a donor. And about how it's not right how much people make a big deal about what percentage of the money is spent on overhead costs, as if that's *the* measure of how good a charity is.
But I don't buy into their ideology myself, because it's not exactly targeted at the questions I have, and my own priorities about charity. Effective altruism makes a big deal about mathematically calculating which charity is THE MOST effective, like you're doing a bad thing if you give to a charity which is doing some good but not THE MOST good- wow, that's something that hadn't even occurred to me to worry about.
And the assumption that something is only worth doing if it can be quantified.
And also... okay so I care about immigrants a lot, I give to charities that help immigrants, but effective altruism has down the math to prove that THE MOST effective charities, in terms of how much they improve people's lives for every dollar you give, are the ones that help people living in extreme poverty. So, mathematically, let's say my money would do 10 times as much good for people in extreme poverty as it would do for immigrants. That means I value immigrants' lives 10 times as much as people in extreme poverty. I ... I guess I do, then? It sounds like a bad thing, but maybe it's not. God loves everyone equally, but I don't. I'm not God. I don't think it's possible, as a human, to love everyone equally, and I suspect it would be harmful to me to seriously make an attempt. (See: Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China)
I mean, effective altruism is great in that they do find very good charities that you can donate to. If your concern is that your donation is going to be mismanaged or spent on something that doesn't do any good, you can take a look at the charities targeted at global poverty, recommended by the effective altruist movement. Those ones are going to be good. But I guess my motivation for donating to charity is not "how can I do the MOST good" but "I see problems in the world- and the problems I care most about are the ones that I can relate to in some sense- and I want to do something about these specific problems."
And here's another tangent on this long rambly blog post: So, I've seen statistics about how millions of people live on a dollar a day. The obvious thing that came to mind, when I was a young naive college student- and my parents paid for everything I needed- was that I should donate so much of my money that the amount I have left only gives me a dollar a day to live on. Because, other people are in that situation, and I'm not any better than them- why should I have money, when they don't? Logically, that's what I should do, right?
But of course I can't do that... 1 dollar a day? I can't live on that. That's unimaginable. I remember thinking about this again, when I was in grad school and my parents *weren't* paying for everything, and I paid my own rent, $800 a month. Thinking about how apparently some people in this world live on a dollar a day, and I'm here paying rent, $800 a month. (There were not any apartments available to rent for $30/month, obviously.) How on earth can this be real, that people live on a dollar a day?
I think part of the answer is, they don't "live" on a dollar a day. People who are in that situation often die from things that I would view as very minor things. Things that, if they happened to me, I would just go to the doctor and get medicine, or whatever, and it wouldn't be a big deal. But people in extreme poverty DIE. Or, even if they don't die, they live with severe medical problems which would be very easy to fix, for someone with access to "normal" medical care, but if left untreated they derail someone's entire life. Living with constant pain, unable to work, etc.
So it's not about "well if it's good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for me, why am I acting like I'm better than them, and not donating all my money except a dollar a day?" The answer is, it's NOT good enough for them. And also that, in parts of the world with that kind of poverty, people have access to extremely cheap and crappy housing, and cheap and crappy food, which is not good enough for them, nobody should have to live like that, it's not safe, it's not healthy, and people do die prematurely because of it.
And all of that is not okay, but it also doesn't logically lead to "and therefore *I* should also live in that horrible situation." So, uh, I guess that helps me out with this particular hangup.
Is it just me thinking like this? Or does every naive idealistic young person who hears "millions of people live on a dollar a day" think "logically, *I* should donate so much money that *I* am left with only a dollar a day"?
Wait, is it weird that having a more realistic conception of what it means to "live on a dollar a day" makes me feel *less* urgent about donating to help them? Well... I mean, in reality what happens to me is, I feel like "logically I should donate so much money that I'm only left with a dollar a day" and then I'm just overwhelmed by how IMPOSSIBLE that would be, and then I'm just very confused (and feel guilty) every time I think about it, and I feel like "I'm gonna look for answers, I'm going to figure this out. I'm gonna find an answer for huge philosophical questions like 'is it morally okay for me to have money in a savings account when some people in this world are desperately in need?' and 'what is the correct ethical response for me to take?'" And then I never make any progress on those questions, of course. So I don't end up donating.
Like, the whole "logically *I* should donate all my money except for 1 dollar a day"... I was never going to actually DO that. I was going to NOT do it and then feel bad about it all the time. And that doesn't help anyone.
Whereas, my current thinking is, just do something. Just find a charity that is doing good work, and set up an automatic monthly donation- in an amount that feels manageable to me, not an amount that's going to cause problems for my ability to meet my own needs. Do that, so I am at least doing some good, and then always have these questions in the back of my mind.
