I think a big part of it is that they think they’re smarter / more sophisticated than they really are. And definitely more sophisticated than their audience.
If I were in a similar position to Tim, here are the things that I think I would do:
1. Partner with a specific charity to do a push for viewers to directly go to the charity’s website / donation platform (ie, go to the March of Dimes.org or Text Donate to 555-5555 and donate $5.
2. Simply *suggest* some charities that folks might want to donate to. IE For Texas “We don’t live in Texas, but we’ve done as much research as we did to determine we couldn’t get pregnant, and based on that, we recommend you visit the following websites to find out how you can help...
3. Just donate my own money and take the tax deduction. Publicize it if you must, there will always be some that say that publicizing your donation, while tacky, can bring awareness to a charity and therefore more donations.
I just think they’re too dumb to understand any of this, and they have no idea how “the media“ works, and like it or not, they have as many eyes on them as many TV shows on cable TV do. The whole idea of trying to take money and match it just screams how very unsophisticated they are. Like Joey on ”Friends” running his letter of recommendation for Chandler and Monica through the thesaurus and picked the biggest words, resulting in a ridiculous mess of a letter, Tim & Jenn have “Baby Kanagaroo Tribiani’d” themselves here by doing what they think someone in their position should do without understanding why or how someone does these things