Donation
- See also information on donating to the WikiMedia Foundation.
Donation is a gift to a fund or cause, typically for charitable reasons. A donation may take various forms, including cash, services, clothing, food, accommodation, blood or new or used items. Charitable gifts of goods or services are also called gifts in kind.
Donating in someone else's name
It is possible to donate in somebody else's name. Donors do this for various reasons, such as a holiday gift, a wedding gift, or in memory of somebody who has died. The latter case is sometimes requested by the survivors, with the cause usually related to what the person did in his/her life or how he/she died. This is also sometimes done by people if they cannot go to the ceremonies.
Legal aspects
Donations are transfers, or gifts, given without return consideration. This lack of return consideration means that, in common law, an agreement to make a donation is an "imperfect contract void for want of consideration." Only when the donation is actually made does it acquire legal status as a transfer or property. In civil law jurisdictions, on the contrary, donations are valid contracts, though they may require some extra formalities, such as being done in writing.
In politics, the law of some countries may prohibit or restrict the extent to which politicians may accept gifts or donations of large sums of money, especially from business or special interest groups (see campaign finance).
Challenges
Sometimes people perform extraordinary or unusual challenges or feats in order to encourage people to donate to a particular cause. Such people may already receive corporate or other sponsorship, but need donations from a wider audience in order to achieve their financial goals. Some examples of "charity challenges" include celebrities having their heads tonsured, crossing a continent or an ocean alone or with minimal support, or hitchhiking to Morocco.
Overheads
Some organized charities have been criticised for the proportion of financial donations which are used for administrative or operational purposes. Donating directly to a charity (rather than through solicitation), or donating to smaller charities, often tends to reduce expenditure on "overheads". For charitable organizations this information is usually available on government web sites, such as http://www.secstate.wa.gov/charities/consumer_faq.aspx.