Can "donate" be used as a ditransitive verb?

Question

Are sentences like the following valid?

1. He donated the charity five hundred dollars.
2. She donated the children every penny she had.
3. We donated the library a large collection of books.
4. They won't donate the school any more supplies.
5. Would you donate your sister a kidney?

All of these sound perfectly natural to me. But I can't find this definition (or any similar examples) in any dictionary, and Huddleston & Pullum (2002) claim that "donate" can't be used with an indirect object. Am I crazy?

(I'm in the Northeast US, in case this is a regionalism.)

Answer 1

In “Dative Shifts and Prime Rib Dinners,” linguist Neal Whitman examines the oral specimen The townspeople wanted to donate us a prime rib dinner and says:

. . . it is usually noted that Latinate verbs such as donate do not undergo dative shift. Here are some sample sentences from a few papers I found by Googling “donate” and “dative shift”.

_{[selected examples]}
I donated money to the Red Cross.
*I donated the Red Cross money.
I donated money to charity.
*I donated charity money.

He then goes on to provide shifted examples from Google Books:

_{[selected examples]}
Next month someone may donate us an office.
If you want to donate us something for dog food, . . .
I’m so grateful you’d think she’s just donated me one of her kidneys.

He concludes:

I’m not saying that analyses of dative shift no longer need to exclude certain verbs from participating in this alternation. However, the canonical exclusion, donate, isn’t such a good example, after all.

_{Source: Literal-Minded — Dative Shifts and Prime Rib Dinners}

I won’t be doing this until further notice, though.

Answer 2

It's not something I would say as a fellow native speaker in the northeast US, and I didn't find any examples in in COCA in the top 3 "recipient" collocates (charity, campaign, and organization). Excluding false positives, every example I found used "to". You can replicate this yourself by searching for DONATE near NOUN.

I found this grammar discussed in On Shell Structures.

Answer 3

The Britannica Dictionary explains the usage of donate:

: to give (money, food, clothes, etc.) in order to help a person or organization

[+ object]

The computers were donated by local companies. We donated our old clothes to charity. people who donate money to political candidates He donates some of his free time to volunteer work.

[no object]

Everyone is encouraged to donate.

Probably your examples are regional or informal usage.