If you were going to give to a charity, how would you decide which?

Would you give to one that makes life easier or more comfortable for the sick/disabled/terminally ill? Would you give to one researching a cure? To one that rescues people from any number of traumatic situations? To raise money for the poor?

You could be motivated by pity and go with a comforting charity. Chances are you've seen someone in rough condition and wish you could do something to cheer them up. But if you're trying to cheer someone up, I'd say the difference in happiness from sick to happy-but-still-sick is so much less than the difference from oppressed/enslaved to free, which would make a rescuing charity a better option. However, you almost never see those people, so there's less empathy there. However, if you donate money to Make A Wish or some such, it's pretty much guaranteed to help somebody, even if it's not huge when compared to the plight of child sex slaves. It's certainly believable that even with your $50 that those kids are still going to be in a pretty similar situation, making it kind of a gamble. So maybe buying a sick kid Super Smash Brothers isn't such a bad option after all.

Speaking of gambles, you could always bet your money on finding a cure. It's a long shot, but the number of lives that would end up saved not only in the present, but also in the future, is just tremendous. This is sort of the lottery of charitable donations. Your money probably won't make a big difference, but if it does, it's certainly going to be a BIG difference.

A thought occurs: I work for my school's fund raising program. This money, theoretically, raises the quality of education that RPI can offer. Either this is cash that would be way better spent on a real charity, or perhaps the butterfly effect is much more massive than playing the odds in the nonprofit game. Who knows?

Unless there has been some sort of comprehensive study as to the most efficient way to give charitably, I'm pretty certain that nobody really has a good idea of how best to give. Not that it's a big concern, since giving money to those in need is still a pretty great thing to do.

A while ago I realized that when you give money to a charity, you aren't really donating your dollars to someone else. You're buying a sense of self-satisfaction, or at least bribing away a feeling of guilt. If I was really a nice guy, I would have taken the twenty bucks I spent on a Bang Camaro t-shirt and given it to kids with cancer. If you were all that wonderful, you'd have spent $00.17 on Ramen instead of $17.00 at some restaurant and pledged the remaining sixteen bucks to starving families in Africa.

Just another step in my never-ending quest to get you to admit you're just a self-serving prick.