Donations are a funny thing.
In a perfect world, charities wouldn’t need donations — every organization would have enough money to do what it wanted to do. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, so organizations are forced to raise capital through sweat (e.g. volunteers), donations, fundraising campaigns, gifting of goods (e.g. a food bank receiving food for distribution to the needy), etc.
We all work hard for our money–well, I’m assuming we work hard, but we certainly work–so when we are asked to donate to a cause we are giving up something that we worked to obtain, to help some other cause. This is convenient for us, because we are already working anyways so we don’t have to trade time (sweat equity) to volunteer at an organization to “give back”. Also, volunteering doesn’t necessarily work for all organizations. If you’d like to help hurricane relief efforts somewhere in another country you can’t just walk over and volunteer your time, so you do the next best thing by donating money you made with your time. But one of the biggest challenges is which organizations–if any–to donate to.
I was dropping off Augie at school the other day when I heard that my local university radio station CIUT, was having its annual fundraiser. CIUT is incredibly important to me — I love community radio. My music horizons have grown over the years thanks to the now defunct CKLN, and now CIUT. CIUT provides a platform for everyone to speak on, and has some wicked good DJs (and if you don’t believe me, just check out The Drill Squad every Tuesday at 6AM, Moovin in the Right Direction every Thursday at 6AM, or Masterplan every Saturday at 8PM). I missed the 2020 fundraising campaign, but I’ll be donating this year.
By sheer coincidence, friend reached out to me to donate to another cause that same day, to support rebuilding a school that was blown up in Afghanistan.
Shit.
I had only planned on donating a small amount this year, and realistically splitting the money I had between two causes really wouldn’t do much. And herein is the problem: most of us have a limited amount of capital, so how do we choose where to allocate it? On the one hand, I am a staunch supporter of CIUT and community radio. Music is very important to me. When I’m sad, or happy, or lonely, music is there. There are countless songs that speak to countless emotions. I can virtually track my entire life by albums and when they were released. When a song starts playing on random, if it a song that is close to me, I can usually transport myself through time to when that song was important to me.
On balance, a friend reached out to me to support a cause that they believed in.. And I believe in my friend, so by extension should I believe in that cause too?
Do I support a platform near and dear to my heart, that has been there for me through thick and thin? Or support a friend?
These are hard decisions. Everyone will donate things that are important to them, and charities and organizations come and go. I think that when we are planning on what to do with what we have to share, we need to stay true to ourselves. Peer pressure, social pressure, is a dangerous weapon. I’m quite tired of doing the right thing because I’m told that it is the right thing to do, versus doing the right thing which is right by me. This sounds absolutely selfish, but is it? An individual cannot give to every cause, it’s simply not possible. So we all have to perform an internal calculus over what matters, what truly matters to us.
So, to answer my question:
Who should you give you money to?
The answer: you should give it to whoever, or whichever organization, matters to you. There is no right or wrong as long as you are true to yourself. To be sure, not everyone will agree with you — but not agreeing is part of what a true friendship is about.
tendim 