Another activist economist asks:
What is your donation strategy right now? Are you giving to more places, or more to places you were already supporting? I was torn at the end of last year and just did the latter. Trying to decide what to do for 2017.
#2 says: Both!
#1 also says both. I think I must have the warm glow version of donating because I am totally just giving to places as they come on my radar. I have no strategy at all for this stuff (my only planned giving is to my alma mater and DC1’s former private school). Something horrible happens, I donate to the relevant agency or agencies, it makes me feel a little better.
I know that’s not optimal for the organizations in question (based on graduate public finance*), but it’s optimal for me! Plus it’s a strategy shared by a ton of people since whenever I give, the news says that organization has just received record amounts.
Another activist economist replies:
If lots of donors share that behavior, it might become optimal for the organizations (getting small amounts from huge numbers of people)? Also, maybe your strategy (or non-strategy) means you donate more over the course of a year than you would if you explicitly made a budget for donating and only gave to a few places. Which is better for the places getting your money.
I have been holding back so far this year since I’m torn. For instance, a friend of mine started supporting this local organization that gives financial assistance to women who can’t afford abortions. But is it better to give to them or Planned Parenthood or split between the two? I’m leaning toward only PP.
I’ve given to both! Because I cried super hard when my sister told me that she was working with an organization in [City] that provides rides and housing for women seeking abortions and had someone staying in her spare bedroom for 3 days because the woman had taken an 8 hour bus in from [a neighboring state] to get an abortion. So I gave $100 to that organization to make the crying stop. Planned parenthood is where we regularly give whenever one of these things comes up in the news, plus it’s where many of our blog proceeds end up going.
While DH remains employed and with the mortgage gone and our retirement accounts maxed out and DC1 no longer in private school and no firm plans going forward for major expenditures, we can afford to just give money whenever so we don’t really need a strategy (still, this has always been how we’ve donated, it’s just that before it was much smaller amounts in grad school and I’d have to cut back on our grocery expenditures to make up the difference). We should be giving more, but I keep thinking, what if we have to move to Paradise permanently? We don’t have enough money in non-retirement non-529 accounts to buy a house in a decent school district, and renting would still be difficult on just DH’s salary. So mainly it’s the emotions that get me to part with my pocketbook even though we should be giving much more than we do.
Another activist economist replies:
I look forward to reading the responses [from the grumpy nation]!*** I should probably stop thinking about what would be optimal and just give when I feel like it. The reality is that my total giving across the year would likely be higher if I did that. But it is hard to turn off the little voice in my head that asks “if you give that $50 here are you taking it from somewhere else where it would have a bigger marginal impact?”
Yeah, I don’t listen to that little voice. It gets shouted down by the, “Look, do you want to stop crying right now or not?” voice, because I have very little impulse control. And since I don’t have a set budget constraint on charitable giving, there’s more likely to be crowding in** than crowding out of giving.
Plus it probably helps that I wasn’t all that convinced by grad PF’s discussion of optimal charitable giving given that most non-profit’s revealed preferences are to go all out and accept lots of little donations from people like me (and then sell my contact info to related organizations that could crowd out my donations to them…).
Agree about the crowding in (probably true for me too) – I don’t have a fixed budget either, exactly. (Though because I am a procrastinator, during normal times I tend to do all my donations at the end of the year, so then I am thinking about the total amount I want to give for that year.) But there’s a budget in the sense that I have an upper bound even if I don’t know exactly what it is. And that is what that little voice reminds me of. Hmmm….
*Graduate PF, if I’m remembering the lecture correctly, suggests that rational individuals interested in making an actual difference rather than just feeling warm and fuzzy should donate large sums to a small number of charities so other places don’t waste money trying to get more money out of you and you’ll have a bigger impact on that organization and more say in what is done with your money. I am obviously just motivated by warm fuzzies. Plus I’m not sold that that’s a bad thing, as you will see in our discussion.
**”Crowding in” in this context means that giving some money makes it more likely that you’re going to give more later.
*** emphasis added
Grumpy nation, do you have a donation strategy? Do you have a set amount you give each year, or do you give on a case-by-case basis? Have you had to make any sacrifices for giving? What makes you decide to give? How do you pick who to give to and how much?