There are multiple issues with this method, though.
First of all, United Way takes a great deal of money of the donated funds off the top for themselves and only 7 cents of every dollar actually make it to the chosen organization. So it would be much better for you to donate directly to the organization so they receive 100% of your donation.
Secondly, when you donate money through your paycheck (or at the register when shopping), this is added to the the pool of money that the company claims as being donated as a “corporate donation” which comes off of their taxes at the end of the year and to make it seem like good PR for them (ie, “Publix gave X amount of dollars to charity this year”), all the while none of it actually coming out of their own account book.
Absolutely no one should know if you did or didn’t contribute through your paycheck, and if that is being used as a reason to limit your promotion potential please speak to HR (I know you are no longer there, but others may need to hear this, or you may have a future employer that uses a similar system).
This year in particular, conservatives are not just a boomer thing. There was a surprising amount of young male voters for Trump this year, mostly led in by the podcasters/commentators favored by that demographic (Joe Rogan, Andrew Tate, ya know, assholes). So it’s no surprise Trump changed his tune on the tiktok ban because he now wants to make sure these people (and people taking about these people) can still share their ridiculous thoughts and therefore become a hivemind and then all support him. Initially Trump wanted to ban tiktok, and it had nothing to do with user security or Chinese data mining, though that’s what the people around him made it into - it was because tiktok was how word was spread to embarrass him at his rallies.
All this to say - age has nothing to do with conservatism. Even back when I was in high school and college, there were always those asshole kids that cared way too much about their parents’ wealth and how it was taxed and had the views of an old white man.