How to Donate Money

Today we are back with another essay from the forthcoming Crisis Palace book, and now we are leaving the section on the power of the individual, and getting into the power of money. Specifically, how money is used in service of social change—the good and the bad.

In this issue, for example, we're talking about how ordinary people can use whatever dollars they have in the best way possible to make a difference in the world, according to me. Later, we'll talk about the tyranny of the big green nonprofit world, and then the horrors of billionaire philanthropy. We'll end on a positive note, with an alternative vision of what charitable giving should be trying to accomplish. OK here it is take it.

How to Donate Money

A Crisis Palace stress-free guide to climate giving

I don’t fly all that much these days mostly because I’ve come to dread the process of air travel to the point that most trips aren’t worth it, or maybe I like where I live more than I have in the past, or maybe I'm just getting old and valuing my own bed and living room more. But I have to admit, more than getting in a car, more than running an air conditioner, more than plastic cups, getting on a plane is the thing that I tend to feel the guiltiest about climate-wise. 

After relocating back to Tucson from Boston, which was a harrowing cross-country trip in an RV for reasons I don’t want to get into, I didn’t fly at all for almost two years and was surprised by how much I liked not doing so. For a while I thought, maybe I won’t ever do it again. After all, most humans in the world will never get on an airplane, so would it be so bad to just sit still for once in my life? 

But, alas, that is not meant to be due to friends and family far flung across these United States, so as I write this, I’ve got my first cross-country flight in a long time coming up. It will notably increase my household’s burning of carbon for the year, which I think like a lot of people, makes me feel a little guilty, little bit sweaty. There’s been all kinds of debate in recent years about whether it’s OK to fly if you’re concerned about climate change, which leads to what some people call “flight shaming,” flygskam the Swedish call it. I do think generally, people are getting their heads around the fact that the average person’s emissions from air travel are really not that significant compared to that of the wealthy—the 12% of Americans who fly six or more times annually are responsible for two-thirds of all U.S. passenger flights. As a result, private jet shaming seems to be more on trend than flygskam these days. But there is still something about going to, say, Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix, a sealed, cavernous space that is air-conditioned to the point of discomfort, and then climbing into a massive steel tube that will eject a 50-ton carbon bomb into the atmosphere, that feels not very good. 

That very feeling of guilt creates a barrier that I imagine prevents a lot of people from engaging with climate change in any way, and probably part of why most people tried to ignore it for, oh, one billion years. It can feel like we are faced with a binary moral decision, either you are one of those climate change people and you only get around by sailboat, or you are just like welp nothing I can do about this, good luck kids. When in reality, there is a huge middle ground that we’re all floundering our way through. It reminds me of this episode of The Good Place where *spoilers* they discover that nobody is getting into heaven anymore because the unintended consequences of everything we do are so awful, the world has become so complex and interconnected, that there’s really no good way to live.

Which means we all have to walk around like these guilty moral philosophers, always asking ourselves what exactly we should be OK with. How much hypocrisy will we be tolerating today? Should we just keep doing our usual thing, or buy an electric car, or purchase carbon offsets, or go live in a cabin, or maybe blow up an oil pipeline? 

We are constantly faced with this anxiety-inducing question of how to live a moral life during a climate crisis, which leads to inaction, which leads to guilt. When it comes to exactly how guilty we should be feeling, I tend to lean toward the Robin Williams-in-Good Will Hunting camp, in which I aggressively hug you, the Matt Damon in this scenario, and reassure you that it is not your fault. Which is to say, there are exploitative systems, and profit-seeking corporations, and entire political parties and often both political parties that have actively fought to perpetuate the crisis that we are in. And that is not your fault, Matt Damon. But I also think people take this logic too far sometimes and use it to sort of absolve themselves of any duty to act on what is a collective problem with collective solutions. We will all have to change our lives, but it’s literally impossible to do without systems change, but systems change is also impossible without individuals. 

Even if you decide you do want to take some kind of action, there are an endless number of options, which leaves a tough decision for a little person to make out here. Some of my favorite advice on this topic came from Mary Annaïse Heglar, who once wrote, “Do what you’re good at. And do your best.” Because everyone has some part to play, and what you do has to be sustainable for you personally and appropriate to your life and work. If you try to live like a monk or overcommit yourself or get perpetually filled with rage, like some people I know who will remain nameless but are me, you’re going to burn out and have to stop whatever it is you are doing. So yeah, do the thing that makes sense for you, find your people to do it with, do your best. 

