I have a curiosty about charities. Every celebrity seems to have one, every highly paid athelete seems to have one. Charity events happen every, including large donations by big corporations like Tim Hortons or McDonalds or big sporting leagues like MLB or NFL. People like Terry Fox or Lance Armstrong or on a bigger scale Bill Gates and Warren Butffet (or Guy Laliberte or David Einhorn??) are credited with raising millions on millions. Breast cancer fundraisers etc. are everywhere and endorsed by big corporations. Tons of youths go on trips to build schools or wells overseas. Collection jars are everywhere.

How many billions or trillions are raised? Where does it really all go? If that many people are really so helpless and will always need charities to survive or not even to survive is this system really effective?

When I was a child, everytime I saw a homeless person or a busker, I wanted to go give them a dollar. Now I feel a bit bad not giving them anything (usually) but I've lost a fair bit of what used to drive me to give. I know longer feel that dollar does anything of much use, and when beggars are everywhere you'd go broke if you gave a dollar to every one you saw.

How much different would the world be if nobody donated anything to charities or fundraisers? How much different would the world be if every single person in the world increased their donations drastically, such as the people who sold their house to move to a smaller house so they could donate a large percentage of their worth, and other such large measures

Just curious to hear some opinions, feel free to share links or whatever.

it seems to me (I could be totally misreading your OP tho) that the sheer magnitude of the "problem" (say global poverty) makes you think that small efforts, because they fail to solve the problem, are wasted efforts. But that's just you deciding that the expected effect of a donation isn't worth the expense. Small efforts can make a small number of people significantly better off. Or a little better off, and only in the short term. Whether that exceeds whatever positive effect you require a charitable donation to have is up to you.