Office charity drives are already bad enough in that they socially pressure employees to give money. I would be furious if the company I worked for asked me to start recurring donations out of my paycheck. Keep employer-employee relationships to strictly business. I can donate to charity on my own time.
My father mentioned that while working for banks, back in his day (~25 years ago), there were "guidelines" of how much you should donate to $bigNameCharity depending on your position. He was pretty much forced to donate $1500/year, a lot of money back then. Of course, way up the hierarchy, someone was friends with the charity's founders. And of course, these charities paid out huge salaries and expensed extravagant "business trips". Typical.
There's a lot of awful charities out there. I've used "https://www.charitynavigator.org" in the past to determine which charities are worth giving to, or not. However, I've personally interacted with three charities "on the ground" (in Hospital situations): Shriner's (burn unit in Galveston); McDonald's; and, St. Jude's. I 100% guarantee you that those charities are in the business of helping people (kids, in these cases), and doing so for the best-bang-for-their-buck they can. All three are non-religious (if that's important to you).
I think a lot of the people who read HN are probably in a life situation where they can help. Please do so.
I worked at a college and during the hiring process, they tried to coerce you to sign up to automatic payroll deductions for donations to the college itself. I believe it was an opt-in by default, and you had to explicitly opt out by filling out a paper form. I was kind of confused by the absurdity.
Many years ago I worked for a company where the CEO or maybe his wife were associated with the local United Way branch. We were asked to contribute our "fair share" to the United Way campaign. We got a day off or something like that but it was also made very clear that this was not actually optional.
And, yeah, to the other point, while I have subscriptions to various things it's not something I really want to do when I have a choice given that such things tend to be out of sight/out of mind.
It was a little more than that. There was some employer matching of funds, up to a point. And having it come off your paycheck saves a step come tax time.
For charity by companies I agree with your position. But when a company will match your donation (which is given in your name) why not?
I also don't agree with those big name-things donations by HNWs. If you really want to give, why name the thing after yourself? And depending on the charity of billionaires is a sign of a broken system anyway.
