The rise in angry charity

The Future. People feel motivated to donate to charity when something angers them, with viral news headlines acting as rage-motivators to give until you feel like you’ve made a difference. While the cynical view is that clickbaity headlines are trotted out simply to juice up donations, rage giving may actually be a natural human instinct to put your money where your mouth is… and could be an important tool to affect cultural change.

“Rage giving”
FastCompany reports that people love to open their wallets when they’re angry.

• Researchers Jennifer A. Taylor from James Madison University and Katrina Miller-Stevens from Colorado College found that charitable donations skyrocket following tragic or unjust events that go viral, which are dubbed “fury triggers.”
• This phenomenon, called “rage giving,” gives people an “emotional release by channeling their feelings into something they consider positive.”

Charitable giving has spiked this year around gun-control reform following the mass shootings in Uvalde and Buffalo, and abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. One advocacy organization, NARAL Pro-Choice America, saw a 1,400% increase in donations in just 24 hours.

The modern era is perfect for rage giving because of the ease of making donations online. Digital charitable donations have increased 42% in the past three years. It’s hard to angrily mail a check, but it is easy to smash a donate button on an organization’s website.

Talk about channeling your anger into something constructive.