There is, however, something anyone can do that I recommend everyone do at some level, which is to give some money away, and perhaps even convince other people you know to give some money away. To get back to the point I attempted to start with, one solution I’ve settled on over the years with regard to flying is that I use one of those carbon offset calculators but instead of giving the recommended money to actual carbon offsets, which are more or less a load of bullshit, I give to an organizing group I like or a group providing direct services to vulnerable people. I am well aware of the fact that this is in one sense an attempt to appease my own guilt and that it does not absolve me of my contribution to climate change. I also do not think that I am personally culpable for this crisis to the point that I really need to pay some kind of monetary penance. I do it anyway. Because if I have the discretionary income to fly, I am probably also able to give a little money to support work I think is important. So I kick some that way. It’s just something. 

Why giving matters

I know giving away money or talking about giving away money or asking someone to give you money is something that for a lot of people is extremely difficult, and I completely understand why. But philanthropy, or charity, or donating money or whatever you want to call it is something that I actually think and talk about quite a lot, or at least have done so for stretches of my life. Not because I’m some generous, selfless person who lives an ascetic lifestyle (I own three pairs of Air Jordans, which for a man in his 40s who doesn’t play basketball is fucking ridiculous). Rather, I worked for years as a fundraiser and then for more years I wrote and edited news and opinions for a publication called Inside Philanthropy, which covers the world of foundations and nonprofits. 

Whenever I tell people that, I sometimes get this funny look like, huh interesting, because philanthropy is either a puzzling or boring or annoying topic for many of us. At the individual level, there is something about the asking for and giving of donations that makes a lot of people feel deeply uncomfortable. There are tangled up feelings of guilt and resentment and suspicion surrounding whether and how we give money to things we care about, or the reality that many of us need money to do the things we care about. In my nonprofit days, it always drove me crazy how many people who drew their entire salaries from donations seemed absolutely repulsed by any kind of exposure to fundraising activity. The tension is even worse among groups that are further to the left or anti-capitalist, where fundraising is not just a source of discomfort, but a constant reminder that we still live in a system where the acquisition of money is necessary to do just about anything. In such circles, nobody wants to be the person talking about getting that paper.

Philanthropy has also come to represent for many a type of giving that only the wealthy can do, which they often do for the tax benefits, to get their kids into a good school, to convince the world that they are not bad people, to exert some kind of influence over society, or any number of other not great reasons. And that is for sure a big part of it, which is why at Inside Philanthropy, we always framed the act of giving money as a form of power—for good or ill—to be scrutinized. It's one of many ways that those in power try to shape the world to their liking, but it can also be pooled and redirected in ways that challenge existing power structures. The philanthropic, and for that matter, nonprofit worlds have deep structural flaws, and can be yet another form of American plutocracy. But I fear that the act of donating to a 501c3 entity can get caught up in that antipathy, when there are many amazing people and organizations doing important work within these structures.

The giving of money and goods is a vast field of activity, and it's also just something humans have always seemed to do. In his book Just Giving, political scientist Rob Reich points out that philanthropy is often shaped for the worse by our institutional arrangements (our tax code favoring wealthy donors, for example), but that it can be compatible with democracy, and on some level, maybe even a universal activity. Reich’s book and a related collection of essays by his fellow scholars at the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Philanthropy in Democratic Societies, have outlined not only the problems with philanthropy, but also the ways in which it might be beneficial and necessary, including:

1. Pluralism – This is especially important for ordinary individual donors, Reich points out, in that it is a check against government orthodoxies and market forces in the production of meeting societal needs. A good, albeit depressing example of this is private funding for abortion care in a country where the government seeks to outlaw it.

2. Discovery – This one is good for foundations, according to Reich, in that they can experiment with projects that test certain policies or practices, and if people like the outcomes, we can adopt them on a larger scale. One reason this is good for philanthropic institutions is they can (in theory) exist outside of political cycles and act with long time horizons in mind. For example, a number of funders started carrying out extended universal basic income pilots post-pandemic to demonstrate the positive impact of just giving people money.

3. Reparative justice – Chiara Cordelli writes in Philanthropy in Democratic Societies that while living in non-ideal societies, “philanthropy should be understood foremost as a duty of reparative justice” in which the well-off must repair “harm to the worst-off, for which the former can be held liable.”

