What is the last thing you donated money to, how much did you donate, and WHY?

• Choire Sicha: $40, to a friend’s fundraiser.
‪LS‬: How did you decide on $40?
‪CS‬: I never know how much to give. $20 seemed cheap, $50 seems too much. Then I was like “okay I went to the grocery store yesterday, how much did I spend? And it was like $40, so I was like, okay, well I could spend that much on food, so.

• Bennett Madison: My little sister is an elementary school special ed teacher and she asked people to donate money for her classroom supplies using one of those Kickstarter-type things that isn’t Kickstarter. I donated last week and gave a hundred dollars!
LS: YES.
BM: I probably would have donated less but I was slightly drunk.

• Adam Frucci: I last donated to CLL Global, which is a charity that aims to help cure Chronic Lympocytic Leukemia, which my dad is currently in remission with. I donated $250, which was about what I could afford without it affecting my budget/making life more difficult.
‪LS: ‬THAT IS A LOT OF MONEY.
AF: It’s a shitty cancer!
LS: is that something you had done before
‪AF: It’s ‬been a while. I’ve done it a handful of times.
‪LS‬: Do you budget for it or you just get and urge and do it?
‪AF‬: Just get an urge and do it. I should probably budget it and do it at regular intervals but I don’t.

• Mallory Ortberg: THREE DOLLARS at the Safeway to fight MS because the little credit card machine asked me if I wanted to make a donation, and it was the second cheapest option.

• Jane Hu: Um, I gave 30 dollars for my little brother’s music program fundraising thing. But I got some chocolate almonds in return.
LS: WHy did you choose $30?
JH: I’m not sure! It seemed a happy amount above a 20 dollar bill. DO you always feel a little weird giving a 20 dollar bill? It feels impersonal. It’s what little kids give one another for birthdays when they don’t have time to buy a present.

• Matt Powers: I gave to the Human Rights Campaign, because I was stopped by someone on the street and I gave them all the money in my wallet, which was five dollars. And now they email me every week.
LS: THX.
MP: Oh I guess I donated to my friend’s kickstarter more recently, but that seems less charitable.My friend was filming his webseries at his former high school in Detroit and needed money for equipment, editing, dist, food for the cast, etc.
LS: How much did you give and why?
MP: $10. I think web series are twice as important as gay rights.

• ‪Lauren‬ Rodrigue:  I gave $25 to The School Fund, an NGO my friend helped start. I always give $25, never more.
LS: Why is that?
LR: It’s just like the lowest socially acceptable amount. Like you buy people gift certificates for 25 dollars. It’s just a number. It seems like enough.

• Jeff Winkler: We never had “extra” money growing up, and I have even less money now. For many years, my family rang the bells for the Salvation Army during Christmas. But I was taught to give what I can. Often, it’s just a buck or a couple ciggies to the bum on the street.

• ‪Edith‬ Zimmerman: $19 to Obama. I think every like 15 emails they wear me down
‪LS‬: Do you always give 19 dollars?
‪EZ‬: Yeah. One time I gave $50.
‪LS‬: Any significance for $19?
‪EZ‬: That’s one of the ones they offer — 9, 19, 29, etc. It’s a one-click donation.
LS: Ooooh.
EZ: I see SOMEone never donated to Obama

E TU?????????!!!!!!!!

Yesterday, Billfold pal Jodi Ettenberg sent me an email to tell me about about a conference she was invited to speak at called the World Domination Summit in Portland, Ore. (which sold out tickets in just nine minutes this year). Jodi is one of those enviable people who quit their day jobs to become a globe-trotter and make a living as a travel writer, and that was her subject of discussion as a speaker (you can see a Q+A she did with the Times here.

The host of the summit was Chris Guillebeau, who recently wrote a book called The $100 Startup, which includes interviews with more than 100 people who started their own profitable businesses on a very low budget (Forbes has a good interview with Guillebeau about his book here). As someone who has worked at startups that have received big money from big investors, and seen how quickly money can be wasted, I love the premise.

