Explain the utilitarian account of morality?

Utilitarianism is classically understood as the theory that actions are right in so far as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.  Therefore, the right action is the one that creates the greatest amount of happiness altogether.  In this way, it places the moral sanctity of an action on the consequences of that action rather than the internal qualities of that action itself. An example helps clarify this. Take the question of whether we should donate a proportion of our money to charity. To assess whether this was the correct thing to do the utilitarian would look at the predicted consequences of this action. Whilst giving away my money may cause me some pain or discomfort, because, for example, I resultantly do not get to buy some of the nice things I want, when considering the positive outcomes of such an act, likely alleviating someone out of poverty, it is apparent that the action causes more good then harm. Thus, by the utilitarian calculus, this would be a good action to do. However, if it turned out that giving to charity in fact caused negative consequences for the recipients, this could turn out to be a bad thing to do, even if the intentions were positive.