4. Damage limitation – Cordelli continues, “Spending time and money in political advocacy so as to support the provision of more and better services in five years’ time cannot compensate damages caused by cuts to these services here and now. Compensation must happen before more just institutions can be brought about.”

It’s also a way to live well. Another Stanford PACS scholar Lucy Bernholz wrote a book called How We Give Now, in which she challenges us to expand the way we think about philanthropy, to include the many ways non-wealthy people use giving to “live our values and fully participate in society.” There are countless ways that we do this, and Bernholz makes the point that for many communities, this definition of philanthropy happens, not as optional generosity, but almost a given in which support is exchanged from peer to peer, as is always necessary. In Judaism it is called Tzedakah, literally meaning charity or philanthropy, but more broadly the obligation to do what is right. In Islam, there are many sacred versions of charity, including zakat, an obligatory tax on wealth, and sadaqah, the voluntary giving of alms. 

Particularly when it comes to supporting community groups or mutual aid collectives, donating money can also be a form of solidarity and wealth redistribution, not so much a means to an end, but a way to use what abundance you have to suspend the people around you in a softer cushion of care than our institutions provide. Again, some mutual aid groups struggle with the idea of asking for and having money, but as great as donated items and labor are, it is straight up cash that allows groups like ours to meet community needs. And the more money we have, the more sustainable the people-powered safety net we are building becomes. Donating is sometimes a necessary evil in pursuit of a greater goal, but it can also be a beautiful way to be a part of your community.

Guidelines for giving

With that in mind, should you partake, here are a few suggestions I have to offer as someone who has interacted with this space for a while. Most of this is climate related, as are the group recommendations, but the principles apply to pretty much any cause you're looking to support. 

1. Don’t worry about the amount, or if you can’t afford to give at all. 

Much of the uneasiness surrounding donating money, I suspect, comes from anxiety over the proper amount to give, stemming from either our own unstable financial situations or guilt about our relative financial stability. People feel bad when they don't have much to give to things they care about. People who do have a little money feel bad because whatever they give feels insufficient relative to their own comforts. But I don’t think people should feel that way because in a capitalist society, not having money will ruin your life and potentially kill you, and that doesn’t do anyone any good. After all, we are trying to make the world a better place to live in, so making ourselves intentionally miserable doesn’t help. Unless you are really wealthy, in which case you probably have a more complex moral dilemma on your hands, one that can be easily solved by transferring me a large sum of money in exchange for reading this book. But I guess for most of us, the way to think of it is, use the money you have in order to live a reasonably safe and comfortable life, and then give or do whatever you can to help others join you. And if that amount is zero dollars, which is the case for many people, don’t worry about it. As Lucy Bernholz points out, philanthropy exists in the form of all sorts of daily acts of care and support. 

2. Don’t give to big NGOs 

I don’t think your average person concerned about climate change should be giving their $100 or whatever to NRDC or EDF or The Nature Conservancy. Same goes for abortion and Planned Parenthood. Or civil rights and the ACLU. I used to give to some of these groups, and I'm not saying they do bad work or donations to them have no value, but the more I've learned about just how much wealthy donors favor them—and how that can influence their programming—the less compelled I am to support them. These groups have been disproportionately funded by philanthropic giants and, especially when it comes to green groups, have been wrapped up in gross corporate partnerships for many years now. They over-emphasize top-down, market-based, and incremental solutions. They are usually too risk-averse to really challenge the status quo, and most of them are extremely white. They have a role to play, but their approaches are overrepresented in most movements, and they are doing just fine without you. 

3. Don’t worry about overhead

Overhead mostly exists in the form of human beings. So when people look for low overhead costs in a nonprofit, they are valuing the suffering of the humans who work there. Overhead also means things like retirement funds, health insurance, organizational stability, competitive hiring, computers, tables, chairs, air conditioning. Don’t make the recipients of your generosity bow before you for scraps and insist that they neglect their people so they can focus on “programs,” which by the way, are carried out by people, aka overhead. Same thing goes for fundraising costs. Unless we’re talking about the rare, egregious scandal, don’t worry about it. Groups need to fundraise, and fundraising usually contributes to a group’s mission, in that it’s a form of public engagement and community buy-in. 

