Isabelle - Could you provide more detail? Do you expect us to believe that you went into a United Way service office and they were unable to even grab and Post-It and scribble the name of the closest clinic that took payment on a sliding scale?
I don’t care who you give you money to, and I don’t care how you feel about the United Way - but I’m having trouble accepting your claim of being “turned away.” How do you expect to advance your arguement with these Dickinsian images?
Isn’t the tithe one of the old Jewish laws that was negated by Jesus’ coming? Kind of like the law about how uncovering the nakedness of a menstrating woman is grounds for banishment?
If you need money in order to survive, I’m sure that God will understand if you cut back a bit on your tithe. He certainly doesn’t need the money.
Who do you make the check out to? What sort of identification does God show when he cashes it?
I find it terribly ironic that in a thread about the coercive tactics from UW (or, more to the point the tactics of people pursuing “donations”) that there is pressure here for Isabelle to change how she donates her money.
How, precisely, is this different?
Isabelle believes in a moral duty to donate her money in a specific way. Why does anyone here feel it’s necessary to change (or ridicule) that?
I’m sure that God will understand if you cut back a bit on your tithe. He certainly doesn’t need the money.
No, but I certainly need the blessing I’m promised if I tithe 
Plus God’s the one who gives me my income, why wouldn’t I want to honor the source? He’s already said “if you build my house I’ll build yours” so how dumb would I have to be to pass up an offer like that?
I’d rather have a blessed 90% of my income than a cursed 100% anyday.
Isabelle, you go girl!
I work in fundraising and I despise the way United Way goes about fundraising.
Essentially, they are not a charity, but a “fundraising consortium.” What they do is raise cash from a large number of donors, then, after deducting a percentage for expenses, distribute the rest to needy local charities. The concept is actually good: it’s expensive for small local charities to do their fundraising, and if you have one large organization doing the work, there’s less overhead. The problem is, as some posters here have pointed out, United Way offers expensive “incentives” to its top fundraisers. (FTR, my organization does not offer incentives to its fundraisers and the professional group I belong to strongly discourages the practice.) Not only does this increase the overhead exponentially, it encourages cut-throat competition among the fundraising heads.
Hence the fundraisers bombard businesses and their employees non-stop, in the hope that someone will throw up their hands and give. If someone gives $5 to United Way, that’s $5 more towards that fundraiser’s incentive plan, and one more “donor” in their pool. If we got a $5 gift, it would almost be a loss to us after processing…we have an incentive to treat our donors with respect, so they won’t give us a “kiss-off” gift. UW has no such compunction!
My advice to dealing with United Way: if you really want to support the charitable work they do, just give your gift directly to the charity. They get 100% of your money that way, as opposed to the 75% or less they’d get from UW after they deducted their expenses. UW is the middleman…and you know what to do with the middlemen.
(PS: There’s a lot more I could write about United Way, but for confidentiality agreements.)
When you cash checks that are from God, does the bank still require a certain number of days for it to really clear, or do they kind of assume the guy is good for it?
You know the old saying, “In Goid we trust. All others pay cash.”
:smack: Curse these fat fingers of mine.
Praise Goid from whom all bloussings flow.
I seriously am mystified by this:
If God is the one giving you your income, doesn’t that sort of imply that the money he gives you is how much he wants you to have? Shouldn’t he, if he expects you to give 10% to a church, give you 10% more? And why not just give it directly to the church and cut out the middle man?
It’s quite obvious, Otto, god allows his followers to choose to which church they’ll tithe their income.
So do the tithers tithe on the net or the gross? It seems to me it should be on the gross.
You guys shouldn’t joke about what you don’t understand. I am not going to get into a debate as to what I believe in (spiritually) or why, that wasn’t the intention of this rant.
To respond to JuanitaTech in my personal opinion it should be on the “gross” it is to give the Lord your best…not after tax deductions.
Oh PLEASE Isabelle. Give me a break.
I won’t get into my opinion of “tithing” but I will say that A) you’re pretty damned arrogant to tell everyone that they “don’t understand” and B) if God doesn’t have a sense of humor, how did he manage to wire humans with one? Or maybe I should say most humans.
You know opal cat you are right. I should lighten up.
And yes I think God has a sense of humor.
C’mon guys, quit hijacking a perfectly good UW rant and leave Isabelle the fuck alone about how she decides to donate her money. Keep your opinions about Planned Partenthood out of it too. Start a separate thread about PP or tithing if you must.
We have a monthly all hands meeting that is mandatory. They started one with a speech by a bunch of UW assholes. People were pretty upset about that. They should have spoken at the end when we could have left if we didn’t want to hear their shit.
They set-up pledge goals for the company. If we made some amount of money we all got free ice cream bars. If we made a higher total, some tool in management said he would shave his head. Like who the fuck cares?
When my UW package came in the mail, I threw the whole thing in the garbage. I ignored all of the emails saying we had to turn the form in even if we weren’t donating. Finally one of the UW tream clones came down to my cube and demaded my form. I told her that there was no way that I would be turning one in and if she wanted we could have the discussing with the HR manager. The clone finally backed down.
Fuck the UW.
Haj
So do the tithers tithe on the net or the gross? It seems to me it should be on the gross.
The book of Malachi makes it clear you’re supposed to tithe on the gross.
While we’re talking about fundraising methods, this really ticked me off a few weeks ago:
I love St. Jude’s Hospital. I think they are fantastic and they have made such an impact. Their fundraising letters SUCK, though.
The PS is what really irked me: “Mrs. SnoopyFan, we hope you and your family are never affected by the ravages of cancer blah blah blah.”
Do NOT try to emotionally manipulate me in order to wrangle a donation out of me! Just state your case: “In 1950 98% of kids with X type of cancer died, and today the mortality rate is 2%. We use X percentage of our funds for overhead and the other X percent goes toward research, etc. etc.” Trying to guilt trip me into giving shuts down any inclination I had to donate to begin with.
Thank you ** hajario** I appreciate your thoughts.
I just think overall if the company wanted to “sincerely” make a difference in the community they could say we will match dollar-for-dollar donation **TO THE CHARITY OF YOUR CHOICE. **
Now maybe that would be too cumbersome to write a bajillion checks to all the employees charities but how about they ask the divisional offices to “adopt a charity” Give the employees a chance to do something good and DIRECTLY to the charity of their choice.
I would feel better sitting down with the guys in the office and talking about what we could do in our community. Donating some of my time to the Second Harvest Food Bank or The Salvation Army while others that had the cash would be able to give the cash donation to the charity is appealling to me.
So the company would not end up in the chamber of commerce news…so what. So the company woulnd’t get a shiny plaque…so what. You are supposed to give from the heart. Not to expect anything in return.
I hear ya, SnoopyFan. Nothing, and I mean nothing, makes me see red faster than when someone hopes I don’t get a fatal affliction.
Stupid hamsters ate my post. What I was trying to say was basically: