Charity

In my company, everyone is all about giving back to the community and service projects and all that jazz. In the local Denver office, we have developed a community service committee in charge of organizing community events. That's all fine and good, but everyone in my office knows where I stand when it comes to helping out charities... good luck, God speed, but count me out.

One of the reason I don't like giving money to charities is because I don't know where it goes. I don’t' know how much of the money actually ends up helping anyone and how much is wasted. Before I give to a charity, I want to see their financial statements and I want to determine how much is going to overhead and how much is helping people. I've been a business consultant for 6 years now, and I've seen how companies operate and there are very few companies I would trust to efficiently use my money. I don't think a charity organization would be much better. I try to be as generous as I can with offering I make through my church. I trust them. I have complete confidence that those donations are doing good somewhere and are not being wasted. I really don't trust any other organization. Why would I donate anywhere else? I doubt there are too many more charities more efficient than my church, so in my mind, giving to any other charity is just plain wasteful.

For example, how much has been spent on pink ribbons? I don't understand the pink ribbon thing. Maybe someone can leave a comment on here and enlighten me. How exactly are pink ribbons helping cure cancer? I know that when I bough my wife a pink Kitchen Aid, supposedly part of the proceeds went to help cancer. Of course, I don't know where that "cancer curing donation" was supposed to go or if it ever made it to its intended destination, but I have no choice but to pretend I believe that a publically held corporation whose main goal is to create wealth for its owners is genuinely interested in curing cancer and utilized that tiny amount of money in an efficient manner to assist with the search for a cure for cancer. The rest of the proceeds probably went towards the Christmas bonus of some executive who used that bonus to buy his 15 year old daughter a Mercedes Benz, but some of it may have helped cure cancer. Really, the most important thing is that my wife has a pink Kitchen Aid with which to make me a cake.

I assume then that when you see pink ribbons on cars and backpacks and buildings that the money spent on buying those ribbons supposedly go to cure cancer. Even if most of the proceeds do go towards curing cancer, that still doesn't explain the pink ribbon. I don’t' know how much it costs to make pink ribbons, but I’m guessing they aren't free. Especially those huge ribbons you see on the sides of buildings - those have to cost something. Who makes the pink ribbons anyways? Maybe instead of walking for a cure, we should stand in a pink-ribbon-making-assembly-line for a cure. That would at least make them cheaper so more of the money could go towards actual cancer instead of ribbon making. Or, we could eliminate the pink ribbons all together and have ALL the money go towards cancer. But then, how will everyone who drives past me know that I care about curing cancer?

(By the way, I'm not as dumb as I sound and I understand that livestrong bracelets and pink ribbons are en affective way to motivate people to donate to cancer because it makes them feel like they are getting something back for their money and also contributing to worthy cause as well as serving the additional benefit of letting everyone know you are a good person, just like "I voted" stickers. I really don't blame the charity - they are just being smart.)

But I haven't gotten to the main reason I don’t' like giving to charities. Some of them are just dumb. I just don’t believe some of them are causes worthy of my time and money in some situations. Just because you call it charity, doesn’t mean I have to believe in the cause. It seems all you have to do these days is call something a charity and people make you feel like a jerk if you don’t help. Sorry, I’m not going to play mud volleyball to raise money for a program to encourage kids to ride bikes more. That’s not a real charity.

This brings me to the catalyst for this entry and my least favorite charity ever...Junior Achievement. My company participates is JA for a Day, where local professionals go to an elementary school in bad neighborhoods and "teach" them for a day. When I say "teach", I mean, stand in front of them and talk while they throw things around the room and their real teachers tell them to criss-cross their apple sauce or something like that. Teachers will know what I'm talking about.

Today I got an email saying JA for a day has an "URGENT NEED" for volunteers. Urgent need? Really? I responded by saying "And by “urgent need”, you mean if someone doesn’t volunteer, these poor children will be taught by their regular certified and educated teacher instead of a internal audit consultant with no experience in teaching at all. This could be disastrous to their ability to identify firemen as people who work in their community." I suppose it would also be terrible because the real teacher wouldn't get a paid day off.

I just have a hard time getting behind a charity like this. If anyone has ever heard of someone who turned their life around due to the influence of a professional who spoke to their class on the topic of “people who work in your community” when they were 7 years old, please let me know. How is that a good charity? How is me teaching 2nd graders anything under any circumstances a good idea? We are calling that charity now? A bunch of people spending 6 hours of our time on that? Extreme Home Makeover could build a house in the time it would take me to explain to a 9 year old that we don’t’ refer to police as “po pos” Also, if they let me teach, then clearly they aren't screening volunteers very well. And on top of everything else, you want me to pay $100 to go bowling and call that charity? I call it robbery. I'd just as soon buy a $100 pink ribbon.

On a side note, last year my company promised a a raffle ticket to whoever donated to a certain charity. The goal was for 100% participation and the office would all get a free dinner. I didn’t want to ruin it for the rest of the office so I donated $1. I won the raffle and got a $10 gift card. That's a 1,000% return on my money for giving to charity. That must be God's way of blessing me for being so charitable!

By the way, I'm positive there are hundreds of awesome charities out there that do amazing things and change lives. Knock yourselves out and donate to them if you feel like it, just make sure you get a ribbon or bracelet or something else out of it.  Otherwise, what's the point?