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Doing Good Anonymously - a couple of tips
Feb. 23rd, 2014 02:45 pmSome people prefer to do good anonymously because they are the kind of saintly individuals that don't want to deflect attention to themselves while they are doing good work. Much as I admire that, I'm talking about a more selfish motivation. I want to donate some money to good causes but I don't want them calling me on the phone to beg for more or filling up my front porch with junk mail. So I have been limiting my charitable giving the last few years to recipients who will let me do it anonymously and online (since I am much too lazy to drive around at night leaving baskets of food on people's doorsteps).
More and more charities are starting to offer an "anon donor" checkbox on their websites. Some honor this request better than others. Here's a few tips on making sure your contact info stays out of the charity's database.
1) Donate via Paypal. Paypal basically exists to provide a curtain of anonymity between online buyers and sellers. A lot of charities offer that as an online donation option.
2) Donate directly from the Network for Good website. A lot of charities use a 3rd party to process online donations, and NFG is a popular choice. Here's a tip I learned by perusing the fine print of the privacy policies. Suppose your charity website has a "Powered by Network for Good" badge. If you click on the Donate button from the charity website, it is up to the charity whether they want to treat it as an anonymous donation or not. By default, NFG will send them your contact info. However, if you go directly to the NFG site, search for the charity, and initiate the donation from NFG you can control whether your contact info is passed on to the charity. You have to create an account on NFG to do this, but they keep it private and don't spam you. You will get a confirmation of the donation and a year-end summary, both of which are great for tax purposes.
The downside of using any kind of 3rd-party processor is that they charge the charity a fee (5% or so). You might get better bang for your buck if you wrote a check and mailed it to the charity. But they still have to pay someone to open the envelopes and process the check, so there's going to be overhead either way. And if the charity then uses your contact info to send junk mail every month, that's a nonproductive use of your donation dollar. I prefer to remove the temptation for the charity to do that, since it is wasted money in my case. But to make the processing fees worthwhile I have decided to donate to fewer charities each year and make the donation a substantial one.
If anyone is interested in a recommendation, I just donated to the following two local organizations, both of which seem like extremely worthy causes. Both provide the most basic human needs (food and shelter) and both of these have a particular focus on children and teenagers. And I like the idea of helping people in my own community.
Groveland Community Food Shelf (through Razoo)
People Serving People (through Network for Good)
What charities do you donate to, and why? I am looking for more to add to my spreadsheet.
More and more charities are starting to offer an "anon donor" checkbox on their websites. Some honor this request better than others. Here's a few tips on making sure your contact info stays out of the charity's database.
1) Donate via Paypal. Paypal basically exists to provide a curtain of anonymity between online buyers and sellers. A lot of charities offer that as an online donation option.
2) Donate directly from the Network for Good website. A lot of charities use a 3rd party to process online donations, and NFG is a popular choice. Here's a tip I learned by perusing the fine print of the privacy policies. Suppose your charity website has a "Powered by Network for Good" badge. If you click on the Donate button from the charity website, it is up to the charity whether they want to treat it as an anonymous donation or not. By default, NFG will send them your contact info. However, if you go directly to the NFG site, search for the charity, and initiate the donation from NFG you can control whether your contact info is passed on to the charity. You have to create an account on NFG to do this, but they keep it private and don't spam you. You will get a confirmation of the donation and a year-end summary, both of which are great for tax purposes.
The downside of using any kind of 3rd-party processor is that they charge the charity a fee (5% or so). You might get better bang for your buck if you wrote a check and mailed it to the charity. But they still have to pay someone to open the envelopes and process the check, so there's going to be overhead either way. And if the charity then uses your contact info to send junk mail every month, that's a nonproductive use of your donation dollar. I prefer to remove the temptation for the charity to do that, since it is wasted money in my case. But to make the processing fees worthwhile I have decided to donate to fewer charities each year and make the donation a substantial one.
If anyone is interested in a recommendation, I just donated to the following two local organizations, both of which seem like extremely worthy causes. Both provide the most basic human needs (food and shelter) and both of these have a particular focus on children and teenagers. And I like the idea of helping people in my own community.
Groveland Community Food Shelf (through Razoo)
People Serving People (through Network for Good)
What charities do you donate to, and why? I am looking for more to add to my spreadsheet.
