Later it was framed up as a day to gather with family and be thankful. I'm OK with that, being thankful is nice. And I guess it will tide us over until we can get down to the real holidays.
But over the past few years, I've been getting more excited about it, because the "Thanks" is just the first part. "Giving" follows immediately on Giving Tuesday.
In preparation, we've sat down made a spreadsheet with a budget, spent some time looking through previous donations to find favorites, then looked for areas we want to focus this year. We have now a list of all of the charitable donations we'll be making for the "Giving" part of this holiday.
So, what's your giving plan this year?
A few notes about this:
In the past, I thought it was tacky or rude to talk about charitable giving. Something about not wanting to make a show of giving, that is doing something for your own glory, or something about shame in having more or less money to give, something about a value instilled that people should be silently doing good for others so as not to make it about them... something something.
However, I have been convinced over the past few years that so much of what we do is based on social cues and norms, that to hide this is to risk others thinking it's not happening. I want to normalize charitable giving. I also learned that many folks (I am not one of these, so I reseted this notion at first) give to charities mostly when they are asked to do so by someone they know. If you're one of these people, here are some charities my family will be supporting this Giving Tuesday, and we invite you to join us:
- American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Inc
- American Civil Liberties Union
- (Why both? One is the tax-deductible, gift-match-at-work one, the other is the one doing some very important lobbying and legal work)
- Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc
- Planned Parenthood Mar Monte Inc
- (Why two? Same reason as ACLU above)
- Sacred Heart Community Services
- Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties
- California State Parks Foundation
- Southern Poverty Law Center Inc
- I realize there has been a some negative news about SPLC lately, but I still think they are doing very important work, so will keep an eye on this for next year)
- Girl Scouts of Northern California
- Downtown Streets - this one we picked because we were looking this year for something focused locally on homelessness, and this was an organization I'd had the honor of volunteering with once and was very impressed with the dignity and ownership of the work by those who are homeless or at-risk of being homeless.
- Kqed Inc
- RAICES
- Donorschoose.org - we let the kids help pick out a project or two to fund, so they can get in on the giving and get in the habit and joy of picking something themselves. I love the engagement model for that purpose.
