Hi Steve, I read your blog but never felt the need to join the forums or post until this topic came up. I first met you at one of your GDC talks and have been an indie game/web developer for about 4 years now. But long before that I worked in social services, at a youth crisis line and then later at the local United Way offices (also in a crisis line call center gig, but already moving into database/software support rather than the counseling part). I learned quite a bit about how charitable organizations work, and so I thought it might be helpful to share just how incredibly important monetary gifts are in this day and age.
I agree with you that the most personally rewarding way to contribute to society will be your own actions and projects where you get to enjoy/see the fruits of your contribution (like in your examples). But charity, like any good gift, is not really about the needs of the giver. The problem with putting too much emphasis on your own happiness/satisfaction when you are weighing charitable options is that a lot of the most critical not-for-profit programs are fairly depressing or public understanding of their purpose is so weak that most people can't "relate to them" or get a big thrill out of contributing to them. Who can get excited about authorizing the mysterious disappearance of funds from your bank account? That's about the net "experience" most people get from donating money to charity... poof, it's gone. Why do that, especially when there are so many things we want/deserve for ourselves/families? Especially when some executive/administrator is just going to squander your gift money.. and how much of that gift even really helps people? Why do you need hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this or that when all the world needs is (insert your idea of how YOU'd handle social problem XYZ, here)?
AFAIK, some of the most effective charitable organizations are the biggest, the most expensive to operate, and the most dependent on financial gifts and grants. Those big charities obfuscate the warm fuzzy feelings of direct, personal contributions for most of their givers, BUT their operations are critical to give people a simplified way to "give" even if the givers don't really know how best to help the people they desire to help (for example, to an inexperienced giver, it might *seem* best to give a needy family groceries and a job offer but a trained social worker will be able to identify "root" barriers that family has which would render a quick fix of groceries or a job opportunity nearly worthless). Administering charitable work and following best practices/research is a career in itself, and the same level of education/executive experience is mandatory to run a not-for-profit organization as it is for anyone running a for-profit, but the catch is that the for-profit is self-funding in some way (or out of business pretty fast). Which leads to my defense of monetary giving as one of the BEST ways to help the world:
Most of the programs that help those people and projects which are truly needy (in the sense that without the charitable help, nothing will be accomplished and the people involved would never have access to resources and solutions without outside assistance)... these are the projects that don't generate any funds! So you have a mess where the only workers willing to do the work (with the skills to do it well) *require* payment, but the work itself generates no revenue. Now, that would be a totally unsustainable situation if it wasn't for the happy coincidence that many (most?) jobs people have are supporting organizations/systems that generate revenue in excess of what is needed to keep them running (profit- both at the corporate and individual worker levels). In other words, earning money so that you can contribute it to needy/profitless/underfunded programs is actually a vital, completely necessary form of contribution. So crucial is it that I wanted to stress how charitable work won't even be a career *option* for any of us if a lot of other people didn't step up and contribute the one thing that every not-for-profit needs the most: cold hard cash.
Some people think volunteering time is the best way to give, but what I learned from the United Way is that running a volunteer program costs a LOT of money. They need to hire people to help you volunteer and administering training for someone to be a "weekend social worker" or whatever is called for, actually still draws on the financial support pools (everything does) just like the training, recruitment, and supervision costs for paid workers (turn-over is turn-over). The money gifts really are the foundation of all the work that every charity can do. If you have a job where you come out ahead every month or a business that has a healthy surplus, count yourself VERY lucky relative to most non-profit organizations and the many low-income/no-income people depending on them. We don't want to think that money is more important than our time, attention, etc. but for some causes, money is the life blood itself that makes everything possible (and can you imagine the stress of having a main line of work that generates NO money at all, but relies entirely on asking other people to share theirs with you?).
So even though writing that check and wondering where it went/who it helped doesn't give you that warm fuzzy feeling, there is someone who's work can contribute to the world *only if* other people donate the funds to make their work possible. I know people send charity money out of some sense of obligation/guilt that their normal job doesn't involve personally administering AIDS vaccines but that's a messed up way to look at gifts of money. The much more motivating (and more accurate) view would be to think that if you didn't make that cash at your *profitable job* and donate it to these people doing critical but totally un-profitable work, that work would NEVER get done. Everyone in non-profits owes *everything* to the profit-able workers and organizations that provide the grants and gifts!
It's fact that most of the major charities could be doing so much more to help the world but they are always severely limited by funding. They have the skilled staff, the metrics and research to know what works, and they have the clearance, licensing, connections, etc. to do things that none of us could accomplish "on the side" of our for-profit jobs. When you siphon even a tiny bit of your personal profit over to the non-profits working to solve problems you care about, you are doing something tremendous for the world (choosing a truly selfless action over something that might be a more enjoyable experience for you). Writing a check/charging a card is never "fun" or anything to blog about/share at a party, but wow does it help non-profits!!
