The Vine: February 1, 2012
For the past couple of years, I have asked for my birthday/Christmas for a charitable donation (mainly DonorsChoose). I even had a housewarming and asked guests that instead of a hostess gift, they make a donation. This request comes from a genuine desire to donate to charity. Also, I tend to be particular about what I wear or keep around the house. I’m not trying to sound ungrateful, I am very blessed to have people in my life who are very kind and generous, but a charitable donation seems like the best and easiest way to take care of the gift-giving conundrum.
However, almost without fail, this never happens and I’m not sure why. My husband says we give enough to charity and he doesn’t want to give any more. Other than that, there seems to be a real resistance from other people. Can you help understand why there is such a hesitance to giving donations, and if there is anyway I can help encourage it?
Thank you for your help and advice,
Vanessa
Dear Vanessa,
Assuming that you don’t tend to suggest divisive or politically fraught non-profits as the recipients, it’s probably that some people just don’t like to buy from a list. They consider it “cheating,” somehow, and whether it’s a registry or an Amazon wish list, it’s a shortcut that they can’t bring themselves to take. I’m sure that, like every other engaged couple in the history of forever, you and your husband found yourselves writing “thank”-you notes for hideous and hard-to-store nonsense like a set of eight martini glasses with little charms on the stems, or a bread dough…something-ometer. You didn’t put it on the registry, and you didn’t put it on the registry because you had neither the room nor the desire to own the thing, but inevitably a couple of people consider it insultingly “unoriginal” to buy from a list, and it is important to them that you know that they thought about it, and went to some effort with it, and gave you a unique present. Gift-giving should not become about competition, or have a weird performative aspect to it…but it often is and it often does. People are weird and make things about themselves, and that’s what Goodwill is for etc. and so on.
Another reason, which is sort of related, is that people get funny about money, by which I mean cash, in the gift “space.” Like, the same person who will cheerfully drop $60 on a coffee-table book will get all pearl-clutchy about a $25 donation to charity, because a book is a gift, but a donation is money and that’s tacky. It’s not even conscious most of the time, I don’t think, but if it feels like a transaction, some people get ooged out.
So that’s why, probably. Alas, knowing why doesn’t really mean you can — or I guess I should say “should” — do anything about it. Again, it’s a gift, and the most you can do is, as you put it, “encourage” people to donate to Donors Choose or another worthwhile non-profit instead of buying you stuff. You can try making little jokes about cutting down on clutter in 2012; you can go the heartfelt “this organization really means a lot to me, so if you must buy a gift, a few bucks in their direction would be the best present”; you can just say “no gifts — your presence is your present” and hope nobody follows up.
But: they will. Or they will ignore you and buy some chenille horror, and you will have to act delighted by it. If it’s a housewarming, they will bring you wine and novelty coasters, because this is the extent of the thinking most people want to do about a housewarming. Good news, though! 1) 99 percent of them mean well, and love you, so you can enjoy the process on that basis, and 2) there is nothing you can do about the behavior, so permission not to stress about it anymore, ever, is hereby granted. Thank friends and relations sincerely; display the item prominently, once, so they can see it; escort it off the premises with respectful promptness or whatever you want to do (but: maybe don’t sell it on eBay? Or the next letter on The Vine will be about you? Just a thought); done, next thing. But a lot of people have a lot of cultural synapses about gifts that you will never re-carve for them, and trying to will only annoy and alienate everyone involved. Accept this, accept them, and go buy your own neat clothes and coasters and enjoy life.
Tags: etiquette
“What I’m hearing from a lot of these comments is that etiquette around gift-giving seems to be, for a lot of people, more about protecting the feelings of the giver than actually making the receiver happy, and isn’t that a little backwards? Yes, no one wants to be told “your taste sucks” but can’t we be adult enough to acknowledge that we have different tastes.”
Of course gift-giving shouldn’t be about the giver more than the recipient, but I think the flip side of that should be that if you are a buy-from-the-list person, you should accept weird gifts graciously and consider that the giver had good intentions*. Glass half full. Sure, we all have “different tastes” and that’s why you might not like the XYZ I bought you, and also why I felt like the ABCD wasn’t exactly what I wanted to spend my money on.
I only want for the From the List people and the Spontaneous Surprise people to get along! It’s like any other difference of opinion. Making a big effing deal about choosing a restaurant to accommodate a vegetarian friend is rude. So is getting all “Meat is murder” on carnivore dinner companions. There’s plenty of middle ground, I think.
@Kristen — Interestingly, at my office this Christmas, someone started an online drive to donate to a food pantry, giving the explanation that it’s more economically efficient for the pantry than the old-fashioned canned food drive. (The pantry can buy in bulk.) But I think it did not sit well because a) people are weird about money v. goods and b) people LIKE donating a concrete object.
