Charitable giving must be in the air. Last night, a colleague and I were talking about one of the main benefits of earning lots and lots of money was how fun it would be to give a whole lot of it away. Then, this morning, I received an article about an award a friend received for her extensive charitable giving in the town where she lives.

I was raised in a family of givers. I remember sitting by my grandmother every year while she pulled out a large box of index cards filled with the many, many charities she would donate to every year. While the rest of the year, she volunteered just about every spare second she had to the local hospital. Giving was and still is a common topic of conversation in my family, but my family also shies away from any and all public recognition of it, preferring to donate anonymously and not mention it in regular conversations outside the family.

Obviously, giving publicly or anonymously is an individual’s choice,  and there are as many reasons to do it anonymously as there are to do it publicly.

But one thing I noticed, while talking to my colleague last night, was that we immediately started cataloging who we knew of who were giving the kinds of gifts we’d like to give–like Bill Gates & his wife outfitting schools with computers, or Brad Pitt building houses in New Orleans, or Oprah’s school in Africa. We both got all excited imagining how fun it would be to see a need and be able to fill it on the spot–no heat in your building? Fixed! No books at your school? Here you go! No money for life-saving surgery? Consider the bill paid!

SOOOOO FUN!

Then, I read the article about my friend and though about my family’s code of honor that demonstrates giving, but, publicly, keeps it a secret. Now, I’ve always been something of a black sheep in my family. Where they are private, I’m public, where they are reserved, I’m jumping up and down. Probably some kind of a happy medium would he preferable, but it occurred to me that without all the people like Bill Gates and Brad Pitt who are giving publicly, my colleague and I would have not examples to emulate when considering where and how we would like to give.

Giving can get such a bad rap–as though it’s self-centered to point out when we’re doing it.

But why wouldn’t we spotlight it? Without examples of giving, how will others be inspired to do the same? Not everyone is brought up in a family where donating time and money to charity is a common conversation–not everyone witnesses those they love extending that love to others. And if they don’t see it happening around them, isn’t it kind of a crap shoot whether it will ever occur to them to do it themselves?

I’m for public giving–and probably, more importantly, I’m for public sharing of how GOOD it feels TO give–how FUN it is to give–how exciting, humbling, poignant, and touching it can be to simply see a need that someone else has and fill it. Giving doesn’t have to be as large as rebuilding a whole town–it can be as small as seeing that it’s raining and giving your umbrella to someone else because you’ll be inside for the rest of the storm. It’s the kind of action that can fill your heart to overflowing–but if no one talks about how great it feels, or demonstrates how much FUN it can bring, it will remain an untold secret, and how is that helping anybody?

I encourage you to consider sharing THAT you give; sharing how it feels when you give. Whenever I get a compliment on my long hair, I have a hard time NOT saying that I’m growing it for Locks of Love–because it means SO much to me that someday my hair will contribute to the head of hair on someone who can’t grow it for themselves. It warms my heart to talk about how thrilled it makes me. And that excitement is INFECTIOUS!

And isn’t that what giving is all about?

The next time you give, consider being public about it and spread the joy!

(If you enjoyed this post, you’ll want to check out this one, too: http://www.lifebeyondcelebrity.com/giving-making-it-public-check-this-event-out/ ~Rebecca )

Tags: Bill Gates, Brad Pitt, charaties, charitable giving, Oprah

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Family, Hollywood, Money, Privacy, Social Pressure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.