Give What Really Matters

Posted on December 5, 2010 by venagozar

When I was a young man and wanted to give money, I gave to my Church. I felt good giving money. The reasons I gave were varied and are kind of funny to me now. Sometimes the Church would make sure I was aware a particular need during the service.

Other times I gave money because I felt as if I had been wasting my life recently, and donating money was a sort of equalizer. This thought arrived in the famous church tradition of ‘Paying for Salvation’. Here is how the idea was introduced to me.

Pirates on the high seas get old. After some years Pirating was hard work and mortality was setting in. Successful Pirates would suddenly find God (as if God was lost) and build a church atoning for their sins. In their minds and/or the greed based thinking of the Church, money to build one church equaled one ticket to heaven.

I too thought it was my obligation to give money to the Church. After all the building needed maintenance and the leaders needed clothing and feeding. For a couple of years we both were happy. I felt like I was doing my part, and whatever church I was attending had a few extra dollars in the coffers.

I listened to a Minister talk one Sunday morning about his trip to another city the day before. I don’t remember much of the story, but I do remember him talking about the steak dinner he ate while there. The few dollars I was going to give were not enough to pay for his coffee and the slice of pie he had for desert.

I don’t remember the point of his talk that day, but I remember his meal story. After that I made it a point to give money to people or causes where I knew I could make a difference. Giving money for Toys at Christmas or providing Thanksgiving meals for poor families felt good. My few dollars would make a tangible difference.

As the years went by, same as always, the need swelled. In the same small town needy families had grown from a few hundred during the holidays to several times that number all year. Suddenly my piddling few dollars did not seem to go very far.

I know now, without a doubt, poor people are a fact of life and the label “Poor” resides on a sliding scale rather than a balanced scale. There are poor people where you live, whether you live in an oil rich city or in the middle of the desert. I also learned something else about giving along the way.

Money is and always has been just a thing. There is nothing ‘giving’ about money. Whether you or I throw a few dollars at our favorite cause has little effect on the cause itself. No matter what the cause, if it is about people, there is never enough money to it to fix it.

If any cause has more than enough money in a given year, one of two things will happen. Either the standards of the cause will slide allowing more people to be included, or management will spend more. Either way the money is used up, and more is needed.

There is a better solution than dropping money on a collection plate, box, or sending a check to your favorite charity. Donate your time! Donating your time is the highest level of making a difference. Let those who are wealthy, or corporations donate money. If you want to know if you are really making a difference, donate your time.

Each of us has the ability to make more money if we give some away. We can take on a second job, work overtime, sell a possession, or do without. The most valuable item we have in our life is our time. There is no time bank that balances our time account. Giving your time to something you believe in is far more valuable than any amount of money you can give.

The wealthiest people in the world know this and they donate their time. They also donate large sums of money, but it is their time which really makes the difference. If you want to make a difference in your community, donate your time. I guarantee once you get over the idea that you really are not doing much, your thinking will change.

Instead of giving a few dollars and only having a fuzzy idea of where and how your money is being used, giving your time lets you see how you are making a difference by the impact you are making. Because it is your time that you will never get back, you will be more particular about how you donate it. People you help will appreciate you more than they will appreciate a few faceless dollars too.

How and Why to “Do The Right Thing”

Posted on July 5, 2010 by venagozar

Most of us like to pride ourselves for, ‘Doing the right thing’, when we have the opportunity. We like the feeling it gives us knowing that we stepped out of our private world for some small amount of time and did something good for someone else.

It is important we do these things. Making life better for, or helping someone make their life better, in turn makes our life better even though we may not notice any immediate change.

There are differences in how the act of, ‘Doing the right thing’ is carried out. We do not always do the right thing because we want to. Often we have ulterior motives behind our actions.

We occasionally ‘Do the right thing’ because it makes us feel good. Whatever we do is no real hindrance to us, or our time, and we know it will make a difference, so we do it. The feeling of knowing we did something for another is a good feeling and above all else we like to feel good.

Other times we ‘Do the right thing’ because we will feel guilty if we do not. Someone asked of us some help, and we feel guilty because we are thinking of saying no. We do not say no because it is simple request and well within our ability. Doing it keeps us from feeling guilty.

In public with people we know around we ‘Do the right thing’ because we do not want to give the people around us a bad impression. If they observe the need and asking, and we refuse what may they think of us for saying no?

If you have a belief system you are likely to ‘Do the right thing’ because you think there is a reward in doing the right thing in there somewhere. Perhaps it is a test, or maybe it is an angel or God in disguise coming to see if we really are who we appear to be. Possibly we think that doing good works here on earth will add to our benefits due, maybe giving us a little more than the person next to us when we reach heaven or paradise.

