Faith Works 10-21-17

Faith Works 10-21-17

Jeff Gill

 

Donor fatigue is real, and an illusion (it's both)

___

 

Have you gotten one of those letters in the mail?

 

Did you find a message in your email with links to videos, images, and a "how to donate" button?

 

Are you watching television or scrolling online and brought to a halt by some appeal or pitch or program about a cause you believe in, or think you should believe in a little bit more than you do?

 

It's that time of the year.

 

Heading into that grand stretch of months called "the holidays," from All Hallow's Eve to Thanksgiving to Christmas and New Year's, there's a mix of the end of the calendar year feelings with seasonal good will to make every non-profit and charitable cause and, in many cases, faith-based programs (including churches) to take the opportunity to reach out, and ask for your contributions.

 

On top of this annual custom, the recent string of natural disasters in the South and Caribbean has resulted in some extra telethons and text-based donation drives, which we've almost all been exposed to. Repeatedly!

 

Which then leads to a phenomenon known as "donor fatigue." It has some grounding in precedent and fact, where you can track the declining rate of giving and how repeated requests for aid can push those curves down more sharply.

 

Truth be told, though, this is a very generous country. It's how we roll. Some $380 BILLION in the last year's tally of charitable giving, individual gifts the overwhelming majority of those dollars, though foundations and grants total billions themselves.

 

What I think some of us get weary of is our own self-doubt, our own questioning of where we are and to whom we should be giving of our blessings. And I'd take that a step farther, and push us all to think about whether we're tired of thinking about where our gifts should go, or if it's repeated circuits around that track without ever quite passing a finish line that wear us down.

 

The requests, in a practical sense, will never end. But if we come to some settled conclusions about a) WHY we give, and b) how we want to give, and yes, c) how much we're going to give, we can reach a point of relative peace. Yes, the requests will still come in, but we won't wear ourselves out in second-guessing what we haven't quite gotten around to doing . . . and that's where I think the fatigue comes in.

 

I wish I could give more in some cases, to some places. But my wife and I have long had a practice of thinking through, planning for, and working out our giving patterns, starting with our basic commitment to our faith community (and yes, there's a template for that, which is a different column topic sometime again soon). Then we try to allocate what we can do with our time and talents, and there are certain purposes in the community we prioritize beyond that, and there we are.

 

It doesn't mean my heart strings are never tugged, or that we don't make financial gifts beyond what we planned at the start of a year, but there's a kind of whipsawing I see and hear in people's discussions about charitable giving that we just don't feel. Because we've thought through why we should give, how much we're going to commit to up front, and when and where we add to that as the year and its blessings pass in review.

 

To be perfectly blunt: what I fear triggers "donor fatigue" is actually "guilt fatigue." Guilt can spur a certain amount of generosity, but we all reach a point where we say "enough already." Guilt is no basis for giving.

 

Gratitude, on the other hand, often multiplies itself. Gratitude is nearly inexhaustible, and giving that is the result of grace (grace being a gift one receives undeserved, but still freely given regardless of whether we had it coming or not) is the visible form of the all-too-often invisible gratitude we want to feel, but so often can't quite put into words.

 

Giving speaks our gratitude in a language the universe can understand, that we can hear echo back and that might just catch the ears and attentions of others. When you know what it is you're thankful for, and why you want to respond, your giving becomes fairly straightforward.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County. Tell him what causes or purposes you give to support at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.