wow, that sounds like a lot. Of the top of my head we gave 0.25% or so, I think. Giving away thousands never crossed my mind. But I also don't believe charities will accomplish much. The "forces of evil" are much too strong so what's the point.. Spend $10k and years to save an injured mountain gorilla, the next day 12 are killed by poachers. yeah why bother? Do people really believe they can affect change?
My girlfriend used to work at a soup kitchen feeding the homeless. They also try to help out the chronically homeless. Like they'll put good candidates up in a halfway house and find them work to do at the charity. Stuff like that.
In the decade plus that the soup kitchen has been opened, they've had one major success story. One guy who lived on the streets and now works regularly with them and lives on his own. Everyone else they've tried to help has fallen back into homelessness because of societal pressure or drug use or mental health or something else.
Despite the fact that they have just the one big success story among the thousands of homeless that they work with, I still think the charity is worth it for a number of reasons.
1.) You can't really quantify how important the charity was to helping the one guy get on his feet and live a nice life.
2.) Homeless regulars come and go and it's very possible that some of the faces that disappear moved on and are making life work somewhere else. And the soup kitchen was a part of that.
3.) Even if most of the chronically homeless are going to be on the streets the rest of their lives, not having to worry about where lunch is going to come from M-F has to make life marginally better for a whole lot of people.
So you should definitely do due diligence when donating to a charity, but I definitely think it is worth it.