The ONLY donating I do or have done is volunteer my free time to help others. I work time to time at a soup kitchen to help the homeless and down and out get fed. I worked with Habitat for Humanity to get homelss families a free home.
I will NEVER EVER EVER give a bum money or food. I will give them directions to the nearest shelter. If they can't get there, I might offer to pay the bus fair to there if they keep insisting. Usually that shuts them up cause no one has ever taken me up on that offer.
Look, pan-handlers do it to make money. Those without addictions make DAMN GOOD money by pan-handling. Many news services have put reporters undercover to work as "panhandlers" for a few days or a week to see what they can get. Even at a moderately busy intersection, they were raking in a buck every 30 cars or so on average. This usually meant $60 to $200 a day at a moderately busy intersection. At a very BUSY spot, they could walk out with up to $500 a DAY. These were REPORTERS just trying to see how well they could do.
There was also an expose on a lady (with her face carefully hidden) describing how she worked a regular $60K a year job and then would come home form work, throw on her "bum" outfit and go out to panhandling and making around another $50K per year. She had been doing that for 4 years. Her only problem was getting over the people that treated her "like filth." Yah, she said, most people ignore her, some were beligerent, but quite a few just gave money and moved along. Those that were bilegerent to her she could laugh at them when they left knowing she was making more money just being there in that one spot that day then they probably make in a two week check.
That's the hard part and why more people aren't "panhandling." It's hard getting over that social stigma of being a "bum" even if it's a facade. If you can put that out of your mind, you can make a ton of dough "working" as a bum if you don't shell out cash as soon as you get it for stupid stuff like drugs. All you have to do is get dirty, dress in horrible clothes, look terrible, stink, and hold out your hand or put up a cardboard sign with poor writing skills on it.