Sunday Surprise - The Thing About Philanthropy [27-April-25]
You'd think donating money would be easy...
Hello there!
It’s nice being back home and recovering from the jetlag and travel related coughs/colds (though my wife is still in the bouts of illness). The trip to the US slowed down something that I would’ve done
by now: donate the money raised during Ramadan fundraiser. I’ve included all the funds from paid subscribers of this newsletter and all Youtube/affiliate earnings for the month and then doubled it all to donate. That brings the total to about $5600 AUD!
Thank YOU for making it all possible! But it turns out, giving is a bit harder than it seems…
General housekeeping: 90% of the newsletter is completely free. Any links with * are affiliate links. If you’ve enjoyed any of my random creative endeavours/like giving to charity/want to support Substack as an awesome platform, consider subscribing. They take a cut(I can’t actually pay for this awesome service) and I tend to donate most of this to charity, but I do use it as a yard stick to know that people find the content valuable. It should work out to <$2/wk!The Hard Thing with Philanthropy
Growing up, giving was a regular part of our lives — there was Zakat every year, you set aside a portion of what you had, and you gave it to those who needed it most. So when I started working on this project to raise money for the rough sleepers in Melbourne, I thought it would be straightforward - find some charities that seem to be helping and donate. Simple, right?
Even though I’ve been doing this for a few years, it’s a tad more complicated if you start digging into the details.
Given that Eid was nearly a month ago, you would’ve expected the money to be distributed already, but assessing how effective your donations are is surprisingly complicated. Some charities end up spending nearly half of their donations on admin costs, marketing, salaries — all important to some degree, sure, but it does make you wonder how much of your dollar is actually reaching the people you intended to help. So, what I usually end up doing is going through financial reports, trying to piece together where the money really goes. It's not exactly easy reading — and I’m not a financial expert, so I try to do the best I can
After that, I like to get a rough idea of what the dollars actually mean on the ground. Not just "we raised $ XYZ this year!" but something tangible: how many meals? How many nights of shelter? How many people off the streets, even temporarily? I want us to be able to imagine the actual human impact that our giving can have — this is all to help others after all and if it’s not somewhat relatable, how will it feel satisfying that we keep this going?
It’s not just about how much money gets to the front lines either. Sometimes the most "efficient" charities are the least inspiring, and sometimes the weird, slightly messy projects are the ones that make you stop and think, "this could actually change things." One of the ones I have donated to for the past few years is now up and running: the Lord Mayor's project to turn old Melbourne council offices into temporary accommodation for people in need. It sounded like a fantastic idea to take an unused space and turn it into something for the benefit of the community and I’m very pleased that we had some small part to play in that…
The thing is, I'm not an accountant or a nonprofit expert. So this approach is sure to have some errors, but hopefully as I keep doing this, I’ll get better at assessing the charities and also understanding the landscape of what’s possible so we can continue to have greater impact.
And maybe that's part of the deal. Maybe giving isn't supposed to be the most efficient. Maybe it's meant to be a bit inconvenient, a bit messy, a bit of a practice you build over time, like anything else worth doing.
The one thing I have to remind myself in all this is that there's no perfect donation. Sometimes you give with your head, sometimes with your heart, and the important thing is that you remember why you’re doing it in the first place: to help those in need…
Thing to watch
The Why and How of Effective Altruism
This is an old video but defines a few of the key concepts I use when considering how/where to donate. When I first discovered the concept of effective altruism, it fundamentally changed how I looked at philanthropy in general, so if you haven’t heard of the concept, would highly recommend talking the 17 or so minutes to watch.
Cool tech
I’ve been loving the Kindle Scribe for the past few months, but noticed people asking about how it compared to the Boox e-ink reader, so for the sake of the people on Youtube, I ended up buying one to compare! Considering the price is almost the same, I have to say the features might actually end up being better for most people: it’s a full Android tablet with a colour e-ink screen.
I’ve only spent 2 days using it so far so not thorough enough to fully get the ins and outs, but so far, it’s working great!
Weekly Update
I’m very glad all the public holidays meant last week and this week was a short one here in Melbourne! Really did allow the time to settle back in and get into the swing of things.
That said, there were some decent highlights this week. If you’ve over on the Instagram channel, you would’ve seen some of them…
Parents came back from the US - that in itself isn’t odd, but what was odd is coming back to Melbourne and then picking them up. I somehow feel like they’re always there in their house and this broke that illusion
Had a totally unexpected outreach by an interesting brand wanting to work together. Now I haven’t received anything like this before in those terms so I actually thought it was a scam - my marketing friends told me that this is how they reach out normally 🤣
As a result of that, I had to make a “media kit” — I had no idea what it was so just used a Canva template to make it and kept the original “pricing” section so I could ask the marketing folk since I have such a small audience. Now I thought the defaults for 2 posts on Instagram were ridiculously high, but EVERY marketing person I know came back with “double it” 🤯 I think I’m in the wrong career!
There’s a restaurant in Melbourne that we’ve been trying to organise a dinner at for months now. Every time, something comes up and we either cant go or get a booking for the times that suits everyone. Just yesterday, finally ended up going! It was a nice dinner with friends, but just getting there felt like an achievement
We made it on the last day of the most successful art exhibit at National Gallery of Victoria: Yayoi Kusama!
As always, more details and photos over on the blog…
Quote of the week
This week it’s a classic from Confucius…
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