A donation is a gift for charity, humanitarian aid, or to benefit a cause. A donation may take various forms, including money, alms, services, or goods such as clothing, toys, food, or vehicles. A donation may satisfy medical needs such as blood or organs for transplant.
Charitable donations of goods or services are also called gifts in kind.
Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm uses its internal reserves to satisfy its necessity for cash, while the term financing is used when the firm acquires capital from external sources.
Sources of funding include credit, venture capital, donations, grants, savings, subsidies, and taxes. Funding methods such as donations, subsidies, and grants that have no direct requirement for return of investment are described as "soft funding" or "crowdfunding". Funding that facilitates the exchange of equity ownership in a company for capital investment via an online funding portal per the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (alternately, the "JOBS Act of 2012") (U.S.) is known as equity crowdfunding.
A soup kitchen, food kitchen, or meal center is a place where food is offered to hungry and homeless people, usually for no cost, or sometimes at below-market price (such as coin donations). Frequently located in lower-income neighborhoods, soup kitchens are often staffed by volunteer organizations, such as church or community groups. Soup kitchens sometimes obtain food from a food bank for free, or at a low price, because they are considered a charity, which makes it easier for them to feed the many people who require their services.
Historically, the majority of soup kitchens served mostly soup (or stew), usually with some kind of bread. Modern establishments which refer to themselves as "soup kitchens" frequently serve a wider variety of foods, so social scientists sometimes discuss them together with similar hunger relief agencies that provide more varied hot meals, such as community kitchens and meal centers.
Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather money for non-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises.
Traditionally, fundraising has consisted mostly of asking for donations through face-to-face fundraising, such as door-knocking. In recent years, though, new forms such as online fundraising or grassroots fundraising have emerged.
The Library of Congress's Center for the Book was founded in 1977 by Daniel J. Boorstin, the Librarian of Congress, to promote literacy, libraries, and reading and an understanding of the history and heritage of American literature. The Center for the Book is mainly supported by tax-deductible donations.
A donor in general is a person, organization or government which donates something voluntarily. The term is usually used to represent a form of pure altruism, but is sometimes used when the payment for a service is recognized by all parties as representing less than the value of the donation and that the motivation is altruistic. In business law a donor is someone who is giving the gift (law), and a donee the person receiving the gift.
More broadly, the term is used to refer to any entity that serves as the source of something transferred to a different entity, including - in scientific fields - the source of matter or energy passed from one object to another.