June 7th, 2005 - Giving to charity
A perennial issue with living simply is charitable contributions. Here’s what we do. First, let me note that if it were up to me, I’d give 10% of my income to charity, right off the top. However, it’s not up to me so we donate a tiny portion (.2%) of our income to charity.
We chose three charities to which we will donate money on a regular basis. I chose one–the baby charity I work with. Eric chose one–the Oshkosh Area Humane Society, whence came our kitties. And we chose one together–our regional public radio station. We approved each other’s choices, by the way. This decision makes it so much easier to say no to organizations–I can say “I’m sorry, but we’ve already chosen where we will donate to charity this year.” It also means that we don’t have to feel like the other person’s pet cause (no pun intended) gets more money nor do we have to argue for our own. The money is split evenly among the three organizations.
Any other charities–be it Girl Scout’s selling cookies, sponsoring someone on a walk/run, buying fundraiser bracelets, or whatever–comes out of our pockets. (Or, we can choose to spend money from the Household budget, but that’s a joint decision and typically only done when the item is something we would have bought anyway.) We each have a monthly allowance–our spending money. So if I want to spend $100 on the baby charity, I can do so…out of my spending money.
Indeed, I put 10% of my spending money aside for charity each month. In the past, I’ve spend 100s on the babies, but I discovered a new favorite charity–The Elephant Sanctuary (TES) and all my money this year has gone their direction so far. This past winter, I specifically decided to again support an environmental cause. I’ve been a member of the NRDC and The Nature Conservancy in the past. I decided to support either dolphins or elephants. Last fall, I’d read a book by the founder of TES and remembered they had a website. I managed to find it (surprise! type in elephant sanctuary and they are the top hit. Makes sense…but I hadn’t remembered their name.). Now I dream of winning the lottery so that I can give them a million dollars.
Non-monetary giving: We also collect unwanted household goods and clothing throughout the year. Each summer, my parish picnic includes a rummage sale–all the non-clothing items go there. The clothing is given to the St. Vincent de Paul store. All of Maggie’s unused baby clothes and other items went to the baby charity, too. As she grows, anything nearly new can also go to them; we make up My Stuff Bags for children arriving at the abuse shelter.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.