I don’t entirely know how to even START this topic, but I want to talk about ways to give money directly and anonymously to SPECIFIC other people.
There are at least two ways I know of for individuals to most effectively give money directly to STRANGERS who most need it, and one of those is to give money to people on the street who are asking for money, and the other is to leave nice big tips for hotel housekeeping staff. But what I want to know is this: what if you have a specific friend or relative or coworker who needs money, and you know that giving someone money is a surefire way to compromise/ruin a relationship, but you want to give them money? How do you give them money WITHOUT THEM KNOWING IT WAS YOU?
One way is to put cash or a gift card into an envelope and then mail it. Ideally, you would mail it from somewhere you don’t live, and you would address the envelope using your non-dominant hand. The USPS has pretty much tanked that option for me by becoming unreliable. It used to be the case that you could count on the mail arriving where you’d mailed it; the success rate was WELL over 99%. That is no longer ANYWHERE NEAR the case. I DETEST paying bills online, and yet EVEN I have started paying some bills online, because the USPS is so unreliable. I did a test with a friend, where I mailed her ten postcards—and she received only six of them. (Though there’s still time! I still participate sporadically in Postcrossing, and I recently received a postcard that had been mailed EIGHT MONTHS AGO.) (But, like, it was mailed to me from Russia. Not from, like, Missouri.)
Another way, if you and the recipient both belong to the same church, is to give the person the money through a church representative. Huuuuuuuge issue is that there is no way to avoid the church representative knowing about it, which is EXTRA problematic if your church is in line with the whole “don’t give braggily/showily” concept. Huger issue, for me, is that I don’t belong to a church.
Another way is to see if you can arrange the payment of one or more of the recipient’s bills directly with the biller. So, for example, perhaps I could go to the recipient’s vet, or to their electric company, if I know who their vet or electric company is, and ask to make a payment on their account. Privacy laws can mess with this, and also there is no way to know for sure that the person you talk to isn’t going to realize that they could keep the money and no one would know. And, like, do I pay with cash, to make sure I don’t leave a traceable trail? I wondered if I could go to, let’s say the vet, and make a cash payment in the name of the recipient (maybe even implying that I WAS the recipient?), and ask for a receipt, and mail the receipt to the recipient? …This is seeming pretty complicated, and it requires knowledge I generally don’t have, such as which vet someone goes to.
I am pretty sure you can ship things anonymously from Amazon or Target. It seems best to give people MONEY, so that they can buy what THEY consider most important. But if you give someone toilet paper and food, then they can use their toilet-paper-and-food budget to buy something else—so that might be CLOSE ENOUGH to giving them cash. I don’t like this, though. I am imagining someone sending me shampoo and conditioner and soap and food, and having those items be very different than what I would have chosen. There are layers of dignity here, and of life satisfaction. It’s one thing if I go to a food pantry, where I know I will be choosing among the things other people have donated; it’s different if someone sends me already-chosen things directly. And there can be all kinds of things I wouldn’t know: perhaps their septic system is picky, perhaps someone has an allergy.
It is of course easier to anonymously give a smaller amount of money. You can tuck a $20 into someone’s coat pocket without a whole lot of thought or subterfuge. But what if you want to give $100? $500? $1000? $10,000? I feel like if there were good ways to do this, they would be known already, and I wouldn’t have to ask. But what if this isn’t a common issue and so it hasn’t been explored? What if hardly anyone is looking to give money anonymously? What if we can be the ones to explore it? What if our hive mind has the answers?
LET’S SAY you wanted to give a particular person $1,000, and you didn’t want them to know it was you: How would/could you do it? Or from another angle: Let’s say someone wanted to give you $1,000, and they didn’t want you to know it was them? How could they do it?
I have done this successfully only once and I don’t think it’s replicable, but I’ll share. A grandparent died and left me (and all their grandkids) some money. I asked my mom to set aside some of my inheritance to pass on to this person with the explanation that my grandparent heard of their need and wanted to help. It worked. The cash got to them and they didn’t have to feel awkward around me and they were thankful to my grandparent.
We are in the position to financially help friends and family at times. We don’t make a big deal of it. We’ve sent checks in the mail with thinking of you notes. Now, I’m wondering if that’s a good idea going forward after reading about your USPS tests. So far, we’ve never had a mail problem. More recently, we’ve used venmo, especially with younger relatives, but venmo doesn’t always let you make large gifts at once.