4. Don’t worry about getting scammed

You’ve probably read the occasional “bad charities” list in news coverage, which are common in part because nonprofits have to publicly file their finances, which makes it way easier for reporters to investigate them than say, billionaires or corporations or black box political donors. Journalists are also obsessed with “these people said they were good people but look they actually are bad people just like the rest of us” narratives. But honestly, especially if you’re following rule no. 2, this is also not something you should really worry about, and here’s why. When you give to something, you accept risk and put faith in others. Giving should be an act of trust, not a transaction. Trust the leadership of those you’re backing and that they know how to best use resources. Also don’t get caught up in an “impact per dollar” rabbit hole or something like that because that’s not really how this whole social change thing works. On that note, I know a lot of people are really into effective altruism right now, but I am not into it at all and I don’t feel like writing about it, so check out one of the many EA giving guides out there if you really insist on putting a price tag on a human life or you want a good equation for number of happy chickens per dollar, etc. 

5. A group with a bad website is usually a good group to donate to 

Sometimes there’s a tendency to see a janky website or something with typos in it and think, oh man, these people can’t even get their website right they must be incompetent. But all it means is that they don’t have money or time to spend on web design, or they are engrossed in other more important things. I should clarify that it’s not that organizations shouldn’t have money for a nice website, or that they shouldn’t spend money on things like that (see rule no. 3), but generally speaking, a bad website is a sign that these people have their hands in the dirt. Oh and if they don’t even have a website and only a Facebook or Instagram page? Those are the serious ass-kickers right there—run to your checkbook.

6. Give locally

I tend to think that individual giving is best not when it punts your social concerns out of sight and out of mind, but when you form a connection with the work being done. That’s one reason giving locally is important, but also, bottom-up solutions tend to be more durable and equitable than top-down solutions. Giving locally may feel small, but local change builds up to something profound. Look up fractals. Keep in mind you may not have a Local Climate Change Group, exactly, but you probably have a local environmental justice group or transit or green space or housing advocate whose work has implications on your community’s carbon emissions and climate resilience.

Types of groups to support

If I were doing an annual giving guide I might at this point list some organizations worth supporting, which would probably change on some level year to year. For our purposes here, I’ve pulled together instead a list of types of groups, with some examples, but hopefully the categories will be useful. In all cases, I personally prioritize groups that are organizing and building power for systemic change, and/or are providing direct aid to vulnerable people.  

1. Climate justice groups

Most states have at least one of these groups—grassroots, movement-building organizations that are usually underfunded, but have an outsize impact. They are often led by and staffed by people of color or those who are otherwise on the frontlines of climate change, and always center justice in their work. A good starting point is the Climate Justice Alliance, which you can fund directly, but you might also look at that network’s list of member groups to directly support one close to you. 

2. Indigenous-led climate action

There’s a lot of overlap with the above, but Indigenous-led organizing has been extremely powerful in the past 10 years or so, and activists on reservations are pioneering community-led, renewable energy for sustainability and autonomy. Some examples that come to mind are Indigenous Environmental Network, NDN Collective, or Native Renewables, but again, you can also look locally. 

3. Groups using disruptive tactics

Organizations that are sowing disruption through vandalization, direct action, and unsanctioned forms of protest are a necessary plank of a successful movement, in that they make the status quo untenable for those in power, and often play a complementary role with groups that use less disruptive strategies. These groups are also underfunded, and those with power and money tend to be terrified of supporting them. One intermediary that I like is the Climate Emergency Fund, but there’s also Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for the Future, even Sunrise Movement, although they’ve become less focused on direct action in recent years.

4. Worker and community cooperatives

This is sometimes referred to as the New Economy or the Solidarity Economy, but it’s basically a cooperative approach to economic development, often worker- or community-owned, that leverages a combination of philanthropy and investment to reimagine a local economy. Environmental sustainability is a core component, and they often involve climate resilience and mitigation components, including locally owned solar grids, composting, and urban gardens. New Economy Coalition is a good place to start, and PUSH Buffalo is one great local example. 

5. Mutual aid groups

Mutual aid is a necessary form of climate resilience. It operates on the principle of “solidarity, not charity,” which means the exchange of support is non-hierarchical and allows a community to assess and meet its own needs as they arise. This approach saw a resurgence during the COVID-19 pandemic, as collectives formed in many cities across the nation. Mutual aid these days spends a lot of time supporting unhoused populations, but intensifying climate impacts will require more autonomous, fast-moving networks that can respond to emerging needs and crises. (You can give to the local mutual aid collective I work with if you want.) At the end of the day, I cannot think of a better use of money during hard times than a community pooling it together to provide care and comfort and reduce suffering.