Give a little bit, give a little bit of your love to me
DailyCandy informed me that yesterday was National Philanthropy Day. (Who decides these things? Is there a calendar somewhere? Apparently it was Plug It Out Day on November 10 and nobody told me.)
Sort of relatedly, December 1st is World AIDS Day. This "Until There's a Cure" group is trying to organize a 27-mile ride (to represent 27 years of HIV-AIDS) in every city around the world. Supposed to start at 8:00 am sharp; participants are to wear red, to make it look like a red ribbon.
From the email I got: "If you would like to organize a local ride in your hometown, please contact us at brian@teamutac.com. We will list you on the national database of rides and supply you with all the information needed for local press." In the Bay Area there are 2 rides scheduled so far: one from McLaren Lodge in SF to Mill Valley, and one from the Newark Community Center to Palo Alto.
Would participating in this make up for the fact that when ordering my brother's Christmas present I selected the black one, thinking the video would look sharper than on the (Product)Red one?
And ultimately, what do these "awareness" events really do, anyway? Do they translate into more money, more legislation...a cure? I'm curious to know whether these aren't just activities we do to make ourselves feel better so we don't have to do real work, like lobbying our congresspeople or (more painfully) funding research organizations, or even becoming researchers, doctors, congresspeople and so forth ourselves. Or maybe they really are rallying cries, so that we participate, get all revved up, and then are motivated to do aforesaid real work.
I'm the first to admit that I'm bad about giving to charity. I mean, really bad. Sure, I always try to participate when the office does a breast cancer ice cream party, or wrap a present for those Make a Wish type toy drives or bring toothbrushes to a holiday party incidentally collecting things for a homeless shelter. I've even hung on to the 14 inches of hair I cut off last year fully intending to donate it to some wig maker or other (Locks of Love is so 2005).
But that stuff ain't nothing, and I know it. I have no good excuse, either. I guess there's always the advice that you should first show kindness among those in your own life before reaching beyond yourself. My grandmother's term "do-gooders" critically described people who ran around helping a million and one strangers while their families fell apart. But I don't have a family, and already try to be a nice person, and I DO have spare time, which to date I've selfishly been spending on things like triathlon training and Jello shots...and blogging.
I'd like to do things like Rebuilding Together (a Habitat-esque organization that retrofits elderly people's homes with shower bars and whatnot) and cleaning up last week's gas spill in the Bay. I know that hands-on stuff would make me feel good. And there are some really great resources around here for being a participatory activist:
http://www.volunteermatch.org/
I get overwhelmed by the options, though, and question my own motives. For example, I used to work on the Silicon Valley Marathon, and these volunteer calendars were a vital source of race volunteers - the people handing out water and medals and directing traffic. Races like that depend on volunteers (and donated product) - participants' entry fees go mainly towards city licenses, medical teams and paying for cops earning overtime. But while on the one hand there is no question that the water you hand out or the support you give an athletic event participant is so welcome and valued by the people you help, and maybe the help you give enables somebody to reach a goal they never imagined and turn their life around, or motivates them to stick with a healthy lifestyle...by no means are such events non-profit.
Should factors like that influence where we spend our time and effort? It's an open question. Surely helping anyone is better than helping no one. And if we get caught up in figuring out where our help is MOST needed, we can become paralyzed by an inability to comparatively value people's neediness. (And who are we to judge?)
My father started an organization called the ASEAN Children's Fund. It's had an evolving model, but is aimed at kicking leukemia in Southeast Asian children and has been conceptualized around training third world doctors in first world hospitals like those in Singapore and sending them back home to service children there. At the beginning, I wondered where he got the idea to fight kids' leukemia. It seemed kind of ambitious and expensive and random, when so many people in Southeast Asia are dying from much simpler things like starvation and malaria. (I think one of his motivations is the high cure rate when treated (something like 80%) versus the existing cure rate of closer to 20% that results from poor diagnosis and treatment and lack of follow-up. That is, I think the results of trying are really tangible and rewarding. And I think he likes the "teach a man to fish" methodology of the charity, versus just sending Western doctors over to treat people on an ad hoc basis before returning home.) I know finding funding has been extremely difficult and I'm sure there are many reasons for it. For just one, as compelling as his promotional materials are, once you take a step back and see all the other organizations asking for your dollars, how do you choose?