Honestly, I don’t think I would want to receive an anonymous gift. I would feel strange that someone noticed my need and pitied me. I would hate not knowing. That’s why I made up the gift-from-grandparent ruse. I’ve had good luck with being very matter of fact about wanting to help, keeping it light and simple. We’ve got it, you need it, no problem. The key is to have zero expectations when giving. You think you’re helping replace a furnace and they take a vacation instead. You’ve just got to be ok with it.
Could you try buying yourself or a family member a digital gift card and see if you can send or email it anonymously? Or send it to them using their own email address as the sender?
Could you courier the card and cash or the physical gift card? I’ve never used a courier so I have no idea how much they cost but it could be minimal compared to $1,000. You could also mail it but pay for a mail service that requires a signature.
Whatever you do I think you need to include something so they know it’s for them. If you find $20, that’s lucky. If you find $20,000, that’s crime money and you need to leave it alone.
Yes, I think if I found $1000+ in my mailbox with no explanation I would feel worried rather than lucky, even if I really needed it. I would need some way to explain why I should keep it.
We actually did this. We got a money order anonymously & put it in their mailbox. I don’t know if they ever figured it out.
I’ve done this. I could not figure out a way to get a money order without it having my name on it or, if I left my name off, it potentially causing problems with them depositing it (I talked to the cashier about it and couldn’t find a good workaround), so I did cash. I knew which church the recipient went to, so I went to their church and asked them to give them the money. My backup plan was sticking it in their mailbox, but putting that much cash in a mailbox made me nervous and I didn’t want to be seen putting the envelope in there.
I assume they don’t live close / you don’t know their address and you can’t sneak an envelope into their letterbox?
Do they go to a supermarket where their name would be known – can you go in and anonymously put money on their account / similarly to how people pay it forward sometimes at a Starbucks etc?
Do you have to put a sending address for something like sending flowers in the US? You don’t necessarily in Australia. Can you sneak an envelope into the bottom of a box of flowers?
I am very much in a wishful thinking and ridiculously hopeful frame of mind here, but it’s easy to do that when I’m in another country and also removed from the circumstances. I hope that it’s not too serious a matter (I’m not asking for details) and I love that you’re being thoughtful and kind as always.
I think if I wanted to send money, I might use FedEx or ups or something with tracking. It might cost $25 but that cost is low relative to the amount of money. For a smaller sum like $100, maybe a grocery store/walmart gift card.
If you know for sure where they bank, you can make a deposit to their account. The bank cannot confirm they are a customer and the bank will need to have YOUR identifying information but the bank can shield your information from the recipient. I recognize there are lots of situations where this option won’t work.
If you are local, I agree that the money order or gift card in an envelope with a generic, ‘thinking of you’ note dropped off at their house is a good option. Maybe doing it via their workplace could be a way of making it more anonymous as they might think it is from a colleague? I’m thinking of an envelope dropped off at reception but this depends greatly on their type of workplace.
Or, perhaps if they have kids enrolled in anything at all, you could pay some fees anonymously?
This is a generous, beautiful question to bring to the hive mind!
Unfortunately a lot of banks will not allow depositing without knowing the specific account number, even if you know the person has an account with them. It has the potential to get too messy- what if they have several different accounts, or only joint accounts with other people, what if there are multiple people with the same name, what if it’s a secret account and by accepting the deposit they inadvertently expose that the person has an account to someone who should not know about it, etc. The potential is there for liability and most banks want to stay far away from that.
One more thing: for really large sums, people can hire a lawyer and it gets held in escrow and paid out anonymously. This isn’t efficient for $1000 but works for really big amounts. Another option for the really big amounts is creating a Foundation which can pay the money out. Obviously, this isn’t what you are looking for (I don’t think!) but just some trivia.
yesss! This was my suggestion for large sums.
Like Great Expectations!
You can create a go fund me that is listed as Organized by a friend or anonymous. The platform needs to know who you are, but it doesn’t necessarily make that information public.
If you are good with an Amazon/target/grocery store gift card you can arrange for those to be shipped anonymously. I would think a $1000 at my local grocery store would be very useful to free up $1000 elsewhere.
