OzBargain 2024 Christmas Donations - $40,000 to Charities of Your Choice

scotty on 15/12/2024 - 11:40
Last edited 22/12/2024 - 00:16

Update:

  • 16 Dec: we have reached over 50 charities in the list. Thanks for all the suggestions, but no more will be added.
  • 20 Dec: we have reached over 1000 unique commenters. Donation this year will be $40,000 to 6 most voted charities.

  • 22 Dec: the poll has ended and the community has decided the following charities will receive the donations this year:

    • Cancer Council
    • Royal Flying Doctor Service
    • beyondblue
    • Dementia Australia
    • Lifeline
    • Kids With Cancer Foundation Australia

    I will sort out sending the funds over in the next couple of days.

OzBargain is doing the same donations to the community's choice of charities again this Christmas. Same amount, same rules — thus much copy 'n' paste from last year's post. OzBargain has been donating some of its earnings to charities every June and December for the past decade. Here is a list of past donations if you are interested in which charities we have been donating to.

For this year, OzBargain will be donating at least $30,000 to charity organisations, and whom we donate to depending on your suggestions and votes. I have pre-selected 25 charities from last year's Xmas donation poll. However, community can use the "Suggestion" box in the top-level comment to suggest more charities to the poll. Please note that I'm travelling at the moment, at hotels with crappy Internet, so suggestion-approval might take sometime.

Add your poll suggestion here

If you are suggesting a charity, please also

  • Check the current poll to make sure your suggestion is not already in the list.
  • Provide a link in the comment.
  • Add one or two sentences on what this charity is about, to help the community to decide.

The poll will run until Sunday 22 Dec @ 12AM. After poll expires, votes will be revealed and we will divide up the final donation amount to give to the top 6 charities. Donations will then be made over the weekend before Christmas.

Moreover, for each unique commenter in this forum post, we will be donating an extra $10 (capped at $10,000 extra) to the total sum of donations. For example, if there are 500 OzBargain users commented in this post, we'll be donating $35,000 to 6 different charities ($5,834 each). If 1000 OzBargainers commented, $40,000 will be donated ($6,667 each).

Note to the Charities

This is a poll for the OzBargain users. This is not a contest between charities, and please do not ask your staff or followers on your social media to vote for you here. We had similar incidents happen in the past and those charities got disqualified from receiving donations.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Which charity should I suggest?

There are some limitations on the charity that a user may suggest:

  • It must be a registered charity eligible for DGR (deductible gift recipient). That would make NPOs like Wikipedia & some international charities ineligible.
  • As we are OzBargain, it would be great if the charity is Australia based or benefits Australians.
  • The suggestion feature will also be closed after having 50 charities on poll.

Please note that all the suggestions will have to be manually approved by the moderators, so they might not show up straight away.

Q: Why is foo charity on the list? Why is bar charity NOT on the list?

All the charity organisations are suggested by the community (either this year, or from previous years). If you think certain charity organisation ought to be on the list, please suggest it (provided that we haven't reached the 50 options limit). If you do not think a certain charity should be there, please leave a comment in the post, and use "Report" to notify a moderator. We will assess your claim and decide whether to remove that charity from the list.

Q: Any bargain?

Free $10 to the top charity when you comment!

Poll Options expired

Site Discussion

Comments

  • Own3d on 19/12/2024 - 23:48

    Great work Ozb!

  • Alpha-q on 20/12/2024 - 00:17

    10 from my end

  • zombree18 on 20/12/2024 - 00:36

    Merry Christmas, thanks for maintaining a great website.

  • currentfad on 20/12/2024 - 00:53

    Thanks

  • Bytelover on 20/12/2024 - 01:13

    +10

  • Lucky Lady on 20/12/2024 - 04:05

    $10 more

  • Kirkitplayer3 on 20/12/2024 - 04:13

    Lets do it!

  • dono2 on 20/12/2024 - 07:16
    +2

    Next to those charity's, should be what they take out of donations for administration, marketing costs etc.

    Those clowns at the McGrath foundation took 62% for expenses marketing ect.

