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Not Just a Feel Good Fest: The Difficulty of Giving

by kate baggott on December 21st, 2007

When I launched the Generous December Group Writing Project, I imagined a feel good fest. Everyone loves a good cause, everyone loves charitable giving.

I didn’t expect to have my faith and values challenged. I didn’t expect to have to do deep soul searching and have a philosophical crisis.

Except, that is exactly what happened.

I thought that we’d be giving lots of Christmas presents to needy children through organizations that distribute them. I thought there would be heartfelt and personal explanations of how we have been helped by charitable organizations ourselves. That has and hasn’t happened the way I expected.

A few issues have made me think and feel so hard and so deeply that I lost sleep over what to do. You see, it was always my plan to do something for every charity that each participant submitted. I knew I didn’t have a big budget, I knew some people would have to share the spirit of the goal, I knew a least one “secret Santa” sponsor would sign up and then drop out.

It never crossed my mind that I would have second thoughts about giving. Two of the charities submitted, for example, have a military context: Operation Kid Comfort and Adopt-A-Chaplain.

I am a pacifist. It is deeply entwined with my religious and spiritual beliefs. I’m not American, so certain issues are not my responsibility to comment on nor is it my right to address those, but I have a social and spiritual responsibility to differentiate between supporting victims of war and supporting the war effort. My values demand it of me.

At the same time, when I launched the project, I didn’t ask you to tell me what I would do when I choose to do the right thing. I asked you to tell me what you do.

Lillie, I respect you as a writer and I respect what you believe, but while I could get my head around Operation Kid Comfort, I can’t get involved with Adopt a Chaplain. I struggled over this decision, but ultimately, it isn’t my role.

The decision had other implications I did not expect. Summer at Wired for Noise wrote about the social change organization Resist. Resist’s origins come from the anti-war movement. It is exactly the kind of organization that addresses what I believe, at least, in part.

Hence the difficulty.

This project is not about me and what I believe. It is not about conflict between two different value systems because, really, I think our goals and wishes for a better world are the same. I cannot play one approach against another. Certainly not when everyone is praying for an end to war and for the safety of their loved ones.

So, what is the fair and just thing to do? I prayed on it. Summer and Lillie, I have explained my thinking and feelings to you. I think both of you understand me and have well-developed consciences. I have sent each of you $5 by PayPal to perform a random act of kindness where you live. Add it to a collection plate, put it in the charity pot, hand it to a homeless person, buy food for your local food bank. It doesn’t have to be done by Christmas, I know I haven’t given you much time. Keep it handy and when the right opportunity comes, you’ll know it.

The difficulties didn’t end there. Kadi, in your post, you wrote about helping out a specific family personally and invited others to contact you to help them out too. Ideally, this is the kind of community action that helps people out so they don’t need to go to charities. We make meals for our neighbors when they experience loss, have babies or have another big life transition. When our colleagues get sick we take up collections. On one hand, blogging should be an extension of this aspect of living in communities.

On the other hand, I don’t want to encourage people to donate to strangers who ask via the internet. There are so many stories of hucksters and con artists who prey on people’s generosity. Not that it ever crossed my mind that you might be one of them! Far from it. You have a larger public persona and online identity.  And, from reading your blog, obviously a deeply caring person.

Besides,  I give money to people begging in the street simply because they asked me and I am not silly enough to believe that they are all as needy as I imagine. Haven’t I made the same leap of faith by giving $5 to Lillie and Summer to perform random acts of kindness? Yes. And I am making the same leap to honor your request.

Jacob, yours was the last entry to come in. On the surface, Israemploy looks like and functions like every commercial job search board in the world. Is does, though, have a mandate to help Israelis from minority and oppressed groups to find employment. It is also appears to be funded by the New Israel Fund which supports equality among and social justice for Israelis of all backgrounds.

The thing I couldn’t get my head around is this:

Why do users who are unemployed and, one assumes, in financial difficulty, have to donate in order to use a charitable tool that is run by volunteers?

So, I felt more comfortable giving you $5 to perform a random act of kindness than I did giving to your charity.

<>I know $5 isn’t much, but I hope you can buy someone a hot meal who would otherwise go hungry.

These were hugely difficult decisions for me to make, but I feel that this one will give us all something good, even if it isn’t exactly what you asked for.

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POSTED IN: Mental Health