Rant: Charitable Giving

Ah…fall. Leaves falling from the trees, kids going back to school, relief from the hot summer temperatures (sorta)…All good things. Of course, it also means the beginning of the annual charity fund raising drive. I want to preface this rant by stating that I have no problems giving to charity. The specific charity in question does lots of really good stuff to help the community. It's just the way the fund raiser drive is handled here. I want to repeat again that any cynicism you detect here is not because I don't believe that people aren't going to benefit from contributions. Heck, if they just passed the forms out I'd probably donate more money per year. But…read on.

My current place of employment is a trend setter organization, meaning we have our fund raising drive first. This usually involved having a mandatory meeting where you would go in the morning to listen to a representative of the organization talk, as well as a guest speaker who attempts to make people part with more of their money by explaining exactly what they did with the funds. After this you were given out your donation forms and told to turn them back in by the end of the day. Cut to one year ago. Instead of having the meeting in the morning, it was turned into a mandatory catered lunch/meeting and you had to turn in your forms before you went back to work. This irked me because I prefer to use my lunch to get away from people and to relax during the day. Not listen to what amounts to a sales pitch, usually the same one I heard last year (again, I know that this charity does good things for people).

This year takes the cake though. Not only were we expected to go to a lunch/meeting, we were expected to drive to another office to do it. This was the last straw for me. I'm not going to drive out to a different city (wasting gas mind you) to hear the same speech I've heard for 4 years now. I ended up using some vacation time to take the afternoon off, which was handy because I needed to do some homework anyway.

I should also point out that 100% participation is also pushed…heavily. One year, I was late handing in my form, so they sent out a memo listing the people who hadn't turned in their forms yet. To the entire office. Nothing like a little public humiliation in the morning. The feeling is that if you value your job, you should probably donate. Oh, and the prize for 100% participation? A Pizza Party. Yup. Pizza Party. What are we, in elementary school?

I don't mind giving to charity. I mind it when it's pushed onto me as something I have to do. If they just handed out the forms without the rest of this junk, I'd give more money each year. I just don't think it's any business of my employer to tell me "you're going to donate to this charity!"

Ok, rant off…sigh. If you excuse me, I need to find my checkbook.

Read and post comments

|

Send to a friend