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Giving to charity: Does S$10 make a difference?

SINGAPORE — Many people are willing to support their favourite cause by making a donation. You hear of people giving millions of dollars and wonder whether a tiny donation can make a difference.

Donations of S$10 — or even less — matter and can change lives.

Donations of S$10 — or even less — matter and can change lives.

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SINGAPORE — Many people are willing to support their favourite cause by making a donation. You hear of people giving millions of dollars and wonder whether a tiny donation can make a difference.

The reality is that S$10 or even less matters and can change lives.

A survey by local donation portal Given shows that the top reasons Singaporeans don’t donate to charity are: Not being able to afford to make donations and donations not being transparent enough.

Other countries are similar, with non-profit financial services organisation Thrivent Financial finding that one of the biggest obstacles to giving donations in the United States is that Americans believe they cannot give enough to make a difference.

Take helping the poor, for instance. Philanthropy education portal The Life You Can Save (TLYCS) observes that while many people feel deep sorrow about poverty in the developing world, they conclude that there is nothing they can do. The scale of poverty is immense, and they seem powerless to stop it.

In reality, however, small donations can make a big difference. The key reason, as philanthropy portal Pennies in the UK describes it, is that “pennies soon add up, and the cumulative power of thousands of donations has a transformative effect on people and communities”.

By pooling your tiny donation together with plenty of others, non-profits can massively improve the quality of life for people anywhere.

TLYCS’ Charity Impact Calculator shows, for example, that a US$10 (S$13.70) donation to the Against Malaria Foundation can purchase five bed nets to protect people living in malaria-stricken areas, and a US$10 donation to Protect Healthy Children can provide 38 people with food-based micro-nutrient fortification for one year.

In an era of instant communications, small donations also save more lives faster when disaster strikes. A large number of micro-donations through crowdfunding sites can rapidly raise lifesaving support to help victims of natural or man-made disasters, explained Peter Prix, chief executive officer of humanitarian relief organisation OneRelief.

When people see pictures of a disaster on TV and social media, they can translate their sympathy into action by making a small donation real-time on a mobile application and raise lifesaving funding in the all-important early hours after a disaster has struck.

And some non-profits or campaigns might falter without those small donations. While data here is limited, Tufts University professor Susan Ostrander found that smaller donations account for two-thirds of the funds at charities in the US.

Mr Gary Wohlfeill, director of brand and marketing at fund-raising portal CrowdRise, also said that 20 per cent of non-profit donors “share” campaigns following their donation, with some campaigns receiving more than half their donations through social media sharing. Small donations are essential for some charities’ survival.

Smaller amounts also allow people to follow their passion, commented Aseem Thakur, co-founder of donation portal Give.asia, as “not having a minimum donation amount (means) we are not turning away young donors who believe passionately about a certain cause”.

Again, while data here is scarce, digital fund-raising platform Scalefunder found in the US that small donations are especially important to millennials between the ages of 20 and 35, as 61 per cent of those donors give smaller donations to three to five different organisations rather than a large gift to one.

CHOOSE A CAUSE YOU CARE ABOUT

When you’re giving a small amount, it’s still important to choose an organisation to support carefully, so you can make sure your hard-earned money will really make a difference.

The first thing to do is to choose the cause you want to support. It’s easy to be swayed by a request from a friend to support their favourite cause. Your funds are limited, though, so identify a cause that's important to you based on issues you care most about, whether it’s youth education or the elderly or conservation or something else.

It can help to develop a “charity mission statement” about why you want to support certain causes, too, to help focus your giving.

Once you select a cause, find non-profits in that sector and research them in the same way that you would research an investment.

Giving.sg and the Charity Portal under the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, for instance, have details about non-profits which you can use to look for organisations.

Non-profits themselves have information about their impact on their websites. Look at where your money will go by learning about how a non-profit uses its funds and the tangible results it achieves.

Once you decide where to donate, making a donation is easy. Many people donate through a non-profit’s website, mailing in a cheque or donating at an event. You may donate through portals such as Giving.sg, which has links for donations.

More people, too, are using apps to donate small amounts, to the extent that micro-donations are “taking over the planet,” Mr Wohlfeill from CrowdRise observed.

As donation portal Google One Today puts it, “one deed today = a better tomorrow. Just $1 can make an impact”.

And as Winston Churchill said, “we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give”.

There’s hardly a better time than during the festive season to donate, and even small amounts make a huge difference.

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