Four years ago, I asked three members of my close family who were likely to give me something for Christmas to make a donation to GiveWell/AMF (GiveWell's top charity at that point) instead of getting something for me. This wasn't burdensome at all for me, because I didn't have many unmet material needs at this point.

Anyways, in my case, it turned out that my upper middle class American relatives, who were culturally "normal", rather than being culturally close to any EA/Silicon Valley/rationality circles, were quite offended by this suggestion. This may have had something to do with my presentation--I don't remember myself being particularly good at politics or speaking back then, and I tried to be nice, but perhaps I was too bold, or too culturally insensitive. Still, I was quite surprised at how poorly my request was received.

Of the three family members I talked to, two told me that I was being unrealistic, and that I needed to realize how things worked in the real world, or something like that. They got me something comparable to what they'd gotten me the previous year. The third one actually made a donation to the Carter Center, but only after bemoaning how I didn't appreciate how hard making money was in the real world--I think they had liked the Carter Center because a friend had worked there, or something.

A couple family members I hadn't talked to heard about my request, and I later heard that one had been talking with other members of my family about how she had become "very worried" that I was going to become "too altruistic". Another actually bought a chicken (or goat?) in my name through Heifer International. That was interesting, since I had thought that I been clear that I preferred GiveWell's top charities over other charities.

I guess that I completely stopped being vocal about EA after that point. Still, I've often wondered if the type of EAs who hold birthday and Christmas fundraisers are more, or less culturally normal-feeling to the average first-worlder than my family is.

(Also, since this comment is about how I'm terrible at understanding how to get the tone right on EA things, I apologize if the tone of this comment itself is somewhat off.)