more on charity

i just listened to an absolutely wonderful, insightful and nuanced kqed forum on charitable giving (follow the link and you'll find you can listen too!). michael krasny spoke with arthur brooks, an academic who recently wrote "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism." (pdf of wall street journal review)

don't let the title fool you that the book is wrapped up with the fact, borne out by numbers, that conservatives are more charitable than liberals. that's certainly interesting, but there's so much more to learn.

first off, brooks says he defines charity quite broadly, and so this includes not just what's on tax forms, but political action donations, blood donation, volunteer work, etc.. he uses massive amounts of data gathered over many years, both nationally and internationally, and he makes some surprising conclusions.

one of the most surprising conclusions was that young liberals are the worst givers (money and time). some people called in saying that they knew young liberals who do work X, and that work itself is charitable, and did brooks take that into account... brooks answer was quite reasonable, in my mind. how do you judge the "charity" of a particular job? ie, is a teacher doing a "better" thing than someone working at microsoft? he did acknowledge that certain people go into professions where they make far less money than if they went elsewhere, but they take that job for the "good" it will do. however, brooks was quite worried about making that value judgement, and i have to say that i'd have some trouble too, not just because i'm a scaredy cat.

there was lots of discussion about religion. brooks pointed out that religious people give WAY MORE than those who aren't religious. he speculated religious institutions do a very effective job of teaching about charity (there was some discussion about the motive "getting into heaven" if you are charitable). i was thinking that it'd be great if this kind of teaching moved more into the secular world, and that was discussed as well.

finally, people who give more are happier and more successful than those who give less. not sure how he measured those things, but it sounds good. i'm going to get the book and read more. stay tuned :)

charitable giving: more local?

i've been thinking a lot about charitable giving for the past few months (to learn more about random charities i was using charity navigator, which was useful). i'm still trying to think through my charitable giving goals: what matters to me? how should i best contribute to help? lately i've been thinking that i really want to help locally. i want to give locally, volunteer locally, local local local. why? well, i'm human, and it's easy for me to connect with local changes and what's going on around me, what i can see. more importantly, however, is that i believe we need to think about total wellness, and that's easiest to look at going outwards from yourself: your own wellbeing, your community's wellbeing, your society, other societies, the world...

of course, all these "wellbeings" can be prioritized. but how do you do that? someone recently said to me something along the lines of:

how can you give money locally when there are children starving around the world? when there are people with diseases that we can cure if only we have the money to pay for the inoculations?

these are important questions to consider. certainly it's not either/or.

most people where i live have shelter, food, and basic medical support. that can't be said for many people around the world.

perhaps my local push comes from a feeling, at least for me, that there's something really missing when i write my check to help inoculate children in africa. it's more than just wanting a philosophy to back my charitable agenda...

anyway, your thoughts on charitable giving are much appreciated.

below i've posted some findings from a study of young people's engagement in charitable giving done by the joseph rowntree foundation. you can find the report here.

• Young people define 'charity' and 'giving' more widely than formal organised charitable activities such as giving money, focusing more on engagement through active involvement.
• Charity is not seen as something only charities do; 'helping' others in the community informally is also seen as an important charitable act. Neighbourliness or something akin to citizenship is seen as a positive value, while giving time, in general, is seen as a greater effort than giving money and is often perceived as a more valuable gift.
• Young people are themselves engaged in a variety of activities that come under a wider definition of 'charity', better defined as 'altruistic engagement': from giving goods to charity shops to buying the Big Issue, Fairtrade goods, recycling, campaigning and taking part in charity events.
• The real level of young people's engagement with charity in the wider sense is being underestimated by traditional giving surveys and narrow approaches to measurement, which rarely include the type of activities mentioned by the young people.
• Young people aged 16-24 are particularly likely to fall through the net of existing opportunities for engagement with charities.
• There is a feeling among young people that the emphasis on raising money can be disempowering as they have limited funds to give and more to offer charities and voluntary organisations than money. Many feel that there are insufficient opportunities to give their time to charity, while only a few feel that there are insufficient opportunities to give their money to charity.
• Young people want more information from charities about what is done with their money and how their donations effect change, and they believe that having more information would encourage them to give more in future. The vast majority think that they will be engaged, giving both money and time in the future.