Charitable Donations

With the devastating earthquake in Haiti, and all the talk of making donations there, I thought I would write a bit on why I will not be donating money to Haiti. In the process I'll tell a bit about where I do like to donate money. While some of what I'm about to write may seem cold, I hope you will not judge me for it just as I will not judge you for the donations you make to the charitable organisations of your choosing. I don't really think there is a wrong way to donate to charity, as long as you are doing it regularly, and ideally putting some thought into it. The latter is why I will not be donating to Haiti - I've put a lot of thought into my donations, and this simply does not fit into the "donation profile" that I have chosen for me. What you choose as right for you, is up to you of course.

Shortly after moving to Ottawa about a dozen years ago is when I first started making charitable donations of any meaningful amount, and at the time it was in the form of the Ottawa Food Bank. Every time we went grocery shopping, we'd pick up a generous amount of extras and drop them into the box they had at the grocery store. It was easy to do, and easy to remember, and it was also the earliest of my inklings of what would become my "donation profile". But more on that in a bit. It was after a few years of doing this, that a co-worker pointed out to me that with the amount of groceries I donate every week, it added up to quite a bit of money, and I'd actually be better off donating a cheque to the food bank and getting a tax receipt back. "Hey", I thought, "not a bad idea!". So that's what I did for the next while.

One big problem with the idea of the cheque is that it requires more planning and discipline. Putting the food in the box was really easy to do, and spread the donation out over the entire year. Donating by cheque was usually done annually, so required more financial discipline. Another problem with this approach is that I no longer had control over what food was being put into the Food Bank. One thing I really liked about donating food directly is that I could select the healthiest food, as well as the best bargains. For example I would always donate brown rice not white rice. And in general, foods that had undergone as little processing as possible.

For a while I was also adding to this an annual donation in the name of my great aunt Mary, as a Christmas present to her. She was approaching and eventually over 100 years old during this time, and my wife and I figured that she certainly did not need any more "things" at that point. So we tried it one year and it was such a big hit with her, that we did it again for the next few years until her death. Each year we changed it up, and also chose an organisation that would accept your dontation, and send a card to a 3rd party on your behalf. I recall that one year it was WaterCan, which builds wells in communities in the 3rd world, and another year it was an organisation which provides eye glasses in the 3rd world. Mary used to love getting the cards every year, telling her that we'd donated money on her behalf to these various needy people.

One thing I'd avoided during this time was the program we had at work whereby you could get a small sum taken off your paycheque each time, to be donated to the charity chosen by the employer. My employer was Nortel, and so the charity was the United Way, and honestly I wish I'd looked into this sooner because originally I did not sign up because I had recalled from my university days that the United Way had a terrible reputation for "administrative overhead", which meant that for every dollar you donated, a significant portion of it went to the administrators running the charity, not the people who actually needed the money. But a few years ago I found out that the United Way cleaned up its act quite significantly, and its administrative overhead had dropped from something like 20% (going by an admittedly poor memory), to the very respectable 5% range that it is today (EDIT: looks like I spoke too soon - see comments below). For those who do not know, the United Way is a 'grab bag' or 'umbrella' charity which basically just takes in money and redistributes it to other charities and needy organisations. It is a pretty good choice for someone who cannot make up their mind on where to donate. BTW, any reputable charity should publish their administrative overhead. Whichever charity you choose, you should take care to find one with a very low number here so that your money goes to the people who need it, not the people administering the charity.

So a couple of years ago I eventually signed up for the regular paycheque deductions, which made donating an awful lot easier. Then I also found out that if you want, the United Way lets you direct your money to the charity of your choice, underneath the umbrella. That's when and how I first got involved in my current charity of choice - the Ottawa Public School's Breakfast Program. When I lost my job at Nortel, I enquired at my boys' school, and found out that I was able to make a donation directly to them, which goes directly to their own Breakfast program. Which is a good thing because we live in a relatively poor neighbourhood, and there are a lot of needy kids in the area. The program lets any child have a good breakfast in the morning, and in fact my own boys love going there - it is almost like a social club for them.

