Charitable Donations

I appended as a comment to my essay on Poverty the indignant reply I received from Brian of the popular music group WHY, in Winnipeg. 

 

Long-winded, EH!  Actually I thought I gave the topic rather short shrift.  I’m not an instant messenger kind of guy.  Certainly I exude a great deal of cynicism.  I actually delivered mail to the guy who ran the Wheel Chair Basketball Racket.  His deal with the actual charity guarantees them a set amount yearly and he pockets everything else, even though the donors get charitable donation receipts for their gifts.  Have you checked the percentage of the funds raised that is eaten up by overhead and management fees?  I informed the Salvation Army, another delivery customer of mine that I would deduct $25.00 from next year’s donation for every time they wasted my funds by attempting to get more money out of me. 

 

I didn’t intend my dissertation to be condescending, insulting or a put down; though I did detect a great deal of righteous indignation in your reply.  You might say that I, along with many others, suffer from charity fatigue.  One rule I have is never to make a charitable donation by mail.  For every cheque you send by mail you will get yourself on 30 to 50 other mailing lists.  When you handle those mailings in bulk as I do you develop more than cynicism. 

 

There may well be many effective charities out there but it takes a great deal of research to ferret them out.  Too much well-intentioned “do-goodism” does more harm than good.  Although their lifestyles may seem harsh and primitive by our standards the bushmen of the Kalahari and the Yanomami of the Brazilian Rainforest would benefit most by being totally ignored; if only we could encourage the rest of the world to do the same.  Look at what our incursions into Northern Canada has done to the traditional Inuit way of life.  Too many of our modern day efforts are necessary because of missionary work and the traders who followed them in the past. 

 

You live in the Winnipeg area, have you spent a lot of time in local Native Areas?  Just by arriving on this continent European settlers wiped out over 90% of the indigenous population with their diseases even before they made first contact.  Without delving into the sins of the past at the present rate of progress land claim settlement negotiations will stretch on into the next millennium.  The courts are still bogged down in native residential schools reparations.  The average Band Member on a reserve lives in substandard housing without running water or indoor plumbing.  Sure, the Indian Affairs Ministry spends millions but too much of that money disappears before it actually helps a First Nations Person.