Everyone knows that donating money to charity is a good thing. But which charity? How do you decide which charities to give money to?
Some charities operate locally, some nationally and some internationally. The adage ‘charity begins at home’ would suggest starting with local charities. But even the worst-off people in New Zealand have a standard of living that is astronomically higher than millions of people in third world countries. The same amount of money could potentially make a much larger difference overseas.
And then there is the question of what type of charity to give to. Charities usually work in a small niche:
- Health: breast cancer, child cancer, cancer, heart disease, asthma, haemophilia, MS, deafness, blindness, diabetes, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, arthritis as well as various hospitals and hospices
- Victims of crime: Sexual Abuse Help, Rape Crisis, Victim Support
- Children: Kids First, Starship, Barnados, Make A Wish, Books in Homes, Plunket, La Leche League
- Old people: Grey Power, Age Concern, Meals on Wheels
- Animals: Anti-vivisection, SPCA, Project Jonah, and various specific charities devoted to helping particular endangered species
- Human rights: Amnesty International, Doctors without Borders, Human Rights Watch
- Social stuff: Rescue helicopter, St John Ambulance, Surf Lifesaving, Coastguard, Search & Rescue, Citizens Advice Bureau, Habitat for Humanity, Safer Streets, Youth Suicide prevention
- Poverty: World Vision, Unicef, Make Poverty History, TearFund, Christian Children’s Fund, Oxfam, Red Cross
- Environmental: Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd, WWF, Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society
While obviously all of these charities do good work and are important to the people they affect, there is clearly a big difference in the type of impact they can make. $2000 given to the Make A Wish foundation can help a terminally ill child (who has had the best medical care available) go to Disneyland before they die. It could provide a tenth of the cost of training a guide dog so a blind person can have independence and a higher quality of life. But that same amount of money spent on vaccines, antibiotics, malaria nets or even food, could probably save the lives of multiple people.
The effectiveness of the charity should be a consideration. Some charities spend most of the money they raise on administration and fundraising costs, with very little of the money actually being put to a useful purpose. These costs are necessary to enable the charity to do anything, but ideally, I’d want most of the money to actually be used to do good.
My final consideration are the ‘side effects’ of the charity. For instance, PETA funds the Animal Liberation Front, which is committed to using violence to advance the cause of animal liberation. Greenpeace sometimes goes over the line with dangerous and violent tactics to stop whaling and logging operations. And many charities provide services with religious overtones. The help they give people comes with the attached string of having to convert to a different religion. And even where that isn’t required, many are doing immense harm by spreading misinformation about HIV and condom use and by preventing access to any form of birth control.
How do you balance all these tensions? Which charities do you support?
May 18th, 2009 at 12:11 am
SARAH! This is just the thing I like to think/talk about, I am very glad to discuss this with you. I actually spend a lot of time thinking about these sorts of things. In my fantasy world, I am the most powerful, god-like man in the whole world. I have the power to do anything. And with that limitless power, many moral questions arise. It allows me to think on them within this preconstructed story world.
What you are thinking now is probably what God is thinking everyday of its eternal life. Who do I help? Who do I not help? And in fact who do I punish? But before we going into the “why”, let’s take a moment and think about the “how”.
Remember when we were little kids, mom said go buy some eggs, we take our bicycle and ride to the little shop at the street corner. We pick out some pretty eggs and we give the shop keeper the money. Mission Accomplished! Choice was not part of this exercise. Today to buy the same eggs, you as a well educated young woman will consider all sorts of things. How to pay for it, in what way, cash or card? Where do I get it from, where is cheaper, where is easier to park, do I need to get anything else from the same place, is it busy at this time? Free range egg to support the cause or factory egg? All that just for the little round thing, why is that? Because now you are aware the choices.
Awareness is both a blessing and a curse. Because now instead of buying the damn egg and eat it, the weight of the whole world and the future of yourself and the mankind are on your shoulders. This morning I spent more than an hour on buying an external hard drive, because I can buy from anywhere in the world. On brands that are base anywhere in the world.
