Guidelines On The Value Of Giving
A new experiment is completely changing lives in the rural areas of India by bringing luminosity where there used to be darkness.
The New York Times published an article titled, “Husk Power for India”. Electricity, which is prevalent in the lives of many in developed nations, is a pure luxury in remote areas of developing ones. What was once fed to animals now is used to generate electricity – rice husks.
Growing up in rural Bihar State, Manoj Sinha knew what it was like to sit in the dark. Being an engineer with Intel Corporation he had all the skills to make a lifelong idea come alive. He led the development of his electricity equipment that generates power from rice husks and other farming waste and now he sells it to villages across India.
Sinha is what could be called a social entrepreneur because he feels business is a solution to key social issues. “Business leaders must realise that the world’s poor need investments more than handouts,” he says, adding, “these are customers, not victims.”
The article stimulated me to think about gifting in a different way prompting me to ask myself, “what is the most ideal form of giving?” Is it learning, business transaction or aid work? There are so many methods to make a difference. One way of gifting can appear to be more effectual or maintainable than other ways based on the way it is conveyed, seen or applied.
I then came to define there were eight parts to giving as a way to look at this. So, let me map out the eight distinctions; which in effect are often ‘stages’ of giving as well.
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religion
Charity Ratings Are Unpredictable – How To Increase Rating
Charity ratings are a fickle thing with highly rated charities holding the number 1 position today being overtaken by new charities coming from nowhere. Charity Water is a recent and amazing example of this. Originality and the power of the Internet, are driving the ratings of brand new charities through the roof. A charity may not know today with a non-existent rating, but tomorrow it can be rated as number one by the New York Times as being the most amazing charity ever, and wham their rating goes from zero right to the top overnight.
Because of the power the mass communication media have over the people, when a charity is in the good books of the media, it expands very quickly and manages to get a lot of charitable giving. By that same yardstick, when media do not have much interest in propping up a given charity, its rating also plummets in the same proportion.
Charity rating directory listings
With cynicism a bit on the higher side and eagle eyed guardians of charity practices ever on the lookout for malpractices, with huge amounts of money spent on managing or misuse of funds, directory listings of charity ratings are having a field day. It is rather strange that altruistic organizations, the purpose of which is to give others, themselves come under the scrutiny of guardians of ethics. Altruism is becoming a knotty issue!
Organisations like Givespot.com and Guidestar.org list detailed charity ratings. Givespot.com has a detailed list called the GiveSpot 100 list, which shows its top 100 rated charities. Other organisations like charitynavigator.org have charity check systems as well as a charity Top Ten list so that look up a charity is easy. Guidestar.org is probably the biggest US charity directory offering an amazing array of charity information some free some at a cost. The Better Business Bureau in the USA, despite its name is also charity directory that lists both business and non-profit organisations.
With enough charity rating guides, there is no data shortage for anyone who wants to get information on the 100 top charities, but what