Cash donations are better than donations in kind

Recent disasters - earthquakes, floods or armed conflicts - show us in concrete terms what people need most. Water, for example, or food, or blankets, or medicines. These are all things we have in abundance. And often we do not even need them because we have long since put them away in the attic or cellar. So it makes sense to take them out and give them to people who need them. For example, by dropping them off at one of the collection points from which the lorries take the donations to disaster areas - such as Afghanistan and Ukraine recently.

However, few people realise that sorting, loading and transporting goods, for example from Germany to disaster areas, requires a lot of resources in terms of time and money. What is more, the goods collected usually do not correspond exactly to the actual needs on the ground, either in terms of their specific nature or their quantity.

One example: After a flood disaster, people have to spend weeks in tents in an emergency camp. The nights are cold. So they need blankets and sleeping bags, which are donated in large numbers. But on the ground, it turns out that the nights are not only cold, but also damp. The down blankets and sleeping bags, about half of the shipment from Germany, turned out to be worthless because down absorbs moisture and loses its thermal insulation. In addition to the work involved in sorting, storing, transporting and delivering the goods, there is also the cost of disposing of them.

This is not an isolated case, and the equivalent value in (lost) money is considerable. If the monetary value of the donated items and the effort involved in sorting and transporting them were available to an effective local organisation to procure the necessary items in the required quality and quantity, many more people could be helped - and much more quickly, of course.

What does this mean for us as donors? Rather than sending goods on an expensive journey without knowing if they will be useful on the ground, we should be sending money on the way - to organisations that are working on the ground and have a proven track record. These organisations are best placed to assess what is really needed, procure the goods and get them to where the need is greatest.

But what happens to the things that fill our warehouses and cellars? We can sell them to people in our area who are looking for exactly what we offer. And we send the money to where it is most needed.

In the end, everyone is helped. The family in our neighbourhood is happy about a cheap down sleeping bag, the family in the refugee camp gets exactly what they need most - and our basement is finally tidy again.

About the author

Stefan Shaw

Founder & Director of Donor Advisory

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I am one of the founders of Effektiv Spenden. If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to send me an email. I will get right back to you.