Which I guess brings me to the whys and hows of my own "donation profile". I've actually put a lot of thought into this, and have decided that what I donate to is "basic needs" (food, clothes, shelter) charities. In general I will not donate to any sort of medical research because honestly speaking I think there are too many people in the world and we should be looking at ways to reduce the global population, not ways to extend life and thereby raise the population. Yes, that is a tenuous position to hold given that my father's life has been extended my modern medical interventions, and my son has a medical condition which has not yet required intervention but could well have required it. Though it does look like we are in the clear - knock on wood. This having been said, I do make a small annual donation to a friend who does the MS Bike-a-thon every year, and even though a close family member has MS, that is not my main reason for donating. My friend is very, very dedicated to this cause and works very hard for this every year - and I think that deserves a donation.

Another reason I will not make many sorts of medical donations is because I believe that our government is supposed to be funding this stuff, so every dollar I give, for example, to CHEO (the local Children's Hospital), is one dollar less the government will give. Yes, my son has to go to CHEO regularly, due to the aforementioned condition.

But hey, if you want to make donations to medical research, that is your choice and I will not judge you for it. In fact, I think it is great! That's your choice, and as long as you are donating regularly and generously, you should be applauded!

Now back to Haiti. The biggest reason I am not making a donation is that I have already decided that my donations will not be of the problem-of-the-moment sort. Why not? Mainly because I think that these are the areas that tend to solicit the most donations, especially from people who do not normally donate money. And they also usually come with a matching-dollars promise from governments, as is currently the case here in Canada - our federal government will match every dollar you give to Haiti. Another reason I do not give to the problem-of-the-moment is simply that at any given moment, there is an equally-deplorable situation somewhere in the world that I could be donating money to. And chances are, that situation by definition is not getting any publicity and therefore could probably use my money even more than the problem-of-the-moment.

The mention of matching dollars brings up another interesting criteria when donating money - where can it do the most good? On a pure dollar-for-dollar basis, my charities do not tend to fall into this category simply because I tend to donate money within my community, and dollar-for-dollar it could be doing way more good in a third world country where $100 is a year's wages for someone. A guy I used to work with at Nortel used to do his donations that way - he'd actually do a best-guess calculation of where in the world his dollars would get stretched furthest, and that is where he donated. I thought that was a pretty nifty way to donate, actually, even if it were not for me. If this style is for you, Haiti is probably a pretty good place to put your money because they are an extremely poor country, and dollars go pretty far there.

There you have it - where, how, and why I donate. I try hard to use reason in my decision-making. And I am admittedly somewhat shallow in my decision to donate mainly locally where I can see the benefit with my own eyes. Another charity I've generously supported in recent years is a group home almost right across the street from my house, which supports young families in many ways. But like I've said, I do not think there are any wrong decisions in making charitable donations. The only "wrong" choice is not donating as much as one has the means to do. Right at this moment I guess I do fall into that category, and it is only partly because of the fact I lost my job 9 months ago and have been getting myself back on my feet since then. Though it is true that before I lost my job, I was comfortable with the amount I was donating, though was striving to increase it. At the moment I'm working hard to get back to where I was a year ago, and probably a really good start on that will be for me to donate most of the first bonus from my new job, that will be on my paycheque tomorrow.

I'm still not 100% decided where it will go, though. I want to find a regular charity that can rely on my money every year - something that I think is most important when deciding on where to send your money. And I'd really like that to be the local School Breakfast Program that I've been supporting the last couple of years. But now I've gotten too close to it by going there with my boys. I see the sugary breakfast cereals, and other items which are far from getting the most value for the money or more importantly the most nutrition for the money. So I'm really torn this year. But I have to make up my mind soon. Not necessarily tomorrow when my bonus goes into my bank account, though. I'll just transfer the money to my other account where it will sit safely until I make up my mind.