If you really want to send cash and feel iffy about the post office you can send it fedex or ups, it is a little bit not infinitely more expensive. I would think about the priority mail at the post office though which is a little cheaper and can still come with tracking. Also you do not need to write with your non dominant hand. You can just type the address label.
if someone set up a gofundme for me without my knowledge or consent i would evanesce
If the person has a child you could pay off lunch or school balances anonymously through the school. I’ve heard of people giving anonymous donations to a school to pay off lunch balances and or school fees so I believe it’s something that can be done.
When I worked for a community hospital, people would call in to pay off other individuals bills. We would then call the individual and tell them an “angel” had paid off their bill.
For large sums, I was going to suggest the lawyer route that Elizabeth suggested above.
I’m glad you mentioned dignity because that is a very good consideration. I know people less well off that would honestly be offended by charity. I assume you will know these people well and understand how they will feel.
My husband did this a few years ago. Without my knowledge. It was within church though. He bought gift cards and then had an older church friend be the one to deliver them anonymously on his behalf. I don’t know if she did it in person – it probably was, because he could have just put it in their church mailbox himself otherwise. I don’t even know what stores the gift cards were to. Maybe something like Walmart.
Can you do it through PayPal or Venmo? My Mum sends me money internationally through PayPal. Though maybe you can’t be anonymous then? Unless you set up a fake Venmo?
I know this isn’t the question, but is it absolutely essential for the gift to be anonymous? If I were to receive a substantial anonymous donation I would not stop wondering who it was from or whether there was some sort of mistake.
I once wanted badly to make a significant gift to someone I knew was in need. After a lot of hand-wringing I decided to just give her the money matter-of-factly. I sent her a short email, explaining that I had this $ in my budget, would like her to have it, and would be sending it via Venmo. She expressed her gratitude once, over email, and we never spoke of it again. I got the idea from a friend who had struggled financially for years and told me that she felt most comfortable with direct, no-nonsense donations.
(Or, you could set up a fake email account and send a digital gift card that way. But I’d worry about it going into spam …)
Also chiming in for at least considering doing it non-anonymously. Life is such that some people catch lucky breaks and others don’t, and it’d be nice if we could all be a little more clear-eyed about how sometimes the best thing is a little help before the bad luck starts to snowball. Although of course, you know the actual personalities involved.
Yes, my instinct is that if the gift made non-anonymously would seriously compromise the relationship, perhaps giving the gift anonymously is not the right thing to do either.
I have done this with strangers. I think I gave $1500 to a TSA agent during a shutdown. I read a story in the paper about this specific person who had just bought a house and then the eejits stopped paying them. (This was at least FDT the first time)
I contacted the author of the article and offered to give money. I can’t remember HOW the money went. Like even a little. Did I send a check? No idea. But it was facilitated through the reporter.
I did it again last year. Someone wrote a story of a woman in New Orleans who wanted to go to beauty school but was hampered by an old loan from a time at community college. It was one of those “this is how we fuck up Black People’s lives AGAIN” (also poor people), by telling them college is the thing without facilitating the circumstances FOR college. I can’t remember. She wasn’t into it? Circumstances made it impossible to continue. Something. Anyway. I also contacted the reporter and she facilitated the money. This one sent me a note and was excited and that’s all I heard from her. And that is fine. I think that was a paypal transfer?
I think of it was someone known to me, I would probably just tell them. Look, I have some money. You need some money. I will give it to you. No strings. We will never speak of this again unless you bring it up.
Oh. I have ALSO called the local grocery store and purchased gift cards (small, in town, family owed IGA) for people who randomly asked for money or food on facebook and told them to pay it forward if they could. So I called, purchased a gift card and had it held at customer service under the recipient’s name.
It’s super fun. Recommend! I want to win the lottery so I can scale up.
I’ve done this before and I got a money order from the bank. It was filled out by the bank employee so my writing wasn’t on it. Then I had one of my kids address the envelope. I think if I did it today, I would want to tuck the envelope into their door to avoid the post office, but so many people have ring doorbells now.
My husband lost his job in 2020 and someone sent us $100 cash anonymously in the mail. We were fortunate to not need it at that time, so I saved it until he found a new job and then used it to take our family out for a celebratory dinner. I posted on Facebook as a way of thanking the person. I suspect it was either someone I worked with at the time, or a friend of the family. It was a very thoughtful gesture.
I like the idea of giving the money either by money order or gift card – but you still have the issue of how to get it to them.
