darkoshi | Entries tagged with donations

I was going to sign up for a new Patreon membership, but the page indicated I'd be charged right away for the first amount, and then on the same day each next month. The new donation amount wouldn't be combined with my other Patreon membership charges which are all taken out on the first of each month.

This is what Patreon calls Subscription Billing, and it is the new default (since September 2022) although creators can opt to switch to the legacy billing models. It seems that patrons can't choose when they want to be billed, except by waiting until that day to sign up for a new membership. That is what I plan to do on February 1 (if I don't forget), so that the new amount will eventually be combined with my other amounts in a single payment each month.

I can understand that many people likely prefer the new billing model. But it would be nice if Patreon were to give patrons an option to sign up now and not be charged nor get any benefits until the first of the next month (or whatever payment date they chose), so they could keep getting a single combined charge for all their memberships. Surely that would benefit Patreon the company too, as a single larger credit card charge would have a lower transaction fee than multiple smaller charges.

I also noticed recently that Patreon now supports annual billing, if the creator offers annual membership plans. That pleased me to see, but I don't think most creators have enabled it. And if I'm going to have monthly charges for some creators, I may as well have monthly charges for all of them, rather than some monthly and some annual. Although with the new Subscription Billing model, the annual option makes more sense (being charged on a different day for each creator's membership but only once a year).

Note to self:
Don't donate to USA for UNHCR. They spend 38% on fundraising!

Better-rated charities which help refugees.

Looking at this page, I wondered if donating via them would be easier or better than donating to multiple organizations individually:
Charity Navigator's Giving Basket

One of the benefits listed on the above page is "Competitive processing fee", which links to the following page:
Charity Navigator: Donation Processing Fees

That page says that Charity Navigator uses Network for Good as their "donation vendor", and
"Network for Good charges a 4.75% tax-deductible fee", which "is used to pay banks, credit card companies and other administrative costs."
and
"using Network for Good can save your favorite charity money because Network for Good's processing fees are relatively low. Many charities have to pay more to credit card companies."

But it seemed to me that 4.75% wasn't an especially low rate.
This page indicates much lower credit card transaction fees for charities:
Best Ways to Donate to Charity
By the way, it also indicates that debit card fees are much lower than credit card fees.
And by the way, this page indicates that for large donations, sending a check can be better than using a credit card:
Should I give to charity by check or credit card?

This page lists the same concerns as I had about the Network for Good fee amount, along with some clarifications/explanations from a NFG representative.
The GiveWell Blog: Network for what now?
This post is a follow-up to the prior one:
Network for Good roundup

The GiveWell site may be a useful resource, in general. Or at least worth looking at.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/668708.html

The Overhead Myth - a message from BBB Wise Giving Alliance, GuideStar, and Charity Navigator: The percent of charity expenses that go to administrative and fundraising costs—commonly referred to as "overhead" — is a poor measure of a charity’s performance. ...

In brief, you shouldn't dismiss a charity simply due to it having high overhead expenses. Administrative expenses aren't necessarily a bad thing.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/592811.html

If you shop on Amazon a lot, consider participating in their Amazon Smile program, whereby they donate 0.5% of the price of your eligible purchases to a charity of your choice. All you have to do is log on to smile.amazon.com instead of amazon.com. More details here.

If you have trouble remembering to use the special URL, this Firefox Addon will automatically redirect all Amazon URLs to Amazon Smile. However, it requires you to remain logged in to Amazon, and it sounds like it may cause issues with some Amazon pages.

As I already had the generic Redirector add-on installed, I've now configured it to redirect me. Rather than redirecting all Amazon URLs, I'm only redirecting the sign-in page: from "https://www.amazon.com/*signin*" to "https://smile.amazon.com". This way I can still browse products without being logged in, and then only log in when I want to buy something. This seems to work ok, but has a drawback in that it doesn't automatically return you to the product you were browsing before logging in. Another drawback is that if you add items to your cart via amazon.com, and then log in to smile.amazon.com, it shows your cart empty. Maybe if that happens to me a few times, it will make me start remembering to log in before adding items to my cart.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/590840.html

Do not go to irs.com looking for forms and publications; that is a private website, not affiliated with the IRS. The real IRS website is irs.gov.

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If you have an HSA (Health Savings Account), you have to submit an additional form (8889) with your federal taxes. When your HSA contributions are taken automatically from your paycheck, that is called a "Cafeteria Plan", and those amounts should be included along with the employer contributions on line 9, *not* on line 2, of form 8889.

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Long Term Care (LTC) insurance premiums may be considered a qualified medical expense that can be reimbursed from an HSA (some restrictions apply).

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The federal "free file fillable forms" website automatically rounds amounts that you enter (at least, it did last year). Therefore, if you plan to submit your taxes via that method, and if you fill out drafts of your forms first, it is best to round the amounts to begin with.

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South Carolina lets you contribute a part of your tax refund to several specific organizations via what they call "Contributions for Check-offs" (form I-330). I was never certain, but always assumed, that these organizations were all themselves tax-deductible. In other words, that you could deduct these contributions on your federal tax form the next year.

