The $100 Pledge (The Charity Post)

Hey all!

I hope everyone is doing well. For those of you in the Northeast, I hope the weather is startng to turn for you. For those of you not in the Northeast, well let's just say that you and I need to have a talk about how you haven't came over to help shovel.

In November, gearing up for the Christmas season, I tried a new approach to charitable giving and I thought I would share it with you all. Now charity is often a tough subject for us to broach in common conversation. After all, you don't want to be "that guy".

Bono always wants you to give MORE

After all, it is probably the place of a select few to encourage charity or judge the qualities of giving (not Bono). I'm thinking your local priest, your parents, and maybe the Edge. I think most of us know we should be more charitable, it is kind of like telling us we should eat healthier, get more sleep, or stop stealing candy from children. When talking about charity we need to court the fine line of good ideas vs. browbeating criticism/self-serving gloating. What I want to talk about today is NOT an indictment upon our American excess or some passive aggressive way to get you to give, or some roundabout way of saying how great a human being I am (in order to prove this, I am going to fully admit that I have not shaved in 3 days and have no intention of going to church this Sunday). Rather, this is just an idea I used that turned out to be a great personal success; that other people might like to use for their own benefit.

The $100 pledge:

For the most part, the $100 pledge was created for one of the most humane and honest reasons humanity can afford: the mitigation of guilt. I was purchasing a book one day at Barnes & Noble, and while purchasing, I was asked if I would like to give $1 to a book buying charity. Now, this caused me to mentally jump into a moral quandry about the validity of said charitable act. Was this charity better than other charities? What percentage of the money actually got to the people in need? Was it really fair to blind side people with what was essentially and finacial ambush?

Now all of these thoughts really do deserve some sort of attention and are in many ways legitimate concerns. However, I did not really have time to contemplate them. After all, the young lady at the register (presumably with a BA and MA in Art History) had far more important things to do than wait for me to come to some sort of rationalization of whether or not I should donate such a trivial amount to charity. So instead I made a gut reaction.

"No thank you."

That decision would haunt me for the rest of my life.

Ok, well maybe not the rest of my life, but certainly for a little while. It sometimes amazes me how guilt can creep into your mind. The refusal of a $1 donation had got me thinking about all these things, kept me awake at night, and frankly haunted me to a degree that really was out of proportion with the sum itself.

A few days later, I was buying groceries with Dani, when once again the same situation arose, this time with donation to a food bank. Perhaps it was the fact that someone else was watching, but this time instead of a knee jerk "no", I responded with a knee jerk "yes".

Suddenly I was filled with a massive level of joy and I felt like I was flying with angels!
Or not...

To tell you the truth, I didn't really feel all that different. I questioned my donation, wondered about it ethically, economically, and such. However, what I didn't feel was guilty. I had in essence, bought off my conscience. This in turn, brought its own moral issues. After all, charity I am assuming, should not be about the mitigation of internal feelings of guilt. So now I was left with a bit of a quandry. Unless I didn't want to buy books or groceries ever again, I was going to have to figure out a way to deal with these repetitive small charitable requests which for some reason, were wreaking havok with my brain.

I don't know where it came from, but I decided that from now on, I would just say yes.

I was too young for the D.A.R.E. program, so I missed the message.

I set aside $100 and everytime I am asked for a small donation TO ANYTHING, I say yes. When that $100 is up, I decided I would assess myself and reflect on whether to continue with the practice (I didn't want to bankrupt myself). I would always opt for the smallest amount and always say yes regardless of what the charity was or what form it came in, be it cash, tacked on to a credit card, or some sort of pledge. It helps to keep some singles on you at all times.

Make it rain... for charity

As of right now, it has been about three months and I'm still nowhere near done with the money I set aside. The pledge allows me to avoid the moral arguments about what charity is more deserving, and really just smoothes out a socially awkward part of life. I have yet to have any problems with it thus far (although I am a bit worried about if some sort of White supremacist or pro-puppy killing charity knocks on my door - I'd probably have to draw the line) and have really felt generally good about my giving (keeping well in mind that multitasking my charitable donations as a way to avoid awkwardness has some moral ambiguity to it as well). The $100 pledge has really served as an idea I like, and given the idea that this blog is created for the purpose of talking about ideas I like, I figured writing about it and spreading it can't be that bad either.


In the end, charity is about... well, I don't really know. Sometimes it's a religious tenet, sometimes it's self-serving, sometimes it is seasonal, sometimes we just do it. The meanings and complexities of giving are something for the philosophers, not the 24 year old blogger. What I do know is that I don't know anyone who says charity is a bad thing. And I know if feels good to do it. And between those two things, I figure it has got to be a pretty swell idea.

Do you have any interesting ways you like to donate?