Buying contributes to charity

I did my article presentation this week over some websites that give back to charity when you buy through them.  Most of the class thought this was an “ok” idea. It is not a life changing fund-raising tactic, but a lot of people would take advantage of this but, not go out of their way too.  Two of the websites I found were ebaygiving and goodshop.com Some other people have heard about other things such as  Toms Shoes, that for every pair you buy, they send a pair to someone in a third world country. 

I think that one way that this on-line buying could really benefit people is that if a non-profit org. used it as a fundraiser. I think that if they took donations of gifts, or things people would buy off e bay, and then sold them, and they got all the money for the organization that would be great. I can really see someone like FHCC using this, and making a few hundred off of it. 

I belive that one of the reasons it is not working or blowing up right now, is that people have not heard about it.  The general conscience I got from the class was if they had two items in front of them they could buy, and one the profit would go to charity and the other would go to Joe Brown’s pocket of course they would by the one for charity, even if it meant no tax deduction for them. 

I think this is a great idea, and hope that larger corporations start to grab on to this.

Volunteer

I am writing this week, continuing our discussion on adults volunteering their time. I think another big reason that adults have trouble finding time or actually getting motivated to volunteer is because of what they might be passionate about. As a youth you might get involved with your church and go to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen and think that’s good enough.

As an adult you have more experiences and may have a passionate cause. Such as, breast cancer, it is very hard to donate your time to breast cancer research. It is easier to just send in a check and feel good about that. Most adults are so busy, they cannot find time to volunteer their time. But, in the long run this is really going to take a toll, because it all starts with youth. If the kids see their parents volunteering they will want to go along, or get involved as well.  I am sure we will see a much bigger Delcine as time goes on.

Case Statement

I found a case statement for The University of North Carolina’s Social Work Program. The url for this is:

They wrote this case statement because, they were trying to get alumni donations to : recruit more teachers, more scholarship and to maintain nice facilities.

I thought this was a good case statement and would have prob. gave it an 80% on the grading scale.   They did a good job on the visual aspects, which is good for today’s young generation.  It expressed the mission at the beginning and said the purpose of the case statement. It was a very professional presentation and I like how it broke it down into donor categories. Ex: If you donate 500 you are a Golden Teacher donor, and your money Will go towards…. If you donate 1,000 you are a Ford Hall donor and your money will go towards….

They also included personal stories in the case statement which made it more personal.  I have not seen A LOT of case statements but this one seemed to be trendy and infomational.It also talked about different ways to give BESIDES donating money.

Tax Exemptions

So after reading a number of posts on this topic, I’ve decided I don’t necessarily believe people, who donate money, should receive a tax break. I mean, why do people need a reward for donating money? After all, it was their decision to do so. Must there always be an incentive other than a “warm fuzzy feeling” to persuade donors into giving money to charities?

I guess I don’t necessarily think tax deductibles are bad things, but do we really need them? I wonder… How much of a change do you think there would be in donations to non-profit organizations if people didn’t receive tax deductions for their contribution? Just wondering, but it kind of makes me consider how “giving” we really are. After all, everything charity related seems to have some sort of materialistic incentive to doing good more times than not. Someone discussed the charities we used to do as children earlier in the posts. I realize that some like the Salvation Army were truly “giving” without a materialistic incentive, but usually the charities did have some sort of reward like pizza parties or ice cream socials for the biggest collectors/donors.  It’s really surprising to me that we’ve been expecting rewards for giving since we were young.  Do you think it was wrong of our mentors/teachers to bribe us with these rewards? Did it send the wrong message? or was it harmless? I can’t lie to myself, I did enjoy the pizza.