    • Bidet Mate on 20/12/2024 - 09:32

      It's an incredibly murky hole to go down. I have spent time quite deep in orgs like World Vision and even in more 'reputable/frugal' groups like theirs the money wastage is insane.
      The issue is the sniff test of seeing how much goes to admin gets messy when they start combining it into project cost. Eg they will say something like 5% Legal, 10% Admin, 10% Advertising, 75% projects. But they don't have the resolution to show that 'project' costs involve flying some group of Aussies overseas to do some brain storming for a project, get happy snaps and fly home. Or bribe local officials to get the rights to 'help' the region. Proof of this was how the former head of World Vision was able to divert millions to HAMAS before being caught.

      Another example is a friend of mine was flown by their charity to a SE Asian country where they had a week-long conference talking about strategies for fundraising. The end result was over a week of comped expenses (by my estimate >$200k for the group involved) where the outcome was basically just a free holiday while discovering that people like to feel good about their donations or some shit. I read their main presentation, it could have been an email, or if they desperately needed face to face discussion, a zoom call.

      Another hard pill to swallow is that not-for-profit only means the company. The CEO's are usually on 300k+ in Aus, and the US heads often well into the millions.

      The end result is I've gone from being a massive proponent of charity giving to someone that only gives to one small charity, and instead gives everything directly to people/causes I care about.

      • OZB Al on 20/12/2024 - 09:45

        "The CEO's are usually on 300k+ in Aus", while this may be true of the larger charities I'd say there are smaller ones on this list where that is definitely not the case and I wouldn't want to tar them all with the same brush.

        • Bidet Mate on 20/12/2024 - 09:48

          After looking into/being around enough of them, I am quite happy to tar them with the same brush personally.
          I haven't yet found a charity with >20 employees that wasn't wasting money.
          More than happy to be proven wrong though. I would actually love it tbh.

    • Bidet Mate on 20/12/2024 - 09:50
      +1

      I've gotta give one final example that I have to be a bit vague about though. I recently went to Afghanistan, in some of the remote villages I went to there were outright broke and hungry families due to the Taliban rules for women, and the husbands being dead. I was able to, for ~$300, give these large families 3+ months of healthy decent food. For about $2k this small town had it's starvation eliminated for the next 3 months. For this all I needed was a local brave enough to drive me around in secret at night time for deliveries and translate for me, and of course $2k cash. I was able to do basically the same thing in central Kabul but used a different method I can't describe without risking the locals.

      …Meanwhile, up the road, were UN, UNHRC and a bunch of charities/NGO's. They rolled around in prados with full taliban convoys living a very comfortable life, and from what I saw and heard, doing sweet F all for the actual locals. Taliban were making bank though…

      So the confronting question is, how could my dumb ass manage what they couldn't? The only logical answer is they don't try, and don't deserve our money… sadly.

      My advice is don't ever trust someone to do charity for you, do it yourself. You don't even have to go to the middle east. Guaranteed there are people in need in your direct sphere of influence that need help. Soup kitchens, churches, mosques etc are a great launch pad if you're stuck.

      Sorry for the big rants. it's just something I'm getting more and more negatively passionate about. We aussies donate $13B to charity. I would challenge you to find $100m (1%) of food donations somewhere…

    • ironclad on 20/12/2024 - 12:09
      +2

      It’s good to consider how effective a charity is, but judging that from something like what percentage of funds are spent on overheads isn’t a good way to do it. Need to look at what the charity achieves, in terms of impacting the lives of charity recipients, per $1 donated.

      There are plenty of charities with very low overheads that are highly ineffective and wasteful because the way they spend the donated funds (beyond overheads) is inefficient or ineffective. Likewise there’s some charities with high overheads that still achieve incredible outcomes because of what their funds are spent on and how they spend them.

      These are some of the principle behind the “Effective Altruism” movement, which is 100% worth reading up on. The Life You Can Save book is an amazing primer on these and related concepts.

      There are also organisations like Give Well who are dedicated to doing this sort of research - not delivering charity themselves, but rather figuring out how effective other charities are, to help identify charities where the maximum impact will be delivered for every $ donated.

      If you want a TL;DR version of all this - donate money to any of the charities recommended by Give Well and you can be sure your money is being very well spent, irrespective of exactly what percentage is spent of overheads vs actual charitable outcomes. Or donate to organisations like Effective Altruism Australia or The Life You Can Save Australia, who will aggregate and on-donate it to highly effective charities (often selected directly from Give Well research and recommendations).

