Tag: Charity

The Contribution-by-Guilt Charity Lottery

§   With the best will in the world, I could never fill this aching, endless void of charitable appeals.  §

As I mentioned in an earlier blog (Charity Begins, 06/05/19), I do not tithe to any specific or single organization; I provide funds to various charities as I feel led.  Environmental, animal and children’s charities top that list. But I am growing ever more dismayed by the constant appeals that arrive, both by snail mail, and by e-mail, for yet more funds.

In just one week—one!–I counted appeals from the following agencies:

Wheeler Mission
Arbor Day Foundation
Environmental Defense Fund
Doctors Without Borders
Audubon Society
Smile Train
Hiefer International
Southern Poverty Law Center
ACLU
Planned Parenthood
World Wildlife Fund
Cats Haven
Humane Society

Not even an all-inclusive list, this, of the causes or organizations in which I wholeheartedly believe and to which I have contributed in the past, and it certainly doesn’t include the appeals to which I am subjected through TV commercials and email. But, even with the best will in the world, I could not, cannot, answer all these funding requests. If I had just won the lottery, it’s still unlikely that I could fill this aching, endless void of charitable appeals.

Even more upsetting, years after my initial contribution, I continue to receive funding requests from charities that are not my choice; charities to which I sent a donation only one time. Usually these contributions were made as a memorial for the loved ones of friends; sometimes, the only reason I sent money to a particular organization was that I was once the responsible individual at the office, passing the hat to collect funds and writing the check after a coworker had experienced a loss.

As I open these mailings, so many of which include enclosures–maps and notepads and pens and address labels and little blankets and dream-catchers and greeting cards and tote bags—I’m forced to wonder, how much does all this cost them? All these mailings, all these little bits of bric-a-brac? Can the contributions they acquire from such mailings actually supersede the cost of sending all this stuff out?

And despite all these enclosures, nowhere in those collections of stuff is a simple postcard with an option to check and return, requesting, “Please remove me from your mailing list”. The onus for figuring out whom to contact and then deliberately making that request is put upon the individual being dunned. I cannot help but believe that omission is purposeful. The lack of an uncomplicated “please remove” option is intended keep me on the mailing list ad infinitum, so that I may be guilted into making further contributions. I resent that so much that, even were I inclined to provide more money, I refuse to do so.

The guilt factor is strong in another way, too: only once did I intentionally request to be removed from a mailing list, that of a well-known cancer charity. Fed up after being bombarded with multiple requests in a single week, I finally sought out an e-mail for the right department and sent them a demand that my name be removed from their contact list.  In return, I received the obligatory “It may take us several weeks to process your request” reply—a totally ridiculous statement, and blatantly untrue in an era in which one need only punch a single Delete key on a database to remove contact information. It took almost two months before I was finally free of their incessant mailings, but I still encounter their soul-wrenching commercials on TV every week. I hit “mute” on the remote or walk out of the room each time.

But now, having published this blog, I think I have hit upon the method that I will use in the future to handle requests from repeat offenders in the contribution-by-guilt charity lottery. I will simply print out a copy of this essay and, using their very own return-addressed envelope, mail it, highlighting this note:

“It isn’t that I don’t care. In the past, I may even have supported your endeavors. But I give when I both have the funds and the spirit moves me…and today is not that day. In the meantime, kindly remove me from your contact list.  Please, please, stop asking me for money!”

It may work. Or it may not. But at least I will have stated my feelings and my preference.

Charity Begins

∼  True charity, true giving,  requires so much more of us than just sending a check or pulling used clothes from a closet.  ∼

I clearly remember when I became aware of the need and responsibility to alleviate poverty and to give of my own resources: I was a preteen when our class at school decided to sponsor a needy family for Christmas. I will never forget the look on the face of the mother of that little family as we children and our teacher trooped in, singing carols and carrying boxes of food and wrapped gifts into a bare, cold house. “Well, I got them a tree,” she told us, her voice breaking, “but I didn’t know if there would be anything under it.” That day brought home to me, as nothing else could have done, how very blessed I was—rich, in fact—and the responsibility of sharing my blessings.

The lesson stayed with me, right up to adulthood. Even in those years when I barely had enough money to meet my bills, I saved a small—sometimes tiny– amount to contribute to charitable causes. During some years, that meant no more than my leftover pocket change dropped into a jar at the end of the week, and finally wrapped and rolled at year’s end.  The coin rolls were taken to the bank and deposited into my account before being distributed by check to a charity I deemed important. That, and buying a few small gifts for a needy child from an ‘Angel Tree’ at the holiday season, comprised my charitable giving during the lean years of my life.

As my income rose, so did my distributions. I was never one to believe in tithing to a single organization, but instead selected multiple causes in which I believed and contributed my funds there: environmental foundations, disaster relief, animal shelters, children’s charities. I gave as I felt moved, or the need arose. I donated my used goods and clothing to charity thrift shops, and purchased from them, as well, so that my money could do more for needy community. When someone at the office lost a loved one, I always offered a memorial contribution from coworkers as an option to the traditional and wasteful flowers; when my own mother passed away, Dad and I did the same, requesting contributions to her favorite animal shelter. Then we packed up her lovely clothing and shoes, and I contacted a local women’s shelter so we could contribute the items where they were most needed.

Despite my personal altruism, I was often in trouble during my working years for my refusal to participate in the office-sanctioned big-name charitable concern. A few times, knowing that my job hung by a thread, anyway, I committed to the bare-bones minimum of donating a dollar a week to the giant organization. But I gritted my teeth as I did so, suspecting that what I was actually subsidizing was some CEO’s high roller lifestyle. Nevertheless, when asked in later years to arrange office-wide silent auctions from coworkers’ donated goods, with the proceeds going to the big-name charity, I did so willingly, telling myself that at least people were receiving something tangible in return for their money.

But something happened, as time has sped by, to alter my preteen comprehension of the value of giving. Slowly but inevitably I’ve learned (and it would be a sad thing if we did not spend our lifetimes growing and learning) to fully grasp the meaning of the old maxim, “Charity begins at home”. True charity, true giving, I have finally come to understand, requires so much more of us than just sending a check or pulling used clothes from a closet.

True charity is the kindness that visits, not just to bring a casserole, but to spend time with a sick friend; to care for their pets and do their household chores.  It feeds the homeless, hungry animal that arrives on the porch, and finds the poor creature a home. Genuine altruism invites the lonely person without family to a holiday dinner, or cancels long-anticipated plans when another’s emergency arises and help is needed. It contributes time and compassion, sitting in the hospital room with family members as they deal with the anguish of a loved one’s illness. True charity looks at the neighbor’s overgrown, unmowed lawn and doesn’t register a complaint with the homeowner’s association, but stops by to find out if sickness or crisis has prevented them from caring for their home, and offers help. Authentic generosity arrives on the doorstep with concrete ways to help rather than muttering the worn-out and unmeant platitude, “Please let me know if there is anything I can do”. It cleans the house, drives the children to their activities, does the laundry, or simply sits with the person in pain. True charity uses the funds that would have gone to one of those hundreds of foundations, and instead buys groceries or pays a bill for friends or family members who are down on their luck.

I will never stop providing funds to the causes in which I wholeheartedly believe. But, although it has taken a lifetime, I’ve learned, finally, to give in the ways that really matter