Of course, who are we to judge the worthiness of attacking one problem of poverty versus another? I mean, how do celebrities pick their causes? Is it random? Does it matter if it is? Dyslexia? Diabetes? Reading? Land mines? Sex trafficking? Drunken elephants? You gotta start somewhere.
Still, I think the question of "how can we do the most good" is a great question, and one that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has addressed really admirably. They are in a position, and are forced to, identify where best to allocate their resources, and from what I understand do a lot of research to intelligently make those allocations help the broadest number of the most needy people in the most efficient way possible. I think they are ruthlessly results-oriented with their grant recipients and enormously practical in picking both problems and solutions.
For those of us who do not work with foundations, however, it is almost impossible to judge causes and organizations - how many people are helped, how dire is the need, how ethical and well run are the groups?
But this is what the Internet is for, isn't it? Amalgamating each of our little pieces of info so that the group of us is smarter than any of us individually?
I know I don't have a very large readership, but maybe among us we can start a new meme this holiday season - sharing with one another the names of charitable or volunteer groups that you believe in.
1. What charitable groups have helped, or are in the process of helping, you or someone you love, or have special meaning for you? (If you'd like to, explain why.)
I guess this is where I give a shout out to my dad's ACF: I'll have to talk with him about getting a Web site, or at least some linkable press.
Groups that may not fight poverty but are close to my interests are these:
The Challenged Athletes Foundation. They help people with illnesses or missing parts by providing funds for training, prosthetic limbs and so forth. But they have impact beyond the lives of these individuals because of the way these athletes inspire those who see them compete in athletic events, such as the Ironman, that are impressive by any standard. I'm sure they offer hope to people who've become disabled for whatever reason, but also, I can't count the number of otherwise sedentary people who've come out to cheer for a race and see someone whiz by in a wheel chair or on one leg and say, shoot, I have no excuse for not appreciating and taking care of my body.
Girls on the Run. This group coaches middle school girls who otherwise don't have after-school sports to run a race, but just as importantly, to develop self-esteem and integrity and confidence and to appreciate a healthy lifestyle before they hit the worrisome, peer-pressury teen years. I've applied to coach, but realized I wasn't able to because 'after school' for these kids is right in the middle of my work day. I still hope to do this in the future. Also, anybody can volunteer to be a 'buddy' for their culminating events.
2. What charitable groups have you given to or volunteered with that you feel really good about, either because you've seen their positive impact, or because they made YOU feel especially good, or because you've done research and know that they do what they say and operate with integrity?
Groups that have gotten my holiday dollars in the past include Doctors Without Borders and the National Resources Defense Council. From the limited research I did before making those donations, I got the impression that they did good work with integrity. And neither did a ton of follow-up begging, which is a huge pet peeve.
A friend is executive director for Rebuilding Together San Francisco (which is really the only reason I'd ever heard of it), and I helped with envelope stuffing a couple of years back. And I can say that they have a very direct impact on people's lives, and have incredibly low overhead costs. Everybody there is committed, and they work really, really hard. If you're into Deserving Design or Total Makeover Home Edition, consider getting your company to help out here.
I'm hereby tagging all of you who read this to answer these questions on your site, or post your responses in the comments. Maybe we can share some good ideas, and maybe you'll inspire us to get our own rears more in gear.
I'm still crafting my New Year's Resolutions, and I think one of them will have something to do with devoting more time and effort to charitable or volunteer causes - maybe I won't be too picky at first, maybe it'll be more about forming the habit and the mindset. Another tentative goal might be to get my firm to do some kind of volunteer activity. We're always looking for team-building exercises like Go-Karting or Trampoline Jumping; why not spend the same time actually building or cleaning something?
One last thing to share with you before the end of the tax write-off season for 2007. When it all comes down to the bottom line (and doesn't it always), isn't what these organizations really need from us, money? I mean, I can contribute, and feel better about myself, by nailing some boards together in my free time, but the amount of income I can earn in the same amount of time just by doing my job translates to a vastly more life-changing quantity of rice or malaria pills or whatever in the third world.
This article on philanthropic giving (found through a link on NIM's site) really got me thinking about our obligations to those less materially fortunate than we are, in terms of fairness and morality and sleeping at night. So if you're with me on volunteering, maybe you'll also give some thought to the less warm-and-fuzzy, but probably way more effective, act of writing a check.
Ed. This post and its accompanying comments give a really helpful list of appealing charities, and identify "clearing house" type sites that review the "quality" of many charities for a number of factors.
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