It's not good to be so paralyzed by these big questions that I never actually take any action. Spend so much time trying to figure out the "right" way or the "best" way, and then never actually do anything.
Besides, nobody ever said that *I* am morally obligated to live on a dollar a day. Why am I so stuck on that?
And... why do I have this tendency to spend so much time analyzing charities, very hesitant to give them money if I feel like "I have no way of knowing if this is actually going to help anyone" when I don't put that level of scrutiny on any of my normal purchases? I'm never like "oh should I buy this snack or not, what if the snack company uses the profits for bad things?" Because when I buy a snack for myself, the entire point is to get the snack, and I don't care what the company does with my money- that doesn't factor into my decision at all. But for a charity, you don't get a "product"- or rather, the "product" you get is the belief that you're helping people. And that "product" could very well be fake.
Or maybe this just means I should put the same kind of scrutiny on my other purchases that I do on donating to charity. Or, here's a question, to what extent can you "help the world" by buying your normal daily things from companies that are more "ethical" (whatever that means), and how does that compare to the good you can do by donating money?
Well I have no idea. Hmm.
And another thing. What about going on gofundme and donating to some stranger? I have done that, occasionally. But I don't really think it's a good thing to do, in general, mainly because it very much depends on how well people can present themselves as a "perfect victim." A donor gets on gofundme and reads people's sad stories and pleas for money, and the donor picks 1 and rejects the others. So its all about your own biases as a donor, and how well the person making the gofundme page can perform their sad story in a way that makes random people with money feel they are deserving of help. It's a really messed-up dynamic. (This is if you're just randomly going on there to see if there's anyone you want to donate to. If it's someone you know, who is sending you the link to their gofundme page, that's a different thing.)
Like, if you are having a lot of health problems, and you lost your job, and you really need money, so you start a gofundme- but also, a month before all this happened, you spent a few thousand dollars to go on a nice vacation, well maybe you don't mention the vacation, right? If people knew about that, they would judge you and not donate any money to you. It's all about presenting your problems in a way that matches the donors' biases about who "deserves" help.
Also, gofundme being filled with people begging for money for their basic needs of healthcare and housing is an indication that something is very wrong in our society. (Speaking from an American perspective here.) There need to be big structural changes so that this doesn't happen. (Universal healthcare, for example.) It doesn't really help, in a big-picture sense, to donate to people on gofundme.
At the same time, though, there's something kind of attractive about just randomly going on gofundme and donating to people. You know these are people who really are in need, and you are directly helping them.
Unless, of course, it's a scam.
Hmm, I wonder how many gofundmes are scams. You have no way of knowing, if you don't know them personally.
Yeah, so, let's be realistic about this. If you just randomly go on gofundme and donate to somebody, you shouldn't have grand idealistic ideas about how you're such a hero. Could be a scam.
And to generalize this, it's not just about a gofundme being a scam. Any charity you donate to could turn out to be ineffective, or do more harm than good. In every case, there's a certain probability that that will happen. Hopefully it's a low probability- try to do your research and only donate to the ones that have a low probability of being a scam/ a waste/ a mistake. But I do think it is important to recognize that that risk always exists. Don't donate with such lofty fantasies that you'll be devastated if your donation turns out to not do any good.
This is another reason why I don't think it's good to "give sacrificially." Because if you "give sacrificially," that means it's a hardship for you. It's difficult, and you have to believe that the hardship to yourself is worth it because you're doing such a good thing and helping people. Then if you find out actually your donation didn't help people, well, then what? I can easily imagine being unable to handle that, emotionally. Feeling so overwhelmed, so much regret, too traumatized to donate to any charity again.
So instead, I think the key is to be aware that whenever you donate money, there is some probability that it won't help people. Don't donate an amount that makes you emotionally dependent on the idea that "this donation in particular is doing a lot of good." Don't be so emotionally connected to it. Just decide how much you'll donate each year, and do some amount of research into which charities are likely to use the money well, but be aware there's a chance it won't do good (and if you donate frequently throughout your entire life, inevitably at some point, some of those donations *will* be to something that doesn't do any good), and just kind of... be emotionally detached from the specifics of it.
I don't know, maybe "emotionally detached" isn't the right term. I care a lot about the problems of the world. It's important to me to be part of the movement of people who are working to make a difference. What I mean is, it's not good to be emotionally invested in "I just gave $50 to Charity X, and that's a big deal, that's a lot of money" such that you will feel devastated and betrayed if it turns out that Charity X just wasted the money. So emotionally invested, that you fear getting actual information on what Charity X did after you donated to them, because if it turns out to be bad, you'll feel like you've made a terrible mistake.
