Yesterday I was puttering about the house when there was a knock on my door. Someone was looking for a donation to the Guelph Home for the Visually Unpleasant *.
I turned the fellow away but it got me to thinking. How do people decide upon which charity to support? There are countless charities out there. In one of Bubba's books he made a brief mention of going through a process with Selena about supporting certain charities and not supporting others.
Other than for natural disasters such as the current situation with Hurricane Irene, I have one and only one charity I support because my donations there can actually make a difference because of the amount of money I donate. If I spread that money over a bunch of charities, it would have no impact at all.
So how do you decide which charity you'll support?
* For the record, there is no Guelph Home for the Visually Unpleasant. It's actually in Cambridge.
Every week, I get approached by people/groups/philanthropies to donate or sponsor a calendar, golf tournament, special event or some such. While most are genuine, I quickly came to realize that I couldnt support all these requests, noble though they may have been. Initially I felt bad for refusing to help groups that obviously deserve support (like firefighters). But there are causes closer to my heart (and to my family's heart) that warrant my support. So I let that be my guide...if someone or something moved me, it earned my donation.
Unfortunately, you cant help 'em all.
It has to be a well established charity that does something for the poor or disaster victims, and they are usually affiliated with my church(Saint Vincent De Paul Society(they give out food, simple furniture, bedding and clothes) Catholic Relief Services,and special collections for special needs). My church is located in the inner city and serves well over 100 people a week in the food pantry alone. CRS has very low overhead, and they use over 95% of their funds to help the poor and disaster victims, not just advertising. That's pretty good for a charity!
I also give to the local food drives and Feeding America, as well as the village in the Dominican Republic where a few of our teachers have relatives, and the Red Cross.
Then there are the three cancer societies that I give to because my family has been affected.
I don't give a lot to any of them, except those that give out food, because I don't really have a lot of money to give,
but I want to help where I can.
We tithe 10% to our church right off the top. As far as anything else, we check out the charity to see what percentage actually goes to helping out vs. administrative costs. We also donate food to the local food bank.
This will be inescapably political and I don't care to steer the thread in that direction, but when I give to charities it's to organizations that are working to reestablish a politico-economic condition that makes poverty at worst transitional and temporary, and at best nonexistent. IOW, laissez faire. Out of respect for nonpartisanship those will remain nameless, unless someone wants to ask via PM.
There's a couple of Constitutional-focus entities to which I donate regularly as well: the
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is working to eliminate campus "speech codes" and suppression of dissent, and to restore some semblance of intellectual freedom in colleges and universities, odd as that sounds; plus a couple of organizations -
SAF and
GOA - fighting to keep the Second Amendment intact (i.e.,
not the NRA.)
There's also a worthy organization in Portland, OR called
p:ear, which gives homeless kids a place to learn art. They have a fund in honor of the late, great painter and
conguero Roland Diehl that I contribute to whenever I can. He's perhaps most famous for his portrait of then-roomate Neil Young that appears on Young's first album cover, but I had the incredible experience of playing and recording some really strange (albeit frequently unlistenable) free improv with him and some other ridiculously-talented people for a couple of years in the late '90s. Ro is sorely missed, and p:ear is doing some good things with those kids.
But as we're seeing all around us, without a politico-economic context in which people are free to prosper without regimentation and confiscation - IOW, economic liberty - these contributions are but...how shall I put it... "a teardrop in the ocean."
/soapbox
P.S. - I'm operating under the brazen presumption that it's ok to post links to any given organization here, but you
did ask... If that's not kosher let me know and I will re-post without the links. Cheers, SC
.
Hmmm, I gave to the Chilean Miners Fund that Bubba did. I don't give much anymore, this is a personal thing, but the Missus...bless her...gives every year to Hospice for the both of us. Whatever she gives, I have her double it for me. She also donates time at the Hospice House in our neighborhood in the flower gardens outside.
I guess this doesn't answer the question, I would say to follow your heart.
I try to make sure that I give locally and in the wider world. I support a local foodbank and whenever I have goods I no longer need, I donate them to a local thrift shop.
On the wider front, I favor charities that support things I believe in. Some recent beneficiaries include The Coral Reef Alliance, Ocean Conservancy, WWF, USA Olympics, St. Jude's and Amnesty International. When I want to donate for a disaster, I go to Shelter Box.
I can't always give a lot but I give what I can. That's all any of us can do. But even the small ones mount up. Look at what Bubba and Brutus did for the Chilean Miners with small donations
My wife Laura and I have really lost faith in large organized charity. If they come to my home they get automatically turned down. From the office in both our names we have a two prong approach to helping that we're lucky to have. One is our good friend who spends about 9 months abroad, lately in south west Africa, where he works with rural communities to bring water and agricultural techniques that help the locals support themselves.
We get him a goat once every few months which is given to a Mom with a family there. The goat provides milk, and is bred to make more goats which brings in a small income for that Mom and her family.
We put our trust in my friend Rick to find the right person there who will most likely get the most out of having the goat and I have to say that some of the stories and pictures and even little gifts he brings home to us not only make it worth while, it's so uplifting for us that we get excited on "goat day" and the few days leading up to it. Just last year we got a batik from him that was sent to us from a family in rural Thailand, perhaps Rick's favourite place to be, and a letter about how a goat from us, eventually translated into art that is sold locally and to tourists generating income and opening doors for a girl and her brother.
It's a very low scale operation between us but the affect and reward for us is huge. Everyone should have their own Rick.
The other is interest free Micro Loans to women entrepreneurs. While the idea is from something I read about support in foreign countries that help to lift people out of poverty, we have put this into practice here in Toronto. Not just small amounts of money but also resources among a few business associates and marketing that would otherwise be out of reach for these start ups. Some do fizzle out but there are a few success stories that make it well worth while. Once a year we get together and examine our combined investment in people and discuss what it is we see really worked and what didn't as well as what resources were most valuable in helping these gals move themselves out of poverty and into their own business and financial security.
None of our group makes anything off of these contributions and none of it is claimed through income tax. How good we feel about it sure goes a long way in battling the creeping cynical view of the world that
comes along with all the bad news and interconnectedness of information we've become aware of through the Internet and such.
(08-29-2011 06:31 AM)Jetrow Wrote: [ -> ]The other is interest free Micro Loans to women entrepreneurs.
I have heard good things about micro-loans, though personally I feel that gender discrimination is not really appropriate. (No offence intended, Jetrow, but it's just the way I feel).
At the moment my charity amount is already 100% spoken for, that is reviewed every year and micro-loaning is high on the list for study next fiscal year.
Well, for us, we don't give to those who come to our door asking for donations, because usually, it's a charity that we've never heard of ("Hang one, let me Google your charity to see if it's legit"). We tend to stick with local charities in our community when we do give and a lot of the time, our donations are supplies (like giving food to the food bank or baby clothes to a crisis pregnancy center). For a few years, my daughter saved up her allowance and bought dog & cat food for our local county animal shelter, and she (and we) have bought school supplies to donate to St. Vincent De Paul to pass out to kids.
Now if I were to donate to more nationwide organizations, it would probably be ones for breast cancer and Alzheimer's as those hit closer to home for us.