>> Panda Express the person asks if you want to donate a few dimes for charity
These requests burn me up. The cashier at Super Store asks "would you like to donate $5 to charity?" What charity? It's nutrition focused for school kids; what kind of monster wants little kids to go hungry?
Then you find out it's the Weston (controlling family) charitable organization, they use the money to buy food through their own organization and benefit from the tax credits... no thanks.
My process:
1. Sit down with your family and decide what causes you'd like to support,
2. Do some research to identify organizations that are cost-effective with their money,
3. Make a commitment on an annual or reoccurring basis,
4. Be the dick who says "no" to every other casual request at your front door, stores, etc.
Buy a turkey (at retail, from them, full price, no discount) and then immediately donate that turkey to Second Harvest. They give nothing, but take the markup on the bird. How charitable.
What a scam. I gave the local food bank $35 cash instead which has way more buying power to get food for people in my area in need.
I have a personal set of charities that I donate to regularly.
Then, as a family, we discuss, and we have a couple regular charities, and then a few charities for causes that are important to us that year (e.g. this year it's voting rights), and we research and find the best charities (not necessarily the biggest) and donate a much more significant amount.
We discuss this every year, and bring up the past year's giving.
This is something new for us -- discussing money and charity like this. As kids, we had no idea my parents donated to anything. My own kids are too little at the moment, but soon enough they can join too.
I don't donate anything else (except for my local homeless news carriers), and feel no guilt at all for not accepting the supermarket's scammy charity of anything else.
These requests burn me up. The cashier at Super Store asks "would you like to donate $5 to charity?" What charity? It's nutrition focused for school kids; what kind of monster wants little kids to go hungry?
Then you find out it's the Weston (controlling family) charitable organization, they use the money to buy food through their own organization and benefit from the tax credits... no thanks.
My process:
1. Sit down with your family and decide what causes you'd like to support,
2. Do some research to identify organizations that are cost-effective with their money,
3. Make a commitment on an annual or reoccurring basis,
4. Be the dick who says "no" to every other casual request at your front door, stores, etc.