Jodi said that an anonymous donor gave Guillebeau a chunk of cash this year, so he decided to give all summit attendees $100 each with the instruction that they use the money as an investment for a new project they believe in, with the themes of community, adventure, and service.

The gesture is reminiscent of the Wearelucky project by an anonymous man who came into “more money than he’ll ever need,” and who gives strangers he meets by chance $1,000 with the caveat that they have to use the money to do something good.

Experiences vary. An obstetrician decided to give the money to her son’s teacher. A tennis coach invested the money in a program for young people. A makeup artist decided to give the money to her cleaning lady so she could pay for her grandson’s education. A common thread here is: Children! We want to support the children!

What good would you do with the money?

Photo: Flickr/perpetualplum

Kids love presents. Kids love things. They cry when they don’t get what they want and they cry when they do. Let’s say Kevin is crying because Suzie got the new Super Soaker he’s been asking for—he won’t be comforted by the fact that he might have the toy eventually, even if his birthday is in a week because he wants it now! It’s hard for him to understand that he will eventually be as happy as Suzie.

This is why it’s not easy to explain homelessness to a child: why some people have homes and others don’t. It’s even harder to explain charity. Children generally learn plenty about spending money, but little about giving it away (UNICEF is a good start, but their box program focuses on giving away other people’s money).

The problem with teaching children to share with someone who is not in front of them is an issue of deferred gratification—the same reason a person donates to a beggar in lieu of a charity. There is a tangible interaction when handing a dollar to the person who will spend it, but for most charities you don’t know exactly where your money goes; you know the general area your money will go towards, but you can’t be 100 percent sure, and picture a real event in your head. Some money will run an office refrigerator, and people don’t want to think they’re keeping some potato salad cold, even if a fridge is necessary to run a charity and the potato salad happens to be delicious.

Deferred gratification is an important and difficult lesson for a child to learn—a lesson that shows that time invested in certain activities (studying, practice, etc.) will pay off in the end. Walter Mischel’s classic Stanford Marshmallow Experiment and all of the subsequent studies show that children who wait to receive two marshmallows instead of immediately eating one are far more likely to do better in school, go to a better college, and earn more money. The study aims to prove that teaching children the benefits of deferred gratification are incredibly important to their development.

Another problem you’ll face when explaining charity to a child is the same problem everyone faces when they decide to donate: Which charity deserves your money? People often donate to what has affected them (if a woman’s mother dies from breast cancer, she is more likely to donate to support breast cancer research). Perhaps consider the practicality of your donation (i.e. how many people you’ll be helping)—is it better to fund research for an extremely rare disease that has a small endowment or is it better to choose a disease that kills many people and has a large endowment? What about foreign causes? And the arts and education (including your alma mater)?

I’m only recently at the point in my life where I have a salary and so I often wonder how much I can afford to give away. In this economy, people are saving where they can—more so than usual—and the first thing that often gets cut is philanthropic giving. If you can’t donate as much as you’d like to, you should make sure you’re donating wisely.

Some economists measure happiness or satisfaction by estimating what they call utility, which quantifies the positive impact something has on everything else. Bhutan uses utilitarianism to measure what they call their Gross National Happiness (GNH) in an attempt to measure quality of life (as opposed to the GDP). Ideally, a donation—and your life—would maximize utility, but it’s reasonable to donate to something you care about. In fact, it could be as productive because you’re more likely to take on a role that is more than a money-giver, even if that role is simply telling your friends about something you support. The utilitarian method for choosing charities should be used when you can’t decide between several organizations or you don’t have any specific preference in the first place. What should be emphasized to children, or anyone, is that deferred gratification can yield better results for the individual and society as a whole.

E.A. Weiss is a writer in New York. Follow him around. Photo: Shutterstock/Gemenacom