Checkout Donations, What To Do?
Written by, Gill Tataev founder of Ruthless Giving.
Chances are that while checking out at your local grocery store you’ve been asked if you want to round up your purchase or donate a dollar to charity. These are small, simple donations that help raise lots of money for charities. However, many people hesitate and feel unsure what to do. This hesitation is justifiable and here are the reasons why.
1. You can’t evaluate a charity that quickly. Unless you’ve already researched the charity that will receive your donation, you really don’t know how useful your money will be. Even if you are a little familiar with the charity, do you really know how your money will be spent? How does the organization achieve its mission? These are all valid questions that should really be answered before giving money to any organization.
2. You should donate from the heart, not from pressure. Giving is something that should make you feel good, but giving because you feel judged or guilty if you don’t is not smart giving. In fact, any kind of pressure when it involves financial decision should be avoided.
3. You don’t always know if the charity is doing what they claim. Take, for example, Indigo’s Love of Reading Foundation, which is registered as a non-profit with the Canada Revenue Agency, and donates around $1.5 million in grants each year to Canadian schools to help build their libraries. However, what donors may not realize is that those grants are given as credit that must be spent in stores in the Indigo bookstore chain. And schools pay full price for any books they purchase through the program. While yes, the charity is still giving books, it’s not as straightforward or efficient as it sounds. This is just one simple example, but it makes the point: you need time to research a charity before giving.
4. What’s the store’s role in the fundraising? Does the store charge charities administrative or other fees? Are they matching giving? How do they choose their charities? The problem is there’s no way to know in the 10 seconds you have to decide whether to add that donation or not.
At the end of the day, “it’s just a dollar or two” which for some people doesn’t make a difference. So what’s the big deal? The problem with making small unguided donations is a deeper issue linked to a psychological behavior called moral licensing. In a study done by Khan and Dhar, the researches argue that a boost in positive self-concept, subsequently licenses the choice of a more self-indulgent option. It means that if we perform an act of altruism, even as small as a dollar, we’re “filling” our good deed tank. As a result, we’re less likely to perform any more good deeds, and in some cases making it easier for us to justify immoral behavior.
This article is sponsored by People’s Foundation.
