Giving donations is fraught with frictions of all kinds.  For example my wife and I once gave some money to a nonprofit only to suffer a year of verysolicitations for more money.

I think this is just amazingly and delightful.  Giving Anonymously is a small nonprofit in Washington state that facilitates giving money to others anonymously.  They clear about $75 thousand dollars a month at this point.  This lets you avoid the social frictions of donations.  It avoids any suggestion that your dontation is a form of status seeking.  It avoids any suggestion that the donation is just another market transaction.

So what could you use this for?

1. Help a neighbor, coworker, friend, … in need
2. Help your club without revealing how rich you are
3. Say thanks to the person who did all that work for the recent event
4. Avoid the embarrassment of a public thank you when donating to the event
5. Use it create a hard to fake signal
6. Use it to demonstrate it to another, a potential donor
7. Give money to things one might not have expected.

I really like #2.  If you are trying to fund some club’s operations it is brilliant.  It is very likely your club’s community of members has some very very wealthy people in it.  But they have little desire for that fact to be known.  By offering all your members the opportunity to make anonymous donations you create a way for the rich members to help without insisting that they break cover.

For gifts of less then $500 they charge nothing, though you can give a bit to help them along.  That’s pretty amazing when you block out what their credit card charges, mailing costs, check processing fees, etc. are so say nothing of the labor.  Well actually, they are apparently entirely run by volunteer labor.  It must be strange working there!  Apparently they listen to every phoned in thank you message before forwarding them back to donors.  Listening to a few on their site makes it clear that would be emotional work!

To give money you’ll need:

1. a credit card or a bank account,
2. the snail mail address for your recipient, and then
3. either an email address or a phone number.

Try it!