No. My thinking now is, just recognize that inevitably it will happen sometimes, and learn from it and try to pick better charities in the future.
Just to have the mindset "I am the kind of person who donates Y amount of dollars every year" and then if you find out that you gave to a charity that wasn't that good, well, it doesn't affect you personally because you were going to donate that money anyway. It's not like the bad charity took something from *you*. Maybe you could make a case that they took something from the people who would have been helped by a better charity. But it doesn't have to be an emotional thing for *you*, because you didn't set it up so it feels like a "sacrifice." Instead, you just know that you're a person who donates Y dollars and lives on X-Y dollars and that's fine.
I want to keep a clear separation between the money I donate to charity and the money I use to take care of myself and my family.
And another thing that should be separate from charity: my job. I don't want to work in a job where "helping people" is one of the biggest motivations. Or, rather, let me say it this way: I want to work in a job where, if I'm unhappy, I can just leave and get a different job, without having to worry about how I'm letting people down by leaving. That's not my problem- see, that's what I mean by a separation. I want my choice of a job to be solely motivated by what's best for me and my family. I don't ever want to be in a situation where I feel like "I'm not happy at this job, I'm not getting paid enough, I could find a new job that pays better- but, no, I can't leave- if I leave, no one will be here doing this work to help people." I don't want to weigh "taking care of myself and my family" against "helping the world" in a context that's as significant as what job I'm working in.
I mean, sure, if I'm in a job that does good and helps the world, that's great, but it also has to be a job where I can leave and they can just hire someone else. So I don't have to feel like I'm letting everyone down and am therefore morally obligated to stay.
Some people do have to be in jobs like that though. Like the people who run these charities that I donate to. Like doctors who work in places where they don't get paid well, but if they leave, their patients won't have access to medical care. Do some people like that kind of job? Maybe some people like the feeling of "this is a sacrifice, but it's worth it because I'm helping people." I feel like... it carries a lot of risk... What if you sacrifice like that, but you fail to make the world better? Wouldn't that be too terrible to handle? (Maybe go into it knowing there is some probability of failure. Like Jesus said, count the cost.)
And... I don't know... I feel like it's hard for me to talk about this, because I have a very "literal" way of thinking... and so I should be worried that I'll say something and people will take it to mean something very different from what I'm saying... Like if I say "there's always some probability that your donation won't do any good," people will take that to mean they should never donate to charity at all.
And also, I'm coming from the perspective that... I moved to China. I gave up my life in the US and moved to China. So when I talk about not wanting my job to be a site where I'm sacrificing to "help the world", when I talk about my confidence in knowing that I want to put myself and my family's needs first... I mean, keep in mind that back then, I didn't believe those things, and that's why I moved to China, and it's been a bigger sacrifice than I imagined.
I don't regret it- see, again, this is a situation where I say something and then people are going to take it the wrong way. But, my point is... the way that one's grand idealistic ideas about "doing the right thing" stack up against reality. My point is... it's a whole different thing when you're actually living it, not just thinking about it.
Heyyyy this is getting too serious, let's talk about another weird thing about charity. I remember long ago, I saw a photo which was taken in one of those tropical countries which are big tourist destinations but the average person there lives in poverty. I forget which country. This photo showed a really nice luxury hotel, and there was a wall going around the hotel property, and a huge crowded nasty-looking slum right on the other side of the wall.
The point, I assumed, was the contrast between those 2 things- where people live completely different lifestyles, and yet geographically they are right next to each other. I felt like this photo was telling us we should judge the tourists in the hotel, for, uh, existing geographically close to a slum? Like, the more I thought about it, the more I felt like it didn't really make sense. I felt like the message of the photo was "It's wrong how some people are rich while some people live in extreme poverty- specifically, it's wrong because they are right next to each other." Like those rich hotel residents were "ignoring" poverty in a way that was uniquely immoral. I thought, "Why does it matter how close they are to each other, geographically? Don't I have money that I could be donating online, and that's very easy and not at all dependent on my physical location? And so I am doing the same thing as these hotel guests who live good lives while other people live in poverty."
The photo was very striking and "makes a statement" because they were right next to each other, but the more I thought about it, the more I was like "I can't see how being right next to each other actually matters."
Or maybe the point was just to make me feel guilty. Which, I mean, yeah, that's what this whole post is about. What should I do, morally, about the reality that some people in this world need help? Feeling guilty and then haphazardly donating money until I no longer have those feelings is just not a good strategy. So what is?
(Like I said, my current strategy is to decide once a year how much money to donate, and then set up recurring donations to do it automatically. This is WAY better than the "feel guilty" strategy.)
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Related:
Culture, Objectivity, God, and the Real Reason I Moved to China
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