That's exactly what I'm questioning though.
Why would you use your charity budget on that? It's clearly not charity...
Even if you never withdraw it, the principal is still there, and you could withdraw it. It seems odd to me when I actually think about it, to consider Kiva any sort of charitable giving at all.
I'm just confused, can you explain why you feel it fits in a budget category of charitable giving?
So your confusion is that different people might have individualistic definitions when it comes to an abstract moral concept? ;)
I too wouldn't have a problem with considering Kiva charity even though the principal is accessible to me. The point of charity is helping non-reciprocally rather than sacrifice.
I would also consider volunteer work to be charity even though it doesn't cost me a thing. Sometimes I do free tax returns for low-income people. However, if I were receiving, say, credit for a college internship for it, it would seem less like charity to me. I don't feel like I have to sacrifice for it to be charity, but I can't receive anything in return. The possibility that I could have gotten a paid internship instead doesn't change it for me, so, again, sacrifice is not the key component.
Another way of thinking about it: the IRS lets you deduct costs associated with volunteer work (if you itemize). Hypothetically, I would feel comfortable deducting costs if I weren't receiving credit for an internship, but not if I were.
What about if it just looks good on my resume or is valuable work experience? While the crux is that I'm not doing it with the goal of personal gain in mind, I guess general, vague benefits don't disqualify it for me.
What about when you give clothes to Goodwill? You don't want them any more, so you're not "losing" anything the way you do when you give money to a (non-Kiva-type) charity. Yet most people would consider that charity and so does the IRS.
Then there are people who donate enormous amounts of money and get their names on buildings or schools, etc. They get enormous gain in terms of social standing and ego satisfaction. Plus, at that scale, it may be directly responsible for improving their quality of life by making the population more prosperous/educated/safer. Whereas, in a sense, they wouldn't have gained anything from spending the money or putting it in stocks because they already have more money than they could possibly spend in their lives. It's a donation, it's an investment, it's charity. To my mind. So my definitions aren't mutually exclusive.
ARS, it seems like you might not even consider Kiva charity regardless of what happens with your personal principal, because the company is lending it to individuals and charging them interest rather than donating it. (edit: nevermind, looks like there have been other threads about that so you've probably already thought about it.)
To muddy things up even more, there is a Kiva-type lending organization that pays interest. It's called microplace. I would consider that an investment, maybe "socially-responsible investing," and evaluate it in terms of risk and benefits. I got one when they were doing a free promo, so it's definitely not charity in my mind because I'm so obviously benefiting from it and in fact did it specifically with an eye towards the gain I would receive. (To be clear, the promo was that just by signing up and choosing a charity, some sponsor company put in $25 on my behalf. When the term is up, I'll "get back" the $25, plus I've been getting interest in the meantime.)
money I use "helping" is no longer available for "giving," so I group it under "donations,"
Disagree that they can just be categorized the same (and that's the crux of this thread). Why not categorize my food budget for the rest of my family as "donations" - as money I use for it is no longer available for giving, and it helps someone else?
Most people have a sense of how far away someone has to be from them socially for it to be considered charity. There's:
self-interest = self-interest
immediate family or friends = affection
extended family or neighbors = favor
strangers = charity
Of course, it's specific and emotional so you couldn't apply rules to it across the world. For some people a cousin is immediate family. Or if a parent abandons a child and then the child takes care of them later in life, that might be charitable.
As much as I like counterexamples in a philosophical debate this one was a little silly. There are obviously a lot of conditions--other than the one you originally brought up which was what impaire was discussing--that have to be satisfied before something is considered charity. I get tired of the idea that complexity = inconsistency = hypocrisy (and that hypocrisy = bad, but that's a tangent). Ethical reasoning requires discernment and nuance. Just because a category isn't so broad and binary that we could teach a protozoa to make the distinction, that shouldn't be identified as a problem.