Some of your Allowance must go to charity?!

I agree. When I was in college (I went to a Catholic university), one class gave us the option of doing community service or writing papers. As I fancy myself a writer and was still working full-time at the time and didn't have time to do community service, I chose the latter. It's much different when "volunteer work" is mandated in order to get a grade or to graduate. It's not "volunteering" then. I will go you one further: the notion that forcing someone to be charitable as a child may backfire in adulthood. If a child is "ordered" to give money to a "charity" and grows up to discover that the charity was a scam (and many of them are, giving more money to themselves for "operating expenses" than to the people they're supposedly helping) then it leaves a deep wound that may never be rectified.