  • Schema on 20/12/2024 - 07:20

    Yoink $10

  • taurenpally on 20/12/2024 - 07:23

    $10

  • Spacedkp on 20/12/2024 - 07:25

    Amazing work all!

  • SkylerVic on 20/12/2024 - 07:27

    10 dollaridoos

  • OZKap on 20/12/2024 - 07:34

    Lots of great charities here, thanks for all your work

  • quackster on 20/12/2024 - 07:36

    Well done, great initiative :)

  • hambar on 20/12/2024 - 07:45

    Thx

  • hubs1982 on 20/12/2024 - 07:50

    Good job bro!

  • mebored on 20/12/2024 - 07:59

    Donation Comment :)

  • Benjamin7711 on 20/12/2024 - 08:10

    Legendary

  • Lu68 on 20/12/2024 - 08:11

    cancer council gets my vote.

  • Natdog on 20/12/2024 - 08:13

    Add another $10

  • Kooka4 on 20/12/2024 - 08:14

    Great initiative - well done - another $10

  • TINYTWREX on 20/12/2024 - 08:17

    I've been on here for many years and I'm surprised I didn't notice this, very cool! +10

  • CemOz on 20/12/2024 - 08:18

    Good stuff guys - all the best!

  • Muddled dead on 20/12/2024 - 08:18

    Great work Scott

  • ozbloke2 on 20/12/2024 - 08:27

    +$10 cheers

  • joshash on 20/12/2024 - 08:31

    Theres my 10

  • OzB4Me on 20/12/2024 - 08:32

    +$10

  • iChrist on 20/12/2024 - 08:32

    +$10

  • RoseViper on 20/12/2024 - 08:35

    Great work. Here's another $10

  • manwithtwobrains on 20/12/2024 - 08:39

    Ozb rocks!

  • BenR31415 on 20/12/2024 - 08:39

    Thanks for everything Scotty!

  • treeman on 20/12/2024 - 08:41

    Thanks!

  • scissorspaperrock on 20/12/2024 - 08:42

    +$10, massive thanks for your hard work Scotty.

  • jemson on 20/12/2024 - 08:42

    +$10

  • onion futures on 20/12/2024 - 08:48

    +$10

    cheers!

  • Mooz0rs on 20/12/2024 - 08:49
    • $10.
      Thank you for this. 🫶
  • rajsez on 20/12/2024 - 08:50

    Awesome initiative by Ozbargain to give back to the Community 💕

  • Sebajun on 20/12/2024 - 08:51

    Plus 10, cheers!

  • masteraj on 20/12/2024 - 08:58

    $10 comment. Such a lovely thing to do at Xmas time!

  • CS118 on 20/12/2024 - 08:59

    +$10

  • grumpyalby on 20/12/2024 - 09:01

    Lifeline Volunteer counsellors are on the phone 24/7! 24/7! What Treasures! (and what a bargain service.)

  • bmxr on 20/12/2024 - 09:01

    +10 thank you!

  • chocsyrup on 20/12/2024 - 09:02
    +1

    +$10 :)

  • Rebound 123 on 20/12/2024 - 09:02

    +$10

  • shaybear on 20/12/2024 - 09:07

    Thank you for organising this every year! Here is my $10 comment. My vote was for Orange Sky. So many people are experiencing homelessness and hardship right now, it feels like the right choice. All of these charities seem very worthy. I'm excited to see who is awarded the big donation!

  • Davelovesdealz on 20/12/2024 - 09:09

    cha ching

  • Lil0leMe on 20/12/2024 - 09:09

    $10.
    Been on OzB for a while, I'm surprised to learn about this only now. Great idea though, love it

  • flpy on 20/12/2024 - 09:11

    +$10

  • elrotundo on 20/12/2024 - 09:15

    Great initiative - Merry Christmas to all

  • Indiana1501 on 20/12/2024 - 09:17

    Keep up the good work! Merry Xmas all! ;-)

  • Whatdafaq on 20/12/2024 - 09:21

    thanks

  • arkosh on 20/12/2024 - 09:24

    Thanks Ozbargain!

  • Loopholio on 20/12/2024 - 09:25

    +$10 if you would good sir.

