zero

6. Many employed people love to donate an hour of labor in a soup kitchen, but would have substantially bigger positive impact by donating an hour of wages. This happens because, unsurprisingly, people like to be seen as helping.

7. This is the reason why we give out the "I gave blood today" stickers. People donate more when asked by two solicitors rather than one. People will donate exactly as much as is needed to be a “Gold Sponsor”, and no more.

8. In fact, we pretty much only help out when we’re asked by others. Up to 95% of all donations are given in response to a solicitation from someone else.

9. Prime someone with mating cue’s or a team-building motive, and their propensity to do conspicuous good deeds like volunteering goes up drastically. Their propensity to perform unrecognized good deeds? No change.

10. No one likes to acknowledge we want the credit and glory for helping. But in reality, we do it in part to advertise our excess wealth and pro-social orientations. Does realizing we have these selfish motives undercut the real good we do in people’s lives? Of course not.

11. But what’s the take-away of this cynical view? Why acknowledge this ugly truth? As the author’s point out, if we ignore the underlying motives explaining our behavior, our attempts to reform for the better will fail.

12. How can this view help charity? It’s critical to align what society sees as effective charity with what actually is an effective charity. If my research says that the best charity is the “Iodine Global Network”, you have no idea if it’s a scam, if it’s my friends, etc.

13. Given people donate to charity at least in part to be seen helping, we need to be mindful of that and take that into account. It's perfectly natural and the consequence of evolution, and can't be easily changed.