*The huge exception to this would be gifts that are passive-aggressive and intended to be controlling. Like buying clothes in a style you prefer and know the receiver does not.
Addy, I can’t agree that it’s backwards to prioritize the giver’s feelings over the recipient’s desires, or even that that’s what’s going on if gift-givers give undirected. It’s a piece of generosity, not a transaction. If the giver is keen to know what I like and asks me for a direction, that’s fine, but the statement is “I was thinking of you fondly,” not “I wish to enrich your life.” Their thinking that is considerably more important than what I get, and telling people how to give me gifts would be like telling them how to be fond of me.
To this would be as if somebody offered me a ride home and I asked them to buy me lunch instead.
To get off call lists: interrupt calls with an automatic “I no longer donate to groups that cold-call. Please take me off your call list.” (in one breath, then hang up.)
For mail lists: if it is a charity I will donate to again, I email explaining that the amount I donated is all I can afford that year and if they waste money sending me form letters or reminders, I will have to stop donating to them. QUICK cooperation ensues! If you don’t intend to donate, write “Unwanted, Return to Sender!” on the envelope and pop it back in the mailbox. If you’ve already opened the appeal, return the business envelope with a note: “Remove me from your mailing list. I am not going to donate and you are wasting money.”
Jackie D. et al. have it right. Enthusing about fave causes or a specific request like “I want to donate a memorial brick” sparks Friends&Family to cooperate AND feel they have really pleased you.
The book party/”give us stuff my fave charity really needs” is BRILLIANT and keeps F&F off mailing lists. (Totally stealing this idea, BTW.) Bonus: many groups have a list of desirable stuff available for you. It solves issues of “how much?” & “I want to give a thoughtful gift you can unwrap.” A homeless shelter doesn’t care if I’m regifting the bath set that makes me sneeze.
@Bev w/ the aunts – you could try directing them to Kiva.
My friend Mari died suddenly a few years ago. She had been a volunteer translator for Kiva, so I made two loans with them in memoriam. As those loans were repaid, I re-lent the money, and so on, and so on. Every few months a get a note from Kiva saying, you’ve got more than $25 in your account, want to re-lend? and it’s a reminder of Mari and all the reasons I liked her.
So if what your aunts are trying to give you is occasion to think of them fondly on a regular basis, Kiva could work out nicely for everyone.
Wow, who knew this would be such a polarizing topic…
Apparently I finally lucked into the secret of getting donations instead of things: tell people I want them to sponsor a cat at our local rescue (I was feeling sad because the shelter rescue through which we got our cats recently shut down, so I sent everyone to the organization that had absorbed those animals). I guess it worked because they know I love kittehs, and they could pick out one specific cat to support. It was great, one of them looked exactly like if my two kitties had mated! (y’know, if they weren’t both fixed and also both boys).
My boyfriend’s mother is particularly guilty of unsolicited gifts, though. She apparently does not understand my hoarding tendencies, which I keep under control by just not bringing more crap into the house. It drives me absolutely crazy, because I have far too much stuff that I will likely never use or wear, but feel obligated to keep for some amount of time “just in case,” to inevitably get stuck in a pile that I really will donate one of these weekends, I promise, just as soon as I go through that other box for things I need to donate… For me, the best gift is the feeling of not-dread at “oh, great, now where will I put this??” But, apparently, your mileage may vary.
I’m one who dosent like people knowing what I spent and so if its absolutly the only option will give $5 or whatever and make it anonymous.
I’m also pretty broke and do surveys/scan barcodes/click links to get vouchers to cover gifts, if I’d not budgeted for you out of real money and I can’t juggle you with someone else then its not going to happen.
This is a really interesting letter and set of comments. I’ve been working in the charity ‘space’ in various ways (paid and unpaid) for several years, and I agree with a lot of what has been said by others here – philanthropy is complex, and so is gift-giving, so it’s no wonder that combining the two can lead to difficulties.
I would definitely reinforce Amanda’s comment about possibly making people feel like you’re showing them up as being less ‘charitable’ than them. I do think that this is a big issue for a lot of people.
And I agree wholeheartedly with Jackie D’s comment regarding ‘selling’ your request for charitable donations, so people understand why the cause is important to you. My husband has a serious illness and I’ve fundraised for that cause, and I can guarantee that 99% of the (very generous) donations I received were because people knew why I want to see a cure found for that illness: I didn’t write a huge sob story or anything, but I explained the context for my fundraising, and people responded.
I don’t think that the whole ‘I don’t want you to know how much I spend and that’s why I don’t want to donate’ issue should come up: how would the person making the charitable request in lieu of a gift know? I’m assuming that they’re just saying something like ‘there is, of course, no obligation to buy me a birthday present/Christmas present/whatever, but if you ever feel inclined to do so, I’d really much prefer it if you donated to X Charity, which is very dear to my heart’ – and then don’t know whether people actually do.