While all these reasons have there merits, I propose there can be real reward in saying no, when we are asked to, ‘Do the right thing’ and we do not want to. Maybe we are better off in our private world where we are lone with ourself. Maybe we are on our way to somewhere and we already feel about as good as we can feel, and the distraction of doing the right thing would only darken our otherwise bright and bubbly mood.

It is possible that we need not feel guilty about anything we do not do. Maybe we were asked if we would ‘Do the right thing’, but we choose not to and we do not feel guilty about refusing at all. Even if it is a test of sorts imposed upon us by some immortal being or a directive of one, that should not be reason to stop what we are doing in our own self centered selfish world, and reach out a hand to a stranger in need because we think it is a test of some sort that we must pass.

Even if it were a test, even if our family and friends are watching our reaction, and we think it may make us feel guilty later on, or ‘doing the right thing’ will make the world a better place for a few moments, these are not the better reason for ‘Doing the right thing’.

The better, and the best reason for doing the right thing is this: Do the right thing because you want to, nothing more. Do the right thing whether you think God will reward you or not. Do the right thing because you want to whether or not your family and friends are present to see what you will do. Do the right thing because you want to no matter who you think might be in disguise asking you.

Doing something only because you want to is the highest form of giving. You are ‘Doing the right thing’ not because it will make you feel good. You are ‘Doing the right thing’ not because you will be embarrassed if you do not. You are ‘Doing the right thing’ not because it may be a test of your faith or humanness.

Doing the right thing because you want to is the highest reason to do the right thing. You are not expecting reward, punishment, accolades, or suspect it is a test. You do the right thing because you want to. Doing the right thing because you want to brings real meaning to what you do when you choose to ‘Do the right thing’.

When you ‘Do the right thing’ because you want to, you have freed yourself from those hollow props and supports most of us are prone to using. You have freed yourself from being artificial, shallow, and a handful of other reasons that make ‘Doing the right thing’ something less than the ultimate kindness it is.

When you are out and about and someone asks you for something, think before you act. Find the right reason to ‘Do the right thing’ before you act. Both you and the receiver(s) will feel empowered in the act if the reason is the best reason – Because you want to. Settle for no other reason than ‘You Want To’ the next time you are asked.

Pay it Forward with Heart

Posted on March 1, 2009 by venagozar

On CNN Headline News early this morning was another all too familiar segment at one Starbucks drive through, with Starbucks’ customers who were, ‘Paying it forward’.

Before he retired, I used to occasionally run into a man named Johnny, who I did not particularly like. I thought Johnny was intentionally course, rude, and generally dressed worse than a second hand store could manage if he raised his standards enough to shop at one. His clothing of course was probably better than I dress now, but that is a different topic.

Johnny did one amazing selfless act twice a year that made me feel very small twice a year. Twice a year Johnny received a work bonus check, usually between One Thousand and Fifteen Hundred dollars – after taxes. It was what Johnny did with his bonus check that both amazed and humbled me. Twice a year Johnny would reduce his bonus check down to an equal amount stack of twenty dollar bills.

Johnny would get into into his old tank of a car and head down to a city park where homeless people hung out. Johnny would park his clunker and get out. Starting at one end of the park Johnny worked his way around handing out twenty dollar bills to every homeless person present. If he had any cash left, Johnny headed down to the next park where he knew more homeless folks hung out.

Besides myself, and perhaps to to four other people who could stand being around Johnny, no one of knew he willingly gave away between two and three thousand dollars a year without a second thought. I asked Johnny, ‘Why?’ the second year he was about to go donate, and he said something to the effect of, ‘They need the money, and I do not’.

Around the same time period, a small local group raised over Ten Thousand Dollars through car washes, bake sales, etc. They tried to donate this money to a homeless shelter, but there was a problem over who the donating was, and the money was rejected.

They were not criminals, gang, or drug selling criminals, simply men and women who shared a common vision of helping. Eventually on the fourth or fifth attempt they found a homeless shelter that was happy to take their money. The story made the local news, not because a small volunteer group tried to donate such a large amount of hard earned cash to a homeless shelter, but because of who they were.

Back to Starbucks and the present. I want to say Starbucks is a great company. They do great things for their employees, and they serve hot tasty drinks to me on a regular basis. CNN is a great news service. I depend on CNN when I want to see the news at any odd hour of the day or night.

But why is this, ‘Pay It Forward’ at a Starbucks, McDonalds, or other giant…gaining this type of attention from news behemoths like CNN? Does it really make us feel good to pay for another persons coffee at a drive through when those folks we are paying for are more than able to pay for their own drinks and treats? Is this a new American compassion, our new American public display of selflessness and helping?

