Do you love animals? By volunteering with an animal shelter you will feel needed, purposeful, and energized. Do you believe education is the best gift you can give? By sending money for girls to go to school, you are listening to your heart and, ultimately, fueling your passion. By giving your time to a charity, you get the opportunity to build your social circles by working with like-minded people.
You may also be able to do something physical, giving you the opportunity to become healthier and happier. And the mental and spiritual benefits from knowing your contributing to your favorite cause are through the roof!
Did you know when you donate to a charity the amount you give is tax deductible? Not just the money you give, but also any money spent on travel, parking, convention or event fees that are associated with the charity as long as you are not being reimbursed by the non-profit organization for these expenses!
Sign up for a Free Consultation Please complete all required fields! Refresh Please enter the characters shown. Why Donate To Charity? Here are five reasons to donate to charity: 1. Almost everyone in the world appreciates the value of charity to some degree.
Beyond the seemingly universal inclination we have towards donating to charity — or, more generally, to doing the right thing — why should we donate? What are some specific reasons why charity should be an important part of our lives? Merely thinking that charity is important is one thing, but it is crucial to bridge the gap between intention and action if we are to help those who are in need. In this article, I provide three key reasons why charity is a necessary ingredient for making the world a better place: it is effective at helping people in need, it can improve our own wellbeing, and it can make the world a much fairer place overall.
Global poverty, the mistreatment of nonhuman animals, and other social injustices cause so much suffering in the world. For those of us who are relatively well-off, what responsibility do we have if any , to improve conditions for those less fortunate?
What does it take to "do good" or to be a good person? These questions concern not just ivory-tower philosophers but many of us who place a crucial importance on discovering the ingredients necessary to live ethical, happy, and fulfilling lives. One individual who has thought deeply about these kinds of questions is Peter Singer.
Singer is widely considered to be one of the most influential living philosophers , and is one of the effective altruism movement's key intellectual forebears. In , he wrote an essay titled Famine, Affluence, and Morality , where he argued that "If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.
See if you agree with each of the following statements from Singer's Famine, Affluence, and Morality :. If these statements sound reasonable to you, it follows that most people in high-income countries should do what they can to prevent suffering and death in other parts of the world. Donating to highly effective charities is one way to do that. Another key consideration, beyond our moral obligation to donate to charity, is to think about our moral obligation regarding the cost-effectiveness of our donations.
This point is argued by Toby Ord , a co-founder of Giving What We Can and another key figure in the effective altruism movement. In a publication called The Moral Imperative toward Cost-Effectiveness in Global Health , Ord argued that it is not just important to emphasize cost-effectiveness, but it is morally crucial that we do so. This amount could be used to provide a guide dog for a blind person — a clear quality of life improvement, but not something that will restore the person's vision.
Or, as Ord points out, the same amount of money could instead be spent on surgeries for trachoma, an infectious disease that can lead to blindness if left untreated. Few people, if any at all, would be able to convincingly argue that an outcome in which one person can more comfortably navigate blindness is preferable to one in which 2, equally deserving others can avoid blindness in the first place. It is, thus, a moral imperative that we consider the cost-effectiveness of our donations.
Failing to do so can mean that more people suffer unnecessarily. We truly live in unprecedented times where we have unprecedented opportunities to use charitable donations to significantly improve the lives of others. Giving to charity can be one of the easiest ways to make yourself feel good. It is a highly effective way of generating that amazing warm glow feeling — the same one you feel when you help your neighbour, your friend, a family member, or a co-worker.
Some people give because a particular cause or organization matters to someone they care about. People who know someone with a specific disease might be much more willing to give to an organization that fights that disease. If a corporation sponsors a certain nonprofit, employees may be eager to support it as well, either because they love the cause or because it enhances their image at work.
Harness the power of social dynamics by :. While psychologists debate whether pure altruism is real, altruistic people enjoy giving and receive pleasure from the action. Harness the power of altruism by :. That means a lot of potential donors are now suspicious of every nonprofit and may approach giving with cynicism. Successful organizations overcome cynicism by proactively working to build trust.
They make it clear that donations are helping beneficiaries, by openly sharing their accomplishments, especially the important outcomes for each year. They are also fully transparent with their financial information, sharing the annual financial statements on their website for everyone to see. Harness the power of trust by :. People are easily overwhelmed by large numbers. If we think for very long about the huge numbers of people in the world who are hungry or need medical attention, we may start to zone out or feel small and helpless.
We see this a lot after natural disasters. But if you can help donors see that their donation will make a real difference to one actual person, telling their story, it can help your donor understand the situation and they can understand how their donation will make a difference. Harness the power of impact by:. Goal Proximity.
This simply means how close or far you are from your goal. This is particularly important when you are publicly fundraising for an important project. Psychologists say that excitement of helping push a fundraiser over the line makes a donation feel more important. Harness the power of goal proximity by:.
Overcoming difficulty. Psychologists sometimes call this the martyrdom effect. It takes place when people expect to have to endure pain or difficulty to achieve a goal. People actually want a challenge. Which teen is more likely to be more invested in taking care of the car? People care about things they have to work for. Harness the power of overcoming difficulty by :.
Another reason why people give is to receive a personal benefit. People want to feel good about themselves or look good to someone else. Some donors value the financial benefit of giving — like saving money on taxes or impressing customers and clients. This may not be the main motivator for most donors, but probably even the most altruistic people experience psychological benefits from giving. Even if giving is a life-long moral or religious tradition, helping someone else leads to warm fuzzy feelings which means the donor gets to feel good about giving.
Harness the power of egoism by:. Fear of Missing Out is defined as a fear that others might be having a rewarding experience from which you are absent. There have been a lot of studies about this phenomenon recently in relation to social media. All human beings need to belong, and they seek out groups with similar values and sensibilities. Donors are looking for personal connections and rewarding experiences just like anyone else.
FOMO can be a driving factor in why people give or attend your event. Nonprofits are not just organizations that distribute money; people who share a cause are a community who have rewarding experiences together. Harness the power of FOMO by:. Having some understanding of why people give helps you figure out how to ask them to contribute to your cause and that will ultimately help you raise more money. Donors feel sympathy, empathy, guilt, or some other emotion when they donate.
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