catagories of giving

I've realized that the reasons for giving between different countries are very different due to the varying perspectives of people and the cultural differences around it. Most people in Vancouver have said that it is to 'make yourself feel better' more like a kind of karma. With the second reason being religious values.

I was recently reading a book Why the Wealthy Give, it was amazing to me that some of the reason why people give is also because of social status. It is almost implicit that if you are wealthy that you must give in some form or another and not to do so is a taboo because you have excess now and are not just trying to get by. Some of the wealthy actually will switch charities if they do not get on the board of trustees for a certain cause. Seems a little appalling. Charities and most books on charities seem to come down to one thing: MONEY, and as much of it as you can get. I have not read of much yet that deals with investing time or for lack of better words 'self' into the cause.

In the book 'iceberg philanthropy' the authors group donors into a couple of groups. tippers, donor, and investors. These terms are pretty self explanatory and most people are grouped into the bottom half with the goal being to convert donors into investors. Now there is an interesting idea that this form of charity when investors are at the helm become 'viral' that is anyone that comes into contact with these people become infected with the cause. They call the spreaders 'sneezers' and it would be interesting to apply this concept not so much on the monetary side as for the cause side. 

A conversation I had with a friend produced an interesting result. That is she was volunteering her time because someone she trusted asked her. a 'sneezer' and she would probably do it again. This time volunteering bypasses the monetary stage and goes straight to the cause stage. I will be thinking about this incident during my concept and development stages.