How about reinvigorating ‘Pay It Forward’ with real meaning rather than a false feel good? How about doubling your order, whatever it is and giving your second order out to a momentarily fortunate homeless man or woman you spy hanging out on the route you are driving? I bet they really would appreciate a hot, tasty, expensive cup of coffee. I bet they might even be grateful? Don’t expect them to pay it forward as generously as you did when you spent a few ‘spare’ dollars, and a minute of your time to ‘Pay It Forward’.

The small group that tried to do a charitable service I wrote of earlier broke up. The negative publicity sent them back into the shadows, or I should clarify, there was little future publicity about them.

Be on the lookout for Johnny though, he may be out there doing his thing at the same time you hand out your second cup of coffee. You would not want to mistake Johnny for a homeless person, even though he may look like one. Johnny doesn’t need the handout, and probably would not bother with a thank you if you asked for a sincere one. But you might get on television….

Donating to Charity is a lot of work

Posted on April 15, 2008 by venagozar

Almost every company I have worked for has had a special charity or organization that they support. Most of us have our own special charities that we support in some fashion. One I supported for a long time tried to help children with medical conditions that had no where else to turn to. Some people I knew referred to what they did as experimental surgery, but when all other avenues are exhausted, medical care from the edge becomes someone’s only possibility no matter how experimental it may be.

I would donate some money to this charity every year at tax refund time, or more often if I could afford it. One day my mind was wandering, and I was thinking about the money I gave to my special charity. I was feeling pretty good about it when the idea occurred to me that I was not even covering the cost of some doctor’s bathroom break at the hospital they worked at!

I knew that my thoughts were noble, but in reality, what I gave to that charity was so little, it probably barely paid for the paper it was tracked on. From there I went to donating money to a local church. That seemed pretty fitting. Give money to a church, and they distribute that money out to those in need.

I am in church one morning listening to the priest talk about going to a city one hundred miles away for some shopping, a steak dinner, and a movie. At this point in my life, I had maybe five dollars free for my whole weekend entertainment. I did some quick calculating in my head, and I determined that it would take a few months of my donations to pay for one trip such as the priest was talking about. I thought about the last of a four day old casserole I had eaten for dinner last night, and somehow my dinner and his did not balance out.

I was trying hard to make an impact, and do the right thing, but it was obvious I was not in even close to the middle of the income level of this church, and it was doubtful my few dollars a Sunday were doing anything for anyone really.

About this time, I started doing volunteer work, and that was gratifying at times. The only problem was it was hard to fit my free time into a groups need. So volunteering became sporadic at best. I found a homeless shelter that needed money and food, and that was pretty rewarding for a few years. I could see I was making a direct impact on peoples lives right where I live, and that made me happy.

A group of gay men and women who wanted to do something charitable for their community started doing car washes, bake sales, and other fund raisers to raise money. When they raised over ten-thousand dollars, they tried to give it away to the homeless shelter I was supporting with my few dollars every few weeks. A funny thing happened though, the founder of the shelter refused the money! He claimed that as a Christian he could not accept money from those people…. I wrote him and told him the money I gave him came from playing poker, and I won my money in part from drug dealers, gang bangers, pimps, and addicts. Certainly my money was no better than the money he refused. I ended making it clear, that my money would be going somewhere else. Thankfully, so did about half of the charitable donators also agree with me, and gave their money elsewhere.

Now I give to a charity that spends the money right where I live, helping people in my city and state, and I feel good about that. I know that my money is going to things I can see, appreciate, and hopefully those being helped do too. I do not my time often as I found in general, donating my time was more painful than it was rewarding which is too bad, I wish it were not so.

If you have little or no money and want to do something, look around your neighborhood. If you pay attention, you will find someone or some group needs your help. If you donate to a charity, make sure it is one that makes you feel good, not just a charity that makes feel like you are fulfilling an obligation.

Charity, Panhandler’s, and Swindler’s

Posted on February 18, 2008 by venagozar

I was discussing charity with a friend the other day, and I have to admit he was rather puzzled by my charitable actions this week as I talked about them. The conversation started innocently enough about some little thing, and eventually led to charity. I am a great believer in intelligently sharing some of what I have with others who are not so lucky. I am lucky enough to know that I am where I am, and the people I give money too are is by a difference of a few critical choices in our separate lives.

Those people I give money to made some choices in their life, that either I was not required to make the choices they did, or I made a different better choice than they did. I would like at times to think I made better choices, but I do not know that is a true statement. I think it is closer to truth to say I chose not to go as deeply into the results of bad choices I may have made in my life as others, now less fortunate did.

I was leaving a museum a few weeks ago, and there was a man panhandling as people were walking to their cars. He asked me for any change I might have. I looked into my wallet and I had two bills, a five and a one dollar bill. Neither was change, but I recognized the shake in his hands, and I pulled out the five and gave it to him. He mumbled a quick thank you, and lurched and trembled off to get his bottle of salvation.

