Donation strategy: how do you allocate your donations?
I noticed that transfer companies usually charge fixed amount for each transaction, so donating $1 can easily incur 30%+ fee.
So I would like to find a rule of thumb to minimize the fees yet cover all projects I like
Any tips?
My tip is: Instead of $3/month, donate $35/year. That way it's only 1 transaction.
Liberapay, 12$/year to any open source project I use. It isn't much, but its what I can afford.
Most of the time, I rely on larger organizations, that I trust, to handle donations.
Non-profits like Untied Way aggregate donations in local areas (as well as inter/nationally) and distribute funds to other organizations.
They're kinda like the production company for my contributions in the sense that they'll know more about local organizations and what they're in need of so I don't have to rely on my limited knowledge and resources to find effective ways of making donations.
Banks charge too much for facilitating transactions so if I want to donate to a specific organization then I'll plan ahead and do a single transaction for the year and I'll try to find a process that doesn't involve electronic transfers other than a wire transfer since I eat the cost of the transfer that way.
My donations to NeoVim and soon Beehaw are near and dear to my heart
I almost don't do donations at all because i either don't have the money or they don't support the swedish version of cashapp, swish. Every time i have wanted to donate anything to anyone this had been the issues i face, except for one twitch streamer who became one of my better friends and one server hoster who i later on realized alot of bad things about. In both of these cases there was no transaction fee.
TL;DR Swish takes no transaction fees but barely anyone takes swish. The few times i have the opportunity to donate i usually don't have the money to donate.
I only donate to mutual aid requests, personally. It's 5-10 bucks depending on what I have at the time and I do it a few times a year. When my parents' house burned down people donated thousands ton a GFM set up for my parents, so it feels right to pay it forward within my means.
A couple of times a year I do sales of my art that benefit a particular group, and that usually corresponds to a national tragedy. I did one benefiting Kansas City's Community Bail Fund after the George Floyd murder, for example.
The only regular donation I make is a buck each to my two Lemmy instances and my mastodon instance every month.
Pick 4 NGOs per year. Donate 10% of income at the end of the year to them evenly.
Next year pick another 4 NGOs that you think did great work that year.
Not sure about foss specifically, but I've had some non-profits prompt me to up my contribution to cover transaction fees. But they seem to be closer to 3%.
A (for-profit) employer used to do gift matching and would also give us pocket money to contribute to the organization(s) of our choosing. It got me into a habit of contributing on a roughly quarterly basis.
I try to identify places where there is actual need so I am not consistent. Some of the big-name non-profits get disproportionate attention, or they spend too much money on fundraising, or they grossly overpay their key people. Other non-profits do good work and are sorely underfunded. It's not just transaction feels, I find the act of making individual contributions in itself an inefficient allocation of resources.
Thanks! I'm interested in more information detailing your vision.
Any criteria for identifying sweet spot projects where the funding is "almost right": non over or under funded (where each donation matters the most)?
At some point you have to trust your gut?
Speaking more broadly than FOSS:
The large national nonprofits probably don’t need your money, and the small local nonprofits probably do. At the same time nonprofit can lose sight of their mission, and bigger orgs need admin, specialty jobs, and leadership that are full time jobs that a family could live on. So it’s hard to generalize. Their mission is the goal, not making decisions based on finances.
I look at their finances to get an idea of where they are at. These can be “lagging indicators” if there really is a time sensitive need though.
Examples: Ran into one person who was trying to promote their non-profit rather than solicit donations — when I looked into their finances it was clear they didn’t have the money to get there but had done great work already. Another person who doesn’t pay himself for the work he puts in because it’s all volunteer based and only seeks contributions for his projects.
Thanks for reminding me to donate to Wikipedia. Also interested in the topic. Luckily wikipedia lets you cover the fees at least
It's not ideal, but I use Patreon to donate to a few different folks at once (I think it still combines transactions to reduce fees...). Otherwise I usually pay the fee, if the amount I'm donating is small and I'm given the choice.
For those transfer fees alone, I should be switching to yearly donations, but I’m about half half monthly and yearly right now. Looking at the ones I support via Patreon, not all of them actually offer a yearly option though.
I donate to what I use - Gentoo, Wikipedia, lemmy, beehaw
Donate to Archive.org!!!
Wikipedia is a very profitable company. They don't need as many donations as the make it seem.
Despite that, I have and will donate to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia foundation, because they host knowledge and quite a lot of pictures. And I love it.
Let me introduce you to open street maps. https://welcome.openstreetmap.org/what-is-openstreetmap/ or more simply https://www.openstreetmap.org/
Their higher-ups all earn exorbitant salaries
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries
Wow that's obscene, especially the steep rise over the years. I'll stop donating to them.
Wow that's obscene, especially the steep rise over the years. I'll stop donating to them.
Do you have a source to back this? Not to say I don't believe you but I am legitimately curious
I disagree with the use of the term "profitable" because it's a non-profit and so donations aren't going to investors or anything. Wikimedia is very transparent and efficient with donations according to Charity Navigator. That said, they do take in more in donations every year than they pay in expenses. See the financial reports they make public.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/12/02/wikipedia-has-a-ton-of-money-so-why-is-it-begging-you-to-donate-yours/
Go to wikimedia foundation's page, the 'about' menu has a link to the financials.
Mid 2022 they had $239M in assets, up from $231M the year before.
If you're german, i can link you a german video which explains it quite well