Year End Giving

It's getting to the end of the year. All year long, I ignore phone calls, emails, and mail asking me to donate money to various charities. Then at the end of the year, I sit down to figure out where I want to donate, I kid you not. Last year I donated on 12/28/2008. No one can guilt me into donating any earlier than that because my charitable donations come after I figure out how well I did on keeping up with my budget for the year.

For the last couple of years, though, I seem to slowly expand my list of charitable organizations to donate (my list doesn't necessarily stay constant from year to year depending on what I want to do). The list grows because with the downturn in economy, charitable organizations are also suffering from decreased donation like this article says. And this year, about 50 million Americans, including almost 17 million kids, were struggling to have enough to eat according to the USDA study as reported by Washington Post.

So, it's not as if I am infinitely wealthy. In fact, even the extreme rich folks focus where they want their charitable contributions to go. But I am lucky enough to be working, and unlike some folks who are worried about job security, I am in a relatively secure position. Thus, I feel that when others are decreasing their donation, I can and should increase mine.

Based on the economic climate, my priorities for picking charity are: (1) ease hunger for the community; (2) allow medical access; (3) education and schools; and (4) art/music non-profit organization. This year, I'm throwing out environment as one of my priorities to make room for other priorities. I add #3 because I strongly believe we should always make education our top priority. Unfortunately, whenever there's a downturn, education seems to be the first area government cuts. So, I include in my priorities to donate to offset in my small way the cuts education endures. I add #4 because art and music have a place in our lives. Music touches lives and is part of what defines our humanity. As a musician, I simply feel it must be part of our lives. So I include it in my list of priorities.

With these priorities I set for myself this year, I need to pick which charities fit my priorities to donate. I generally check American Institute of Philanthropy to see which charities are efficient in using donations for their mission. I also check various charities I have bookmarked throughout the year to review and see if any of them fit what I set out to donate. I also look at my list from last year. I have about 8 organizations that I can list after reviewing all of these. Do I keep donate a little bit to each or pick 4 and donate more to each? That's a decision to make after Thanksgiving.