Very timely indeed. Unfortunately, I dumped my pile of checks into the mail this morning. 
Maybe next year I’ll figure out a way to donate monthly.
This post has me imagining homeless folks wandering around in shoulder-padded jackets and Hammer-pants from the 90’s.
As a worker at a food pantry, I thank you.
False.
"All of the revenue earned from cookie activities—every penny after paying the baker—stays with the local Girl Scout council. "
I would think $200 given once per year would be more valuable than $180 distributed throughout each calendar year - provided the organization is capable of creating a budget and sticking to it.
Even if we’re talking about a one-time donation, and you’re suggesting that people should give $15 per month for the 12 months *preceding * the date when they would have given the $200 lump sum, the charity would have to employ a very skilled investor to parlay a stream of 12 monthly $15 payments into more than $200.
Guessing that the issue NinjaChick has in mind is the deluge of donations that occur around Christmas, making it difficult to predict how donations for the whole year will turn out until right close to the end of the year. Having said that, I only agree to a very limited degree; Christmas provides a focus for wringing as much much charity as possible out of people. I’m guessing that if people were persuaded to give evenly throughout the year it would help the bookkeeping BUT you would see total donations go down since there would no longer be that focus.
I understand this logic, and it makes sense in a way, but…
People want to feel like they are involved. You don’t get that from writing a check.
My church used to do much of the same thing as yours (for which you and your church should be honored). But the food shelf with which we were involved contacted us and said Thanks but No Thanks. That is, they didn’t want our food donations, they didn’t want us to send our volunteers there twice a month to cook and serve - they just wanted the money. So we stopped collecting food and stopped asking for volunteers to cook and serve. And the donations of money dried up almost as soon as we did.
Part of it was the frustration of the desire to be hands-on in service. Unfortunately part of it was the feeling one gets when a beggar asks you for money so he can eat, and refuses an offer of food instead. The reaction doesn’t necessarily make sense in this situation, but it is powerful nonetheless.
From a coldly financial point of view it made sense for the food shelf to ask what it did. But perhaps it wasn’t smart.
Regards,
Shodan
[spoiler]
PS - last Sunday we donated 70 pounds of new underwear, hats, and gloves to the new mission, and raised funds for gifts for 18 kids for our “Share the Joy” campaign.
Merry Christmas![/spoiler]
I once was, many years ago in my “poverty days”. My winter coat was stolen.
I used to save cancelled stamps for charity. I was sending them to a Humane Society branch and a collector was buying them in bulk, but then the branch closed and I found a Catholic Church that accepts stamps. To my understanding, collectors will make a little donation for a big bag of stamps then sort and resell them or something. Not sure exactly how it works, but now I just can’t be arsed to save stamps for anyone.
I was alone one Christmas Day so I went down to the local soup kitchen where a lady puts on a Christmas Dinner for the needy, because I intended to volunteer (like you always see suggested when you spend a holiday alone.) There were so many volunteers that there was literally nothing for me to do. I stood around feeling like a tool for a few minutes then just went home.
Yeah, on Christmas Day you stood around with nothing to do. Go back April 7th. October 14th. July 19th.
I get that it could be a bonding experience for those who take part, but it still seems like a particularly lame way to effect any kind of change on society outside the group. Has a candlelight vigil ever shamed or persuaded anyone to change their ways?
Heck, even these guys got better results. 
Our church runs a food pantry which is stocked to a large extent with food from the county Food Bank, a very large, non-church organization. We also have supplies of things like toothpaste and socks. The Food Bank itself is housed in warehouses in an industrial part of a different town, hard for many people to get to directly. We are the most prominent and oldest church in a town with a lot of homeless people and a lot of foot traffic. People often stand outside after Mass, begging. Our food pantry is heavily used, believe me. There is an associated soup kitchen, maternity home for the indigent, and a small house for homeless families. Lots of volunteer opportunities.
Maybe. But don’t discount the value of a demonstration to its participants. All those people go out into “society outside the group” afterwards, with the importance of their message affirmed.
Key word being “council”. Our troop made 30 cents from each box sold. 30. Cents.
Very quickly made the cookie sales into the biggest joke when I was a leader. Very hard work, not very educational or fun for the girls, and the money basically disappeared into the council’s coffers, never to be seen again.
Want to help the troop at a cookie sale? Just pass the leader a $20.
I’ll second the feeling about wanting to actually be involved. When you do actual charitable work where you get your hands dirty or at least make some sort of physical exertion, you feel like you’re accomplishing something. When you provide your own food or clothing, you feel like you’re providing something real.
When you write a check or hand over cash, you feel like a wallet. You feel like the most important thing about you is not who you are, or what you can do, but how fat your bank account is. Like the biggest thing that matters is money. For Christians, this seems to go directly against Jesus’s message to serve the poor and Paul’s observation that the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.
There’s also the discouragement that comes every few years when a scandal breaks out among one of the major charities about how hundreds of thousands of dollars of your money and my money actually went to support the Executive Director’s Sports Car and Exotic Stripper Club Dues Fee Fund and not starving Ethiopians like we thought it would. It’s hard to buy a Ferrari with donated food cans, coats, and a few people willing to help pitch tents in the desert. So donating “in kind” helps me know that my donation actually gets used. Those executive types in their corner offices can go get their own money for strippers. I’m not funding that.
Also, I’ve seen at least one case where the adults were doing everything. Just admit that you are cookie retailers and let’s get on with it.
Interesting point about the council. I remember a high school teacher giving the class a lecture about how we needed to avoid losing anything. If we lost something and paid the school its value, that would still hurt that school because money for lost items went to the state’s general funds and the school would have to request more budget money to actually replace the item.
I guess I am different in that the last thing I want to feel is charitable. I have a deep suspicion of the whole idea of charity in general. And, I hate that feeling of “oh looky me, I am being charitable now! I’m alleviating a teeny weeny bit of hunger, go me! I’m reflecting on poverty or an incurable disease from a position of middle class health!”
But I don’t want to do nothing, merely because I hate that feeling. So I do my research and send my checks, and never think about it again until the next time.
It’s worse than that. The local troops buy all the medals, ribbons and literature and such from the GS headquarters so they literally get the money back anyways. And most of that money just goes to salaries and benefits of the top Girl Scouts officers.
And do the math. A single award pin can cost $2. If a troop gets .30 from a box of cookies that means the kids have to sell 7 boxes to pay for one damn pin. You start multiplying that by the number of kids and number of pins and very little is left to for the girls to do anything useful like use the money to fund summer camp.
Oh, lets not forget the girls get these lame mini teddy bears for selling a certain amount.
Now contrast that with the Boy Scouts and their annual popcorn sales in which the boys have money put into account when they have sold above a certain level and can use that money to pay for summer camp or other fees. Plus they get cool prizes like fishing rods, tents, or camping equipment.
That reminds me, after Katrina we had some relatives from Mississippi come stay with us because they had evacuated and my wife took Kathy and her then 6 month old baby down to the refugee center set up at the local Red Cross so she could sign up for benefits (I think it was mostly health related but also included a $500 Wal Mart gift certificate).
Well when she got their their were all these volunteers standing around and as soon as they walked in they were surrounded by people offering water, food, even “can we watch your baby?”. So Kathy allowed someone to watch her baby and went away to sign papers and my wife was standing there and had a plate of food shoved into her hands even though she said “I’m not a refugee” but they said they had extra anyways.
Oh and they left with this huge bag of donated items like soap, toothpaste, and toiletries because they had this big pile of things. We felt like thieves taking it but she said they kept insisting and they did indeed have this massive stockpile because they were anticipating thousands of refugees and didnt get nearly that many.