The funny thing is there is no right answer, I base my decision on some arbitrary requirements, and right away I will admit I did not consider “everything” and I did not base on my decision on 100% reliable information. Although the chance of me getting a workable external hard drive at the end is quite high, but I can not be certain the money I spent will match my original intention. And I will definitely not have been picking the best product out there. That is an awareness itself, not only you are aware you have choices, but you are also aware you do not have all the choices including the best one.
Ok charity~ First thing is everybody and I mean EVERYBODY thinks they need help. Just look at those CEOs who fly in private jet and pay themselves millions of dollars bonus, think they need government to bail them out. And indeed everybody can use your money to improve their life and arguably a lot of people are worse off than us. So this is very much down to your preference, you can justify your opinion in any way you like. But the important thing is don’t feel bad about doing charity. It’s like you gave all your spare change to the poor guy then turn the corner and see another poor woman with her baby.
Everyday my god-like hero character is trying to help people, but only to find there are more people waiting for him to help. But that is what defines him. Charity is not measured by the amount of effort you contribute today, but by the thought of you will continue tomorrow.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
I go for bang for buck. World Vision, UNICEF etc. seem to do a lot of good in terms of lifting communities out of poverty.
Make a Wish does seem a bit over the top now that you mention it. But it’s all relative isn’t it?
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Doug, I think you are right about the decisions being fairly arbitrary. As Voltaire said, ‘the perfect is the enemy of the good’. There’s no way we can make a universally optimal decision in any situation. I guess as long as we are doing something to help, at whatever level, we are contributing to making things better in some way.
May 24th, 2009 at 5:59 am
I will go even futher to say there is no way to know what we are doing will make it better or worse. Sending the kid to Disneyland may actually make his/her remaining life even more hard to bare. Giving someone food and clothes may actually diminishing their motivation to get out the current hardship. There is no way to know what our good intention will bring. So as long as we are doing what make us feel good, the rest we can not control.
May 24th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Doug, if you have God like power, limitless, then you’d simply help everyone. Why not?! Show them a better way to live, be happy and end the suffering. If only we have the power to do that.
But I think even God can’t do that, hence he’s not.
I will go read the part 2 of this post now.
May 24th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
It is my character’s intention to “help everyone”. But it’s not that simple, and many interesting questions arise from that scenario. Two men both fall in love with the same woman, who do I help? And if this woman love someone else but the guy is married, then who do I help?
Helping everybody is not a matter of power, but perhaps wisdom. I remember Agent Smith in The Matrix said, when the machine first created the Matrix, it was perfect. I dont know how they did it, but they figured it out. It was a world where everybody is happy, there are no hunger or disease. Everybody live a perfect and filfull life. But people can not accept that reality, the society fall apart, and they have to destroy everything and rebuild. Then Smith said – “as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery”. I believe it too, we dont want to be happy, we want to try to be happy.
November 11th, 2010 at 3:07 am
There are three charities that I consistently support, two children charities and one animal charity. The children charities are Great Ormond Street and the Children’s Society. There’s a personal connection with Great Ormond Street, because they saved one of my grandchildren, after having been born with a twisted bowel. The animal charity is the RSPCA, although I must admit, that’s habit more than anything else.
Ultimately, I would want my money to do good but I also want the charity to be able to continue the work they do. If that means my money is put towards administrative costs, I have no objection.
For me, I also want to donate to a cause I feel something for. I take your point about the impact a charity has but what’s important varies from person to person. Few will be objective when it comes to donating to charity and I’m not entirely sure that total objectivity would be a good idea. Granted, there is such a thing as a greater good but that doesn’t mean I want to see other charities crippled because the contribution they make isn’t completely in line with that greater good.
I hope I’ve made sense, I seem to have rambled on a bit!