Donating to Charity using...a cash machine?

I'm concerned.

An article I just read about something that's been in the news lately, is really concerning me.

The idea that people should be able to donate to charities using cash machines.

How is this idea plausible?

My assumption is that on the 'donate to charity' option you will have a list of charities you can donate to. Or else, how would it work? If there isn't a list of preset charities, then how can you and the cash machine know what details are needed for the money to be transferred?

The problem I have with this (should there be a list of preset charities) is that, inevitably, smaller charities will miss out. Bigger charities will get more donations, partly because they're familiar to the majority of the country (like they don't already get the highest percentage of donations anyway!) and small charities will lose out more than they already do.

I've done charity bag packs, I've stood at the end of a till and asked people politely if they'd like assistance and then they've given me money to support a small, local charity. We've raise a few hundreds pounds here and there, but very rarely enough to support the organisations long term.

Let's say a person got money out of the cash machine outside the supermarket before they went inside, what if they pressed the donate to charity button and gave £2 to a large, national charity which would probably get lost in their higher administration costs? What if they then walked into the supermarket, got asked if they wanted help packing their bags and decided 'no, I won't donate to this small, local charity that has helped me pack almost 100 items into 10 or so bags, because I've already donated to charity today'.

I understand the need to encourage people to donate, I understand the concept of making it 'easier'. But what the big boys don't understand is that the little fish out there struggle more because they're less well known and if this concept only hinders their (much harder) fight for fundraising then it's a very bad thing.

It's part of this 'Big Society' idea, right? But what part of Big Society doesn't support the smallest, most vulnerable aspects of its society?

And none of this even begins to cover the idea that 'the government should try to set as a social norm that everyone should give 1% of their income to charity, or a fixed proportion of their time.' (Guardian.co.uk)

Why SHOULD we? Yes, in an ideal world, everyone would be contributing to the charity sector, giving their money to charities that need funds to continue. Or volunteer their time to support our big AND small charities.

But the idea that it should become a 'social norm that they SHOULD' suggests to me that we're one step away from the government putting a charity tax on every single person in this country, forcing us to either donate our money or time to charity. They've already started with their plans for young people NEEDING to volunteer a certain number of hours at the age of 16.

The artictle in question, which is where the quote is from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/dec/28/coalition-charity-donations-cash-machines