To Give . . . Or NOT To Give December 16, 2010
Posted by nrhatch in Mindfulness.trackback
This morning, I read two interesting posts on Charitable Giving:
* Does Charity Leave You Cold?
The two articles, especially read in juxtaposition to each other, got me thinking about who benefits when we give money to our favorite causes.
Are we making a difference in the world?
Or just making ourselves feel better about our place in it?
You tell me.
Related posts: Hearts of Gold * EarthShare * To Thine Own Self Be True
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Spirit Lights The Way 
when i think of giving, i think 1st of what i am doing for others. however, i “almost” always come back around to thinking about what it is doing for me. I’d answer your question that way. yes. nice post. keep on!
Thanks, Sana. I took a quick peak at your blog. Good topics. 🙂
thanks! awesome!
Interesting topic Nancy. What I do believe for certain, and I have to learn it time and time again, is that we have to give to ourselves first before we can give to others. If we don’t give to ourselves, we have very little to give, but the more we give to ourselves the more we have to give.
In helping ourselves we help others. As long as we remember to give back after we have given to ourselves. Thank you for the thought-provoking post!
here! here! amen! whoop to that!
Ollin ~ I expect you would enjoy Sana’s posts on the need to practice self care.
Sana ~ I excpect you would enjoy Ollin’s posts as well.
too cute. i’m on it!
A good link-up; gotta love how social media works 😀
Hook-ups (and Hang-ups) shared at the speed of cyber light! 🙂
I think those two things are one and the same. When we give to others, we give to ourselves also. If there are people in the world who give “only” to make themselves feel better, so be it. There are worse things they could do for an upper.
Good points, Julie! 🙂
I think it’s sometimes a little of both, depending on the causes. Maybe it depends on how you have to give and how much you do give.
It probably also depends on the charity in question and whether they actually use the contributions to “do good” or just to promote the charity in order to get an influx of new contributions.
* Legitimate charities start out with laudable goals. Making a difference is priority #1.
Over time, the people working for the charity decide that “keeping our positions” should be priority #1 because otherwise they won’t be able to keep “making a difference” (#2).
Still more time passes, and the administrators decide that fundraising should be priority #1 because then they can “keep their positions (#2) and continue making a difference (#3).
Ironic that once I started giving to what I thought was a well-researched charity, I started getting more unsolicited mail from other charitable organizations — all of which contain return envelopes with postage paid if returned with a pledge or donation.
My New Year’s resolution is to give only to the immediate needs of those around me — which I have never stopped doing…
From my current financial status point of view I have no business supporting charities that have money to waste on junk mail…