Generous helping
FRIDAY IS the unofficial holiday for seasonal shopping. Cash registers and credit cards will be hot with use. Fat shopping bags of great buys will be crammed into car trunks.
Consumers who are spending all this money anyway should stop and see if they've got a few bucks left over for a philanthropic cause. That's because Friday is also Giving Massachusetts Day.
Put away any sense of guilt or obligation. Don't bother feeling sad about tough social problems. Instead, think like a captain of generosity and figure out where it would be fun to invest your money.
Good advice on where to give can be found on the Catalogue for Philanthropy's website, www.catalogueforphilanthropy.org. This site focuses on organizations in Massachusetts with budgets of less than $2 million.
There are suggestions to please many personalities. One can give to Aid to Incarcerated Mothers, a Boston program that supports the families of women in jail, or to Jeannie Lindheim's Hospital Clown Troupe, founded in 1997 and based in Brookline.
The catalog also invites people to become venture philanthropists, donating major funds, time, and expertise to help organizations solve problems. Consider Snappy Dance Theater in Cambridge, which is trying to free its dancers from the burden of working day jobs while being paid little for dance performances and nothing for rehearsals. One emerging solution for a creative venture philanthropist is to send the dancers on tour to develop a national audience and generate enough revenue to pay them fairly for their work.
As the world becomes a poignantly -- and sometimes painfully -- smaller place, it's important to cross national boundaries when making donations. According to the catalog, international philanthropy makes up only 2 percent of total personal giving and is growing slowly. Great care must be taken. But the catalog offers several vetted suggestions, including Romanian Children's Relief, an organization in Southborough that helps children with AIDS who have been orphaned or abandoned by their parents.
Rugged individualists may well spot their own philanthropic causes. Maybe it's those annoying blemishes on the ceilings of a favorite church, synagogue, or mosque. Maybe a well-programmed but dreary looking after-school center could use an architect's dramatic makeover. The result could be first-class space as well as the chance to educate students about the power and elegance of design.
Because the economy is dragging and so are philanthropic gifts, now is an ideal time to give. Hard economic times crave the lively tonic of optimistic generosity. Because the economy is dragging and so are philanthropic gifts, now is an ideal time to give. Hard economic times crave the lively tonic of optimistic generosity.