Our neighbor did pay our utility bill once (or send $ to the utility company toward our account) because my husband gave them some landscaping dirt or something and they wanted to pay us back. So we did know it was them, but maybe it could be done anonymously.
Could you get a prepaid and tracked envelope at the post office (pretty sure they still have those- it’s been several years since I lived in the US)? You don’t have to write a return address but (a) there’s a tracking number so you know if it gets there and (b) I suspect they treat those with more care than ordinary mail. You could mail it from a different town – pretty sure since they are prepaid you can just drop them in a mailbox or drop off at a post office. (If you turn it in at the desk the clerk may hassle you for a return address. But I am 99% sure you can just drop them in the box at the post office and then check the tracking online.)
I have sent grocery gift cards in a “Thinking of You” card which I left blank. They could reuse the card if they wanted to, but mostly it was so they knew it was an intentional gift. Pretty sure I typed the envelope with “The _Surname_ Family”.
There is still the issue of reliability of postage though.
I like the idea of super useful gift cards delivered via Fed Ex You could put them in a card and even write (or type!) a note saying use it in good health or whatever. Their local grocery, Amazon, etc., seem like you said, to be useful for spending money anyway. I hate paying fees on cash cards but there might be a way to do it through your bank or credit card which is cheaper. I love the idea of a $1,000 cash card that someone can just use for whatever they want. For the record, if I found $5,000 cash in my mailbox I would spend that money like the gift that it was! I might have a criminal mind but I don’t care, I can always find something to spend $100 on, several things usually!
Anonymously emailed gift cards are going to look a lot like phishing/spam/a scam and if the recipient is even slightly cautious of that you run the risk of it ending up deleted and never used.
Years ago when I worked in an entry level job, my co-worker was frustrated that her car broke down and she needed $400 to fix it so she could drive home for Christmas the next week. I had my housemate write a card to her, so it wasn’t in my handwriting, wishing her a Merry Christmas and put cash into it. Her address was on the staff contact list, (we worked for a indy bookstore and knew each other pretty well, although I had never been to her apartment before,) and I drove to her place when I knew she was at work. When I got there, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with the card, but I ended up putting it partly under her welcome mat. We lived in a small town that didn’t have much of a crime issue, so it was a little bit of a gamble, but I was pretty sure the odds of somebody else finding it and taking it in the hour before she got home were low.
After Christmas, I wanted so much to hear if she made it to see her family, but I didn’t want to bring it up because I felt like that might tip her off. Instead, she was in a sour mood about something a friend had posted about her, so I was always a little sad not to hear the end of the story, but also hopeful that she got the card and it was helpful.
About six months later, I needed medical care and couldn’t afford it. Someone anonymously gave $400 to an older mentor/friend to give to me to cover the bill. I was pretty sure it was my housemate (the one who had written the original card in her handwriting, because she was the only one I had ever told about the first story, and she was definitely someone who would have given me money,) but when I told my housemate the story of the anonymous money for my bill, I saw how her face lit up, so I never let on that I guessed it was her.
Now years later, I am no longer living pay check to pay check. Both events still make me happy, and I wish I had more opportunities to pay for the unexpected expenses people get.
Such a kind and generous idea, Swistle! I love the brainstorming here. Adding to what others have said, if you could find a way to get the gift into their hands (via mail or something), you could add an anonymous note (so they know it’s not a scam and comes from a place of love) saying that you wanted to help and they can pay it forward some day. Groccery and gas gift cards would be most welcome for many, if sending cash seems out of the question.
I think it’s best to tell the recipient “I’d like to pay your rent this month” or whatever specific thing you want to contribute to. I would go crazy not knowing who gave me the money. I think the recipient deserves the opportunity to decline the gift, but should still appreciate the gesture. If the money gift will compromise a relationship if the recipient knows the donor, I’m not so sure the money should be given.
I’ve only ever manage to give financial help indirectly. I had a friend who was living in her car and I let her use our apartment during the day while we were at work. She never would have accepted my money, not that I was rolling in it.
I’ve also bought groceries or paid for meals for friends without ever explicitly saying I was doing it because I knew they would never take direct cash. I’d pick up things at Costco and drop them off (especially friends without cars) and just say don’t worry about when they wanted to try and pay me back. I’d say I wanted to go out to eat—my treat—when I knew they were particularly strapped and stressed. All of it really does add up, but for me at the time it was just some small way I could help a friend.