Hi everyone,
My company offers something called Community Care Grants (CCGs) — essentially, they’re willing to donate up to $2,000 per year to eligible charities based on either employee donations or volunteer hours.
The structure looks like this:
- 1 hour of volunteering → $50 grant
- 16 hours → $150 grant
- 50 hours → $300 grant
- 100 hours → $500 grant
- 250 hours → $500 grant
- 500 hours → $500 grant
(Yes, it caps out at $2,000 total.)
I started my career in February 2025. I make about $60.80 per hour and pay roughly $1,000/month in “rent” to my parents since I still live at home in the Bay Area. Earlier this year, before learning about the CCG program, I had already donated $1,547 to effective altruism-aligned charities. Unfortunately, that donation doesn’t qualify for the grant match.
My parents have since encouraged me to stop donating large amounts, mainly because they’re skeptical of charities in general — even effective altruistic ones — and they think 10% is too much for someone just starting out. They suggested I limit myself to something like $40/month, so I’ve paused regular donations for now. I plan to make larger contributions later in life, perhaps through my will, and instead of save the money to perhaps make more money like investments or something.
Given that, I see volunteering for CCGs as a meaningful way to continue contributing without impacting my financial stability. So far, I’ve done about 16 hours (split between 8 during work hours and 8 outside) and plan to direct the resulting $200 to something like the Against Malaria Foundation.
However, I’m struggling with whether I have a moral obligation to aim higher — say, 50, 100, 250 or even 500 hours. On one hand, I didn’t give a full 10% of my income this year. On the other, the additional hours would cut a lot of my own personal time, and I’m unsure where to draw the line between moral responsibility and personal comfort.
I also find myself confused by ideas like Schelling points and what constitutes a reasonable personal threshold. How do you all think about balancing moral “shoulds” with practical limits in cases like this?
Thanks for reading — I’d love to hear your perspectives
Hey, I appreciate the response!
This comment is just out of complete curiosity, and even thinking about this I find really distasteful.
Quick question — one thing I’ve noticed is that it seems pretty easy to fake participation in volunteer events, especially virtual ones. Do you think it’s bad to do that just to boost volunteer hours?
For example, I recently did about 8 hours of virtual volunteering. I wasn’t super productive the whole time, but I did technically spend those hours working. Would it be bad to pretend to have done an event that can’t really be ... (read more)