  • jthurley on 20/12/2024 - 09:26

    +++$10.00 👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌👌

  • hashtagbargain on 20/12/2024 - 09:27

    Keep up the good work scotty!

  • DentArthurDent on 20/12/2024 - 09:28

    +$10, nice 👍

  • fprjet on 20/12/2024 - 09:29

    Because nobody should forget Christmas or anything else is terrible and the quicker we find a cure the better as it is becoming increasingly more common.

  • Calljennycraig on 20/12/2024 - 09:33

    Commendable initiative. Thank you

  • sneezyd on 20/12/2024 - 09:36

    I didn't know you guys did this every year. Well done. This is amazing!

  • IridiumFlare on 20/12/2024 - 09:40

    $10

  • Mooney664 on 20/12/2024 - 09:49

    Another $10, thanks boss!

  • Luminous on 20/12/2024 - 09:53

    $10.00 comment

    Love your work Scotty

  • fedwood on 20/12/2024 - 09:56

    Thanks

  • unbelievable on 20/12/2024 - 10:02

    Voted. Thanks OzB, fantastic initiative

  • MrLeE on 20/12/2024 - 10:03

    Great work and great idea

  • Zentra on 20/12/2024 - 10:08

    Merry Christmas! $10 Donation Comment!

  • Scooter77 on 20/12/2024 - 10:10

    JDRF, two family members have type 1 one was a child and the other mature adult when they developed. Every bit helps find a cure.

  • Husks on 20/12/2024 - 10:11

    Good on you Ozbargain.

  • lacr on 20/12/2024 - 10:15

    Thanks bought 10

  • Scotty 350 on 20/12/2024 - 10:18

    Great to be thinking of others at this time of year

  • silverwings on 20/12/2024 - 10:19

    👍

  • bobwokeup on 20/12/2024 - 10:33

    Thanks for giving back OzBargain

  • Lucky1 on 20/12/2024 - 10:38

    $10 comment

  • Samalambargain on 20/12/2024 - 10:51

    Thank you

  • DaveDee on 20/12/2024 - 11:02

    Great work all!

  • Msfrugal on 20/12/2024 - 11:03

    Having a mum with dementia is shattering my heart….. it is so painful to be losing her and I pray that she be taken home to the other side of the veil when she becomes so bad that there is no quality of life. And also that if I go same way that I can choose to request they end my life when no cognition as it’s agony to keep someone alive and suffer- my personal heartbreak 💔

  • OL123 on 20/12/2024 - 11:04

    Wonderful work!

  • JayM on 20/12/2024 - 11:05

    Here's another 10 dollary-doos

  • Scot on 20/12/2024 - 11:13

    Oz Harvest gets my vote! Helping feed people all year round!

  • Nixon2142 on 20/12/2024 - 11:18

    $10 comment

  • FloatingPoint on 20/12/2024 - 11:29

    donation += $10

  • dlovep on 20/12/2024 - 11:44

    The worthiest comment of the year, keep up the good work ~~

  • Petakin on 20/12/2024 - 11:58

    +$10 for Pets of the Homeless pretty please

  • scotty on 20/12/2024 - 11:59
    +3

    Hi all. I believe the number of unique commenters have already reached more than 1000 so the donation this year will be at $40,000, or $6,667 to each of the 6 charities voted.

    • Coastie on 20/12/2024 - 21:46

      Amazing Scotty, thank you for all you and the team do

  • ozice on 20/12/2024 - 12:04

    $10 for MSF. They do life saving work work in terrible conditions

  • ironclad on 20/12/2024 - 12:10

    Another $10 - thanks!

  • ccasey on 20/12/2024 - 12:27

    Love OZB! Thank you Scotty.

  • djsydney on 20/12/2024 - 12:41

    +$10

  • abjsdhasehasee on 20/12/2024 - 12:51

    +10

  • Saitake12 on 20/12/2024 - 12:52

    +$10 mate

  • Tubby18 on 20/12/2024 - 13:01

    +$10. Nice initiative 👏🏼

  • DrPotato on 20/12/2024 - 13:28

    $10 from me. Great initiative Ozb and Scotty!

  • penfold1251 on 20/12/2024 - 13:33

    Brilliant!

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