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| Mon Oct 5 23:08:30 2009 My Charitable Giving |
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| Mon Oct 5 23:08:30 2009 My Charitable Giving How I give... |
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| I was catching up on finances last night, and realized I was behind
schedule on my charitable giving (I promised myself to give every
month). Furthermore, I had lost track of who I was giving to so I
had to go back over the past year of donations and see what charity
I was supposed to give to next.
I'd been meaning to reorganize my charitable giving for a while, so now I went ahead and did it. Why reorganize? Because, with these economic times, I've seen more people out on the streets asking for money. You should never give money to pahhandlers, because many are scams, and even for those that aren't, if you give them money you are encouraging them to panhandle instead of working with local charities themselves to get themselves off the street. If you really think someone needs help, give them food instead (I tried that once and was rejected--the panhandler just wanted money!). But not giving money to panhandlers is only acceptable (to me) if I'm sure I am giving money to charities that will help people that really need it. But I realized that all of the charities I was giving to were political, so I wasn't actually giving a dime to charities that were helping people in need. So, as I said, it was time to reorganize. I went through and made sure I was giving to the organizations that I thought deserved or needed the most, and tried to make sure I had a good balance between political causes important to me and just generally helping people in need. When I was done I still felt like I was short-changing one charity, so I decided to give double in December. So here is my new allocation. There are 10 charities that I give to, three of them twice a year. It breaks down as:
How much do I give? Many years ago I started giving just $40 a month (I think that was it), and then every New Year one of my resolutions was to increase how much I was giving. Now I give enough that I watch who I'm giving to pretty carefully. But for a long time I didn't give anything, because I didn't think I could afford to. Now that I can, I feel like I should. I don't think how much is given matters that much--and donating time is usually better than donating money anyway! The important thing is to give. Comments |
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