Keeping you anonymous to the charity to preventing them from spamming you with mail is maybe the best part of this pitch. Even well run charities send a tremendous amount of mail after you give a donation. It's one of the big turnoffs I have about the whole donation process.
Dollar a Day
71–80 of 97 posts
Re: Dollar a Day
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you know if there a legal/tax impediment to getting the pass-through classified as a not-for-profit? Or did you just mean it makes it harder to implement as a traditional startup?
The pass-through would have to set up as a foundation that then issues grants to other non-profits. That isn't an easy process. I won't donate anything unless there's a tax advantage. The reason is that non-profits that are registered 501 3(c)'s have certain reporting requirements. If they aren't registered, there's little accountability.
It appears that Network For Good largely operates this way as a "donor-advised fund":
Re: Dollar a Day
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems the way my brain wants to donate. I want to pick and choose instead of giving $1 every day to a random charity I have no idea how I feel about.
Exactly, not every charity is worthy. Some charity wasting my money on CO2 mitigation has a different value to me than a charity helping battered women escape abuse. ..as an example.
Now think for a minute which one of these actually matters more for continous well-being of mankind, and you'll see why effective charity is a hard problem.
Re: Dollar a Day
#74"all donations are 100% US tax-deductible."
The tax-deductability of charitable donations has always sat weirdly with me. It's not exactly charitable if you're not actually sacrificing anything; it's more a rearrangement of your tax allocation. That can be a good thing in and of itself, but if you're going to claim donations on tax, it's not really something you should get a warm, fuzzy feeling for (in my opinion). I have a regular payment to MSF happening every month, and it doesn't really sit right with me that I can claim it on tax (and I don't).
On the other hand, this is a good argument against the libertarian dot-point that private charity 'would happen if we weren't taxed so much'. Given that you can offset your tax by your charitable donations, it becomes a zero-sum game, so why aren't people currently donating at the levels libertarians say they theoretically would? In the US, you can deduct up to half your gross income from tax, and given that the tax load is less than 50%, you can at least convert your income tax to charitable donations, and then start this theoretical "extra charity" that would apparently spring into action.
Re: Dollar a Day
#75Check out http://goodst.org/ to pay $0.25/day
Re: Dollar a Day
#76Not saying this isn't valuable, but I believe that Google did this a year or two ago: https://onetoday.google.com/ What's the differentiation?
Since it's the first time ever I saw this thing, apparently Google failed at visibility this time. So there's the differentiation.
Re: Dollar a Day
#77Keeping you anonymous to the charity to preventing them from spamming you with mail is maybe the best part of this pitch. Even well run charities send a tremendous amount of mail after you give a donation. It's one of the big turnoffs I have about the whole donation process.
Welcome to the world of marketing. They can do stuff that sucks hard, because apparently doing it brings more money that not doing it. Remember, they care about your money, not about your feelings.
Re: Dollar a Day
#78"all donations are 100% US tax-deductible." The tax-deductability of charitable donations has always sat weirdly with me. It's not exactly charitable if you're not actually sacrificing anything; it's more a rearrangement of your tax allocation. That can be a good thing in and of itself, but if you're going to claim donations on tax, it's not really something you should get a warm, fuzzy feeling for (in my opinion). I…
> On the other hand, this is a good argument against the libertarian dot-point that private charity 'would happen if we weren't taxed so much'. Given that you can offset your tax by your charitable donations, it becomes a zero-sum game (...).
From what can I tell, the game theory itself is essentially one big argument about libertarian ideas.
Re: Dollar a Day
#79I must ask this question and someone please enlighten me but --
1. Where does money come from to support these Organization ( e.g. dollaraday or Watsi ?
2. How do these Organizations pay for developer costs , website, office maintenance and employee salary ?
Do they take cut from donation and donate rest of the money ? If that's the case then its pretty much scam.
Susan Komen for women's breast cancer collect millions of dollar. Innocent people pay thinking money is going to cancer research. But they instead pay their CEO some $500k+ salary. What a shame !
I must ask this is starting a non-profit new legal scam in United States to collect money ?
Re: Dollar a Day
#80"all donations are 100% US tax-deductible." The tax-deductability of charitable donations has always sat weirdly with me. It's not exactly charitable if you're not actually sacrificing anything; it's more a rearrangement of your tax allocation. That can be a good thing in and of itself, but if you're going to claim donations on tax, it's not really something you should get a warm, fuzzy feeling for (in my opinion). I…
> "It's not exactly charitable if you're not actually sacrificing anything"
Tax-deductible doesn't mean that the money comes straight out of taxes, it means that you don't pay taxes on the donation. So you give $1.00 to get out of your marginal rate, something like $0.28 or $0.35, in taxes.
In order to eliminate your entire tax burden (per your libertarian comment), you would have to donate considerably more than you pay in taxes. You'd have to donate everything you made above the 0% tax bracket (getting down to a net income of about $15,700 for a married couple.) There are actually people who do it -- pacifists who refuse to pay taxes that could fund wars, for example [0]. But even then it's only possible if your income starts low enough.