Their website simply says that the donations *may* be tax deductible:

Donations made to elligible [sic] charities may be tax deductible. Deductions are taken in the year in which the donation was made. Individuals making donations through CheckOff, filing in 2012 for 2011, would include the donation on their 2012 federal tax return.

Today, I tried to verify it by using the search tool on the IRS website. I only found some of the organizations, so it seems that the rest might not be officially tax-deductible after all. These were my findings:

Endangered Wildlife Fund (www.dnr.sc.gov) - not found
Childrens Trust Fund (www.scchildren.org) - EIN:57-0785431
Eldercare Trust Fund (aging.sc.gov) - not found
SC Veteran's Trust Fund - EIN:57-1031920
Donate Life South Carolina (www.donatelifesc.com) - EIN:57-1052258
SC First Steps to School Readiness Fund - EIN:57-1087576
War Between the States Heritage Trust Fund - not found
SC Litter Control Enforcement Program (PalmettoPride) - EIN:58-2466709
SC Law Enforcement Assistance Program (scleap.org) - not exactly found, but seems to be affiliated with this organization: EIN:57-1063879 (Law Enforcement Chaplaincy for South Carolina)
K-12 Public Education Fund (S.C. Department of Education) - not found
SC State Parks Fund (www.southcarolinaparks.com) - not found
SC Military Family Relief Fund - not found
SC Conservation Bank Trust Fund (sccbank.sc.gov) - not found
SC Financial Literacy Trust Fund - not found
SC State Forests Fund (S.C. Forestry Commission) - not found
SC Department of Natural Resources Fund (www.dnr.sc.gov) - not found

(update - this one was added for tax year 2016)
SC Assocation of Habitat Affiliates (www.schabitats.org) - seems to be an affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International, which has EIN 91-1914868.
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Free File Fillable Forms

When entering form 1040, the "Done With This Form" button will always remain disabled. It is only used for the other forms that you Add.

W2, W2G and 1099-R forms can be added on the "Step 2" page.

"All other Form 1099’s, including SSA 1099, 1099 INT, 1099 MISC etc. are not available as individual forms in Free File Fillable Forms because you do not have to e-file these statements to IRS."

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/560257.html

There are some clothing donation bins around town marked with "secondliferecycling.com". That website, however, says "Site Under Maintenance". It's apparently been that way for a long time, as Google's search results display the same text for the site.

The only info I found on the organization that owns the bins is the following.

Local Charities Concerned About For-Profit Clothing Donation Bins

Collection bins are popping up all over town. Some are red, some are green and some are blue. For most people, it's an easy way to drop off old clothing so it can go to charity.
...
And even though some of the donation boxes do support charities, most of the ones we spotted came from for-profit companies, like "Better World Recycling" and "Second Life Recycling". According to Georgia state law, those collection bins are supposed to let people know they are not a charity, but we found dozens across town that weren't labeled that way.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/535223.html

A donation page for a particular non-profit gives the option of donating via justgive.org, paypal, or bitcoin.

This made me wonder which one would be better for me to use from the charity's standpoint. Which one charges the charity the least fees, resulting in the most money for the charity?

For that matter, don't credit card companies themselves charge processing fees for each transaction? If these other payment processing organizations accept credit card payments, doesn't that mean that some fees are going to the credit card company, as well as additional fees going to the payment processor?

According to this page: Saving On Credit Card Processing Fees (dated Feb 2007),
the processor must pay a fee to Visa and MasterCard, which typically charge 1.65% for a normal credit card transaction.

According to the last comment on this page, some payment processors charge initial setup fees and monthly fees, in addition to the per-transaction fees.

According to this page (dated Aug 2011),
PayPal’s fees are smaller than either of the above options [JustGive and Network for Good], so long as the charity gets at least $3000 a month

Edited to add:
The video on this page explains bitcoins. It isn't what I thought it was (based on the name, I thought it was an official currency-backed micropayment service), and I'm a bit confused by it. It's a new artificial currency which anyone can "mine" by running a software program? Who are the people who exchange bitcoins for actual currency, or who accept bitcoins as payment, and what do they get out of it? It sounds sort of like the "money" you can accumulate in certain video games, and which you can sell to other gamers, except that its usefulness isn't limited to a particular game.

Edited to add:
I ended up using JustGive.org. One of their pages displayed this message: Please note that your credit card will be charged by JustGive and 4.5% will be deducted from your donation to cover transaction costs.

Crossposts: http://darkoshi.livejournal.com/460190.html

And I don't know why I donate money to that stupid pet shelter when the past 3 times we've found a lost or abandoned pet, they wouldn't take it. They pretend they'll take it, but they don't.

Someone from work said she knows someone who is interested in the puppy, as they recently got a different puppy and would like to have a playmate for it. They didn't call me yesterday though. I hope they do. I hope it works out.

This is a neat site: http://www.newsmeat.com/

It lets you do searches to see what political campaign contributions (of $200 or more) an individual has made. You can search by name or zip code. I'm even in there, because I donated to the Green Party a few times!

There's also an interesting chart on the right side of the page, showing the current number of casualties, troop deployment, and money spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the list of popular searches, Harrison Ford is currently at the top... his donations are sort of interesting - in 1999, he donated to both Al Gore's and John McCain's presidential campaigns.