Never ever ever ever give money to someone that promise to give it after to charity. There are countless stories with proof of people who never kept the promises. Even if they did give it, they get tax benefit instead of you. It’s worth also (even more) for shop or other places that propose to round up the total and give to charity.
You want to give to charity? Just give to charity, why a middle man ?
Even if they did give it, they get tax benefit instead of you.
No, they don’t.
They literally just don’t have to count the amount you gave them as income. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You can’t profit off of middle manning donations unless you commit fraud.
So, you’re kind of correct. However, you CAN make profit by acting as an ‘organizer’ for the charity event, where the charity pays you the money as a service, but directly gets the donations. See: Games Done Quick, which is a for-profit LLC that the various charities they ‘support’ pay them to put on the event. Of course, this number naturally is likely to end up being a % of the last event’s donations.
I don’t see what that has to do with the premise, which is the somehow donating to charity gives you a net profit because taxes. The real issue here is that people don’t seem to understand taxes (understandable, it’s complex).
Here’s how it works WRT to taxes:
you normally make $X
you receive $Y in charitable donations, and donate that $Y to charity
your taxable income is: $X + $Y - $Y = $X
Middle-manning charitable gifts is net zero tax-wise. The only potential for profit has nothing to do with tax write offs:
pay people involved a salary for operating the charity - only works if you own the nonprofit, and then there are issues if you have people getting paid by both wings (lots of tax scrutiny there)
charity event increases sales of your for-profit venture - e.g. more people watch your other videos or buy your merch - this is why YouTubers do it, but this still has nothing to do with taxes
charge the nonprofit for a spot on a for-profit stage - again, not sure if that’s legal, but they’d have to pay taxes on that income
In short, donating to charity doesn’t somehow make you better off in terms of taxes, at best it helps you with your branding.
Also if your on the charity board etc you can use the funds for “marketing” or “admin fees”. Its a quite common scam that crappy charities only donate like 5% of donations
It’s usually people who weren’t thinking of giving to a charity until the charity host did it. And it’s usually also done for in return for entertainment.
So while there’s definitely an overarching goal to get something to a charity, it’s usually about grabbing people who would normally not think about doing it.
Because A) you have to research the charities as a lot of them give very little (or sometimes don’t, in this case) to the actual cause they are championing, and 2) sometimes people are more likely to donate to a face they know rather than an organization.
iirc Crit1kal used to donate practically all of his YouTube earnings to charity waaaaaay back in the day with pics of the monies being given. No idea if he does it now still, but I’m confident he would show the receipts if it was in question.
I’d rather just donate to the charity in question. Why funnel it through a middle man when I could just donate it straight to the source?
If they’re selling other merch and profits go to a charity, I evaluate it as a sale, not as a charity, and only buy if I want the item for that price.
People like to make the argument about the money going to admin costs instead of productive work, but I think that’s silly because that admin costs will need to be paid by someone. If I trust a charity to allocate bulk funds properly, I should also trust them to allocate other funds properly as well. Money is fungible, so all that earmarking does is make their accounting work harder.
Never ever ever ever give money to someone that promise to give it after to charity. There are countless stories with proof of people who never kept the promises. Even if they did give it, they get tax benefit instead of you. It’s worth also (even more) for shop or other places that propose to round up the total and give to charity.
You want to give to charity? Just give to charity, why a middle man ?
No, they don’t.
They literally just don’t have to count the amount you gave them as income. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You can’t profit off of middle manning donations unless you commit fraud.
So, you’re kind of correct. However, you CAN make profit by acting as an ‘organizer’ for the charity event, where the charity pays you the money as a service, but directly gets the donations. See: Games Done Quick, which is a for-profit LLC that the various charities they ‘support’ pay them to put on the event. Of course, this number naturally is likely to end up being a % of the last event’s donations.
I don’t see what that has to do with the premise, which is the somehow donating to charity gives you a net profit because taxes. The real issue here is that people don’t seem to understand taxes (understandable, it’s complex).
Here’s how it works WRT to taxes:
Middle-manning charitable gifts is net zero tax-wise. The only potential for profit has nothing to do with tax write offs:
In short, donating to charity doesn’t somehow make you better off in terms of taxes, at best it helps you with your branding.
Also if your on the charity board etc you can use the funds for “marketing” or “admin fees”. Its a quite common scam that crappy charities only donate like 5% of donations
And fraud is not something youtubers is known for!
That’s not the point. It’s the constantly repeated “they get tax benefits” lie despite that never being the case.
It’s usually people who weren’t thinking of giving to a charity until the charity host did it. And it’s usually also done for in return for entertainment.
So while there’s definitely an overarching goal to get something to a charity, it’s usually about grabbing people who would normally not think about doing it.
Because A) you have to research the charities as a lot of them give very little (or sometimes don’t, in this case) to the actual cause they are championing, and 2) sometimes people are more likely to donate to a face they know rather than an organization.
iirc Crit1kal used to donate practically all of his YouTube earnings to charity waaaaaay back in the day with pics of the monies being given. No idea if he does it now still, but I’m confident he would show the receipts if it was in question.
I’d rather just donate to the charity in question. Why funnel it through a middle man when I could just donate it straight to the source?
If they’re selling other merch and profits go to a charity, I evaluate it as a sale, not as a charity, and only buy if I want the item for that price.
People like to make the argument about the money going to admin costs instead of productive work, but I think that’s silly because that admin costs will need to be paid by someone. If I trust a charity to allocate bulk funds properly, I should also trust them to allocate other funds properly as well. Money is fungible, so all that earmarking does is make their accounting work harder.