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Hernando Today

No time like the present to get back in the giving mood

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By RON RAE

The Rae Way

Published: June 23, 2009

Oh, dear. I haven't made a single charitable donation yet this year.

What was a ritual over the past few years has come to a halt. The battle between guilt and survival means that I have forsaken goodwill for the moment in hopes that sustainable contributions can be made in the future. Until the credit card balances are brought under control, but not necessarily paid off, there won't be any benefactors from my generosities because, for the time being, I don't have any to give.

Unfortunately, I don't foresee things changing anytime soon. Hopefully, costly unfortunate situations won't be repeated, and I won't have to jump from one zero-percent introductory rate credit card offer to another, plus the 4 percent processing fee for balance transfers. It seems a never-ending battle, one that millions of cashed-crunched Americans are fighting … and losing.

Melissa Brown, associate director at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, said, "The way the economy goes determines how charity goes." Brown also stated that although 70 percent of Americans typically give about 3 percent of their income to charity, the average individual donation dropped from $225 in 2007 to $190 last year.

According to Rapidata's Charity Direct Debit Tracking Report 2009, cancellation rates of direct debit contributions to charities skyrocketed from 50 percent in September to an astounding 67 percent in December.

The Giving USA Foundation estimated that $307 billion was given to charities in 2008, an inflation-adjusted 5.7 percent decline from donations in 2007, the biggest decline since the foundation began gathering data in 1954. Donations to religious and education organizations tend to suffer during a recession, but their stats show an increase of 5.5 percent given to religious causes.

True to form, donations to education were down 5.5 percent from 2007 figures. But the story doesn't end there. Donations to colleges and universities grew by 6.2 percent in 2008 to $31.6 billion, the highest amount ever recorded according to a survey done by the Council for Aid to Education. The biggest bucks went to the top 20 American universities that raised a total of $8.41 billion and, although they make up just 1.9 percent of the institutions surveyed, accounted for 26.6 percent of all donations.

We're talking the likes of Stanford, Harvard, Columbia and Yale. And yet, in anticipation of fewer donations in the future, universities have delayed building projects and eliminated hundreds of faculty and staff positions. Outside these "rich" universities, gifts to the remaining 1,032 institutions were down 4.2 percent.

Getting down to the meat-and-potatoes of charities, at a time when their assistance is needed most, social service organizations saw their funds plunge by 12.7 percent.

What brought on this guilt was the bedroom set I gave to a young couple about to have a baby. The unwed father and mother planned to get a place of their own once the baby was born so they could raise the child in the privacy of their chosen family environment. They didn't.

He continues to live at his mom's home along with three other adult brothers, all on Social Security for mental and/or physical impairments, and a younger brother in high school, plus four lovable but hyper-energetic pit bulls. Therefore, she lives with her parents while receiving welfare benefits.

So, there you have it — the cause of my dismay. I know that if I had donated the set to a charity the proceeds would have gone for an excellent cause and someone would have appreciated the condition of the bedroom set that had been given to me by a relative and replaced with another, newer set from the same retired couple.

In Orlando, it was AmVets that I would regularly contact for a pick-up. In Hernando County, donations of clothing and books, music and videos, and electronics and furniture, all of which could be easily and profitably garage-sold, have predominately gone to Habitat for Humanity. I know for a fact that the proceeds are truly appreciated and go toward such excellent causes like the building of more than 1,300 homes by thousands of volunteers in areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Now that I've gotten this guilt complex out in the open, I've come to realize the year is still half available and there's plenty of time to gather together all those items that haven't been used in years, or even months, and I can truck them to where appreciation abounds. I can also throw a few coins in a jar toward a cash donation to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) where it might save a life or, at the very least, enhance one that's in turmoil.

Although there's no time like the present to make a donation, anytime is better than no time at all. I'll feel much better when that time comes.

Ron Rae, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill. He can be contacted at hernandoron@yahoo.com.

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