I know it’s counter to the expectations of the season. Besides Giving Tuesday, many organizations (including our local CBS news) are in the midst of a month of giving. Culturally, giving is a good thing. But it isn’t purely positive.

Giving Opens Floodgates

My motivation for writing this blog is the deluge of text messages, emails, and snail mails asking for money. I’m steeped in the downside of giving: once you are on a list, you are doomed.

The organization or cause you originally donated to seeks more frequent and/or bigger donations.

Selling mailing lists can generate lots of revenue. Once an organization has a list of reliable donors, they often sell that list to other entities. Donors are then inundated with with requests for further donations to entirely new organizations!

Donations to political candidates trigger requests from other candidates in the same party. These can come from all over the country. Supporting a candidate at the national level opens you up to solicitations from state and local candidates—not necessarily your own state or locale!

Some solicitations come with a “free gift” to create guilt or an obligation to donate. Often these gifts are of poor quality or completely useless to the recipient. One organization sent me so many free gifts that I doubted how much of my donation was actually going to forward the stated mission. I stopped donating to that group altogether.

Responding to a mail solicitation can trigger follow-up phone calls as well.

Giving ’til It Hurts!

Once, I volunteered my time and professional know-how for a set number of hours on set days per week. That morphed into requests for special events and monetary contributions. I doubt I’m alone in this experience.

I’m currently voluntarily teaching a memoir class a few times per year. Fortunately, I enjoy it. There is considerable social pressure to continue doing so.

When I searched this topic online, I found that giving can have negative effects on the donor, including financial strain and instability, high tax burdens, loss of personal wealth, emotional guilt and anxiety, burnout and compassion fatigue, and neglect of personal relationships, potentially weakening social cohesion and exacerbating inequality if generosity creates donor-recipient hierarchies. In short, I learned that there are more serious drawbacks than the irritation factor that started me down this path.

Further Reading

Here are a few sources you might wish to pursue.

The Other Side of Charity: 10 Shocking Negative Effects of Generosity Unforeseen Consequences of Giving by Richard Wilson

The Dark Side of Being a Giver: Discussing Martyrdom, Low Self-Worth, and Giving to Get by Shoba Sreenivasan and Linda Weinberger, posted March 18, 2019

There’s A Downside To Giving (And It Has Nothing To Do With You) by Darrah Brustein
This article discusses problems giving can do to relationships, and how to avoid them.

Philanthropic Harm: How “Doing Good” Can Go Bad by Michael Moody
This article includes the following sections:

• Malfeasance, Corruption, Fraud
• Diversion of Resources
• Reinforcing the Status Quo
• Favoring Philanthropists’ Needs Over Recipients’
• Teleopathy
• Lack of Transparency
• Faulty or Inefficient Strategy
• Faulty or Inefficient Implementation
• Lack of Measurable Impact
• Unintended Consequences
• Short-Term Band-Aids
• Dependency
• Paternalism and Cultural Insensitivity
• Risks for Philanthropists
• Tainted Donors and Tainted Money

According to Charities Aid Foundation 2024 World Giving Index, 76% of U.S. adults helped a stranger, 61% donated money, and 39% volunteered. This gave the U.S. a World Giving Index Score rank of #6 for 2024 (after Indonesia, Kenya, Singapore, the Republic of Gambia, and Nigeria, and just ahead of Ukraine). In short, there’s a lot of giving out there.

Bottom Line: I’d never suggest that people not give, only urge that they consider the unintended side effects.