Do you give to charity?

[CRFSaver]

Re: Do you give to charity?

I donate to my highschool as well as my undergraduate college. I donate a lot of goods to the local Vietnam veterans charity. I tend to be quite picky on my charities. The one I gave to at Christmas time trains dogs for retarded children. In my mind this gives a child a sense of normality in their life. Allows the to go to school and having the dog also makes it easier for other children to approach them. Its one thing to be down on your luck and most of us can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, but many of these children or young adults dont have that ability. This gives them a chance.

[Jorge]

Re: Do you give to charity?

I love the organizations that let donors purchase tangible items... like chickens and fruit trees. It's a wonderful concept!
We only donate about 1% of our income each year (we could do better) and it's distributed between a variety of charities. All of our decluttering goes to Goodwill or Salvation Army and I've probably dropped off 5-6 carloads of usable items in the past 2 years (part of MY decluttering). Every year I give my time to MS, or do charity walks, but all-in-all, it works out to only about $200 a year for my time. Boy, do I need to do better. My SO on the other hand does quite a bit of volunteer stuff. I'd have to mark it around $500 per year.

[Jorge]

Re: Do you give to charity?

I'd just like to say that in theory, I agree with you (pennywise), but in reality, I think people need to make a conscious effort to help those around them instead of depending on "the system".
However, it was frustrating to be paying for tuition in whole being a single mom and then seeing others with free rides or lots of other help. BUT, I don't think we should punish the kids for the parent's mistakes. Tough line to balance.

[sonj]

Re: Do you give to charity?

I used to give money to charites when I could afford it...now I donate just household items and clothes to a free clothing house.