Giving of Your Finances

As I mentioned in my blog “Walking for a Cause”, in addition to giving of yourself for worthwhile causes, you should also give financially as you are able.  I’d like to summarize my giving philosophy in hopes that it may encourage others to adopt a similar philosophy.

I have four categories/levels in my giving philosophy.

The first of these is to our church. I strongly believe in tithing. I know that some feel that this is an Old Testament thing, but there is still a lot of validity in the reasons for it. In Biblical times, the tithe was used for such things as the support of widows and orphans as such social needs were not within the purview of the government. So one could argue that we don’t need such a large amount of money given to the church these days, since our taxes are used for that purpose. There is some truth to that, but the church is still the best method for helping to meet people’s needs at a local level. Our church runs the food bank for the local community and also has other social needs programs. Unfortunately, the average giving level in churches these days is far less than a tithe – figures I’ve seen range between 2 and 3 percent. But in Biblical times, they STARTED at 10% and people were encouraged to give beyond that.  As a result, today’s churches do not have the resources to do what I’m sure many of them would like to do more of. But I try to do my part.

The second category/level is my giving to some specific missionaries – one who is a member of our church and a personal friends, and one, my brother, who with my sister-in-law are missionaries in Thailand. I believe strongly in what both of these are doing and want to be a significant part of it. Also, at this same level, I support two organizations that I volunteer at – Lehigh Valley Christian High School (where I have volunteered for 25 years and where I served on the Board of Directors for 18 years), and AFS Intercultural Programs (where I have volunteered for many years, including two years as the Chair of their National Council and three years on their Board of Directors). These two organizations are worthy of both my finances and my time.

The third category/level of giving is to a small number of carefully and deliberately selected organizations. There are about a dozen such organizations in our current list, and my wife and I have periodic discussions about whether to add or delete organization to this list. We give each of these organizations about $100 each year – enough to be noticed, but certainly far less than those in the prior two categories. The key here is that the organizations are chosen deliberately and not based on the many requests for contributions that sometimes seem to flood our mailbox (both snail mail and email). Most of these organizations have been on the list for many years, but there are some changes every few years as our interests change.

The final category are all the other organizations from which we get requests. Most of these requests are simply ignored – even if they come in the form of a phone call. The only ones we honor are usually associated with friends/family members who are participating – for example, when my niece was walking across Africa a few years ago, we supported her during that time. But the rest of the time we just politely refuse, since we prefer to support organizations based on deliberate choice research of the organization’s philosophy, rather than responding to ad-hoc requests.

In total our giving is about 20% of our gross income – about the same as was recommended in the Bible. The difference is that back then all the social support was through this method, and now there are many organizations beyond the local church who are involved in good ministries – some deliberately social, and others with other good causes.

I had a great aunt who had a different philosophy – she gave small amounts to dozens of different organizations and large amounts to none. She wanted to spread her donations around and be able to contribute to as many worthwhile organizations as she could. I have no issue with her method – it was something that worked for her. So if you have a different philosophy, that’s fine with me too. But I do think that it’s far better that YOU make the choice rather than just responding to anyone who asks for your money. That way you also can do the appropriate research to ensure that the organizations you support are actually putting you money to good use and not just spending it all on fund raising and other less than worthwhile activities.