To Donate or Not to Donate?

39 Cents - Saturday Night Live

You've probably seen a commercial like this before. Granted, this one is a parody created by the geniuses at SNL, but you get the picture. Most people will change the channel the minute there's someone asking for donations. I've always wondered what percentage of people actually pick up their phones (and not go on Facebook) and dial the number on the screen. There's also a lot of controversy over whether or not the money actually goes to the places they say it's going. How much are the celebrity endorsers getting paid for showing up and filming those commercials? How much are they donating themselves? 

The real questions that I want to ask are not about the money or about the commercials or corporations running the show. I'm more interested in what's really stopping people from donating. There's always a possibility of fraud when it comes to money. (Money can bring out the greed in people, even in non-profits.) But what if people are just using their doubt as an excuse to not give? People spend so much time worrying over how much money they have. As Lynne Twist puts it, in her book The Soul of Money,

Money has only the power that we assign to it, and we have assigned it immense power...If we look only at behavior, it tells us that we have made money more important than we are, given it more meaning than human life. Humans have done and will do terrible things in the name of money. They have killed for it, enslaved other people for it, and enslaved themselves to joyless lives in pursuit of it.

This may sound extreme, but there is truth in what Twist is saying. Everything we do is in some way backed by money. When we're short of it, we go into fight or flight mode. Sometimes, people will do unspeakable things to get what they need. I wonder what people in poverty-filled countries would think if they saw us behaving this way. Lynne Twist saw with her own eyes what "begging" actually means in places outside the U.S. like India. The people there will go to drastic measures to make others feel guilty and pity. Money to them is literally the difference between life and death. Isn't it crazy to think that paper and pieces of metal can determine the value of a person's life?

So why shouldn't we give to those who need help? Studies have shown that money can actually buy happiness. An article in Psychology Today entitled "Worried About Money? Give Some Away" claim that people who choose to spend money on others are happier than those who spend it on themselves. Instead of thinking about all of the negatives from the donation commercials, we should focus on what we can do to make the most out of every penny we have.

Psychology Today: "Worried About Money? Give Some Away"