Maximize Charitible Giving on Humble Bundle (A Guide)


There’s been a crisis in the US for a number of years, and Trump’s administration is expanding and worsening it. As we’ve seen over the last few days, the response of the American people (and around the world) has been a large rejection of his policies, largely through donations to charitable organisations working for human rights (e.g. the ACLU raised 6 years worth of donations over a single weekend).

But let’s say you’re kinda, sorta interested in donating, but worried about whether your money will be well spent. Perhaps you’re just a bit skeptical of charity work in general, your budget is a bit tight and you want to make sure every penny counts, or you’d like to see something tangible in exchange for your donation? These are not unreasonable positions, and this post is for you.

Humble Bundle is a website that sells games and books (electronic) in steeply discounted bundles, and allows you to allocate part of your payment to charity. Which charity? Why, you get to choose from a large number of charities. This walkthrough has been created to show you how to maximise the amount of money going to that charity (i.e. all of your payment), and how to choose a charity to donate to.

The main Humble Bundle site looks like this, defaulting to one of the game bundles they have.

They often have two game bundles running concurrently, and two book bundles. You’re not required to keep all the items for yourself, many of the items (indeed, the whole bundle) can be ‘gifted’ to someone else. Go to the bundle that you’re interested in, and click the giant green “Pay What You Want!” button.

This will jump the screen down to the bottom of the page, where you will see the following:

Choose the amount you want to pay

And then click on “Choose where your money goes”

With regards to getting your money to a charity, this is the important bit. By default, Humble Bundle splits the money between the developers of the game, the Humble Bundle site themselves, and 1-3 charities.

To maximise the amount that goes to charity, you’ll want to drag the Charity slider all the way to the right. Of course, if you want to allocate this money in a different way, you’re welcome to do so (I typically do a 10-80-10 split between developer-charity-Humble Bundle).

Bear in mind, though, that the “Charity” section usually consists of 1-2 charities that Humble Bundle has chosen, and a third one that you get to decide on. You’ll need to click on the ‘Charity’ word to pop that open.

In my case, my last payment went to Planned Parenthood South, but lets say you’re interested in the ACLU. You’ll need to click on that underlined charity.

And search for a charity that you’re interested in.

All of these charities appear to be regional. I emailed the ACLU about this to figure out what the deal was: roughly 50% of what you send to a regional ACLU branch will go to that branch, and the other 50% will go to their national budget. So donating to a regional branch does *not* limit the money to just that branch. I haven’t contacted the other charities (such as Planned Parenthood), but I would expect many of them to be similar.

Your Charity drop down should now look something like

But you want to maximise the funds going to the ACLU, of course, so you can drag that slider all the way to the right as well.

And now you just scroll down and choose your payment method.

Again, I’m presenting this merely for people who are reluctant to donate in general: you get something in return for your money here, and the bundles are typically worth several hundred dollars, if you were to purchase the items individually. Moreover, you can give the games away, and there are sites where you can trade the games as well (technically against the Humble Bundle terms of service, do so at your own risk).

Charity does not have to be entirely altruistic, and you’re not immoral or a bad human for having financial burdens to bear. At least this way you don’t have to worry about ‘extra’ money for charity, you can just put some of your coffee/movie/leisure money to good use *and* get your leisure activity at the same time.

If you feel that this explanation isn’t clear, or would like something else explained, please feel free to leave a comment. 🙂

 

[The charity I usually choose to donate to is The Water Project as I feel my meagre amount of money will do the most good there, but I’ll be pointing my next couple of donations to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.]

 

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