Yesterday I was leaving a Borgstore parking lot, and there at the parking lot exit sat an old woman in a wheel chair pulled onto the medium ‘selling’ paper flowers for a dollar each. To make her lot in life worse, she was missing one leg at the knee. Her clothes were not warm enough for the weather. I drove right past her to the frustration of a passenger in my truck. I did not give her a single penny, or even trade a dollar for a paper flower.

It did not seem out of the ordinary for me, but the person with me could not believe I didn’t give the old woman some money! There she was begging in the middle of the street on a cold and windy day, and I drove right past. I mentioned I had given five bucks to a wino last week at a park. It made perfect sense to me, why I acted the way I did, and I started to explain my thinking.

The Wino at the park could be me except for a few better made choices on my part, and luck. He probably had a shelter he could eat at, and a place to sleep. He would never be able to hold a job, nor will he quit drinking until he is dead, or committed to a place he can no longer drink. To not give him a little money when I had extra would be cruel to my thinking. He needed money to drink, and all he could do was beg for money to drink with.

The Woman in a wheelchair with one leg missing was better off by far. She could not have put herself on the medium because she was too old, and with only one leg it would have been impossible to do by herself. Her clothing was not old or dirty, and I thought she was not dressed correctly for the weather by choice. Her wheel chair was fairly new, well made, and of good quality. Someone had posed her in place there on the medium. Of the five or six cars in front of me who all gave her paper money, she gave a flower to only one, but she took money from all of them.

In my view of both situations, the Woman in the wheel chair was able to earn an income from doing something other than blatantly begging for money. The Wino on the other hand was in pain from lack of alcohol, and was reduced to begging to get money for what his body craved. One person was physically sick, and the other was only handicapped. One person was a beggar and the other had found an easy way to make a good living with little effort. My choices made perfect sense to me. The Man needed and the woman wanted.

Scams, then and now

Posted on January 20, 2008 by venagozar

He told me you buy some bibles, not expensive bibles, but bibles that could be expensive, if you do not look too close. Some bibles with red lettering, because red stands out, and looks more expensive. You follow the obituaries, and try to track down addresses. Once you have the address you put the name of the surviving spouse on the front of the bible in gold leaf. Then you wait until a few days after the funeral.

You show up in the evening when you are sure no other family members are around. That is when the real aloneness is setting in and grief is at a very high level. You knock on the door and when they answer you tell them the story about how their spouse had this very bible on lay away, and they were going to pick it up this week. You continue with how you happen to be reading something by the obituary section of the newspaper, and recognized the name.

You continue, now that you have their grief pouring out, and their need to touch anything that belonged to their beloved passed on spouse, and they had paid you half the money, and there still is a payment for the bible, and are they interested? Of course they are, they are desperate to bring their spouse back to life! You fill in the dead space telling them that the dead spouse was going to have an inscription written on the inside, so the bible would become a family heirloom. No you do not know where or what, only that they had mentioned it in passing, the day they put it on lay away.

Of course the surviving spouse thinking you are an angel in human form, pays you whatever amount you told mentioned was left to pay on the bible. They are overwhelmed with emotion – and you just took advantage of their grief, and took money away from them that you should not have taken. That is a really ugly, some might even say pathetic scam that used to be popular when there was less money flying around than there is today, and people were more trusting.

Today scammers are more suave. They set up internet sites, they send you snail mail, they stand on side walks, at intersections, and beg from the corner. They are making a fortune, and nobody seems to care. The better ones I have heard of are making more than the average income in the United States, and all they have to do is look poor and needy.

I watch them at intersections doing there scams. People, believing they are doing something good can’t dig into their pockets quickly enough. They give change, dollar bills, they give five dollar bills, and the people taking it are making a wonderful living. So good in fact, they work some corners in shifts because the money in their buckets gets too heavy and to obvious.

They also send mail, sometimes with little religious trinkets, and some story about how the mission they represent is helping to feed so many starving orphans somewhere. If you search on the internet they do not exist. If you expect more than one mailing form them, they do not exist. They are a quick, one stop shop. One stop shopping, into your wallet and out again.

No one likes to be seen as cold and uncaring, but everyone can donate responsibly if they only take time to think before they act on impulse. It is not that hard to give money to scammers. It is no harder to think before you do. If you never heard of them before, they probably won’t exist in a few weeks. If they want any amount of money from you right now, they are scamming you.

If you want to donate to a cause, donate through your church, the International Red Cross, or another well known organization. Do not be one of thousands who blindly give money to people who find stealing from you is easier than working for a living, and it pays better. There always will be a great need for charity in the world, but give wisely, not foolishly.

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