Thoughts on Charity
Tue Dec 04, 2007 at 06:35:18 AM PDT
This time of year always gets me assessing how much we've given to charity over the previous year. This isn't necessarily because it's the season of giving, but more because we need to figure out the total amount for tax purposes.
I recently read the book Three Cups of Tea, about an American man who dedicates his life to building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan on a very limited budget (here's a link to his organization). He describes his quest for funding for his projects, and how little money he really needed from Americans to make an enormous difference in another country. It made me think of Peter Singer and this article I read by him years ago. Our country is so amazingly wealthy and it's unbelievable how little we're willing to share with others.
I consider myself a bit of a hypocrite when discussing charity, because I don't think we give enough. I grew up in a pretty well-off home where money just was not given away. My parents would buy things from kids selling them for fundraisers, but acted like they deserved some medal of honor the couple times I remember them making donations (which were under $100). Even now, they make an insane amount of money, but really don't give it away. My mom complains bitterly that my dad gets such a big bonus that they have to pay a lot of taxes on it. (I spend all day talking to my little kids about how it's nice to share, and don't think I should need to do the same with my parents!)
Compared to what my parents give, I feel like we're pretty generous, but when I look at the actual numbers, we're only giving 1% of our salary, and that seems so pathetic to me. We spend about 6% of our salary on a private preschool for our son, and it seems like our priorities are off when that amount could almost build a school in another country. We also do save pretty significantly for retirement, so my hope is that when we're older and have taken care of our own first, we'll be more generous with our money. But I might just have a whole other set of excuses when we get to that point.
Everyone on this board seems so forward-thinking, and I'm curious where you donate money, and whether you feel like you give enough. We always make sure to give money to environmental organizations, but our other priorities on where to donate change every year. This year, we've given significant contributions to a homeless shelter, a school program for urban kids, and a cancer foundation. In the past, we've given to organizations like UNICEF and Doctors without Borders, and I think we should be taking more of a global view with our donations. We haven't really done many political donations in the past, but I can see doing more of that in the near future if we find a candidate we really support.
As my kids get older, I also want to teach them about charity and have them grow up feeling like it's normal to give. This year, my 3-year-old picked out some books from his school's Amazon wish list. When he's older, I'd like to give him a charity budget each year and let him choose what to support, and/or encourage him to contribute some of his own money by matching his contributions. When I was a teacher, my class organized a fundraiser and I told them I would match their earnings, which resulted in a $1200 donation to UNICEF. I like to think we all learned a good lesson about charity from that.
For those interested in checking out how different charities spend their money, you might want to look at the Charity Navigator website.
