Giving back by giving forward.
I thought I wrote about this when it happened, but now that I look back I realized that I only talked about it and didn't write it down. Several weeks ago, I got a call from my alma mater asking if I would make a donation to the school. The girl on the other end sounded monotonic and bland, like a child who was forced complete a chore. I said, "Sure how about $100."?
It was as if a light switch had suddenly turned on. The girl initially sounded shocked, and then excited, as if I was the first and only person who agreed to donate anything. I've been donating every year for a while now. I figured that all the money in scholarships and bursaries I got over the years should go back to the students attending now, who have to pay a tuition several times more than what I ended up footing (pre-scholarship).
I'm always reminded of the chat I had with MJO decades ago when he had that gig as a telemarketer for the university while we were still in school. He needed the job to help pay for school, and it was a fairly thankless job. He'd call up graduates to see if they would be able to donate back to the university and virtually all of them would decline, or only offer a pittance. He had remarked how stingy people were to their alma mater even though it was there that they achieved their education that would have directly (or indirectly) led to their eventual employment.
Now a hundred dollars is not even a lot of money. The fact that the girl was shocked either meant that she was having a very bad day soliciting donations, or people are generally not willing to donate back even a minor sum without serious cajoling. Which can be a sad state of affairs.
In any case, I agree that everybody and their dog seems to be asking for donations these days and it is easy to get exhausted by the constant solicitation. The simplest solution is to say no to everybody and tell them to go away. But for those of us who have made a life of ourselves, we should at least donate some money, or time, or both back to the societies and groups that helped raise us and allowed us to reach beyond what we could have done on our own. To help those coming after us to reach even higher goals. You don't have to give to everyone. In fact, you probably shouldn't. Pick and choose the ones you want to support. Give support to something you believe in. It doesn't even have to be main stream or even organized. But do support someone, for all our sake.
It was as if a light switch had suddenly turned on. The girl initially sounded shocked, and then excited, as if I was the first and only person who agreed to donate anything. I've been donating every year for a while now. I figured that all the money in scholarships and bursaries I got over the years should go back to the students attending now, who have to pay a tuition several times more than what I ended up footing (pre-scholarship).
I'm always reminded of the chat I had with MJO decades ago when he had that gig as a telemarketer for the university while we were still in school. He needed the job to help pay for school, and it was a fairly thankless job. He'd call up graduates to see if they would be able to donate back to the university and virtually all of them would decline, or only offer a pittance. He had remarked how stingy people were to their alma mater even though it was there that they achieved their education that would have directly (or indirectly) led to their eventual employment.
Now a hundred dollars is not even a lot of money. The fact that the girl was shocked either meant that she was having a very bad day soliciting donations, or people are generally not willing to donate back even a minor sum without serious cajoling. Which can be a sad state of affairs.
In any case, I agree that everybody and their dog seems to be asking for donations these days and it is easy to get exhausted by the constant solicitation. The simplest solution is to say no to everybody and tell them to go away. But for those of us who have made a life of ourselves, we should at least donate some money, or time, or both back to the societies and groups that helped raise us and allowed us to reach beyond what we could have done on our own. To help those coming after us to reach even higher goals. You don't have to give to everyone. In fact, you probably shouldn't. Pick and choose the ones you want to support. Give support to something you believe in. It doesn't even have to be main stream or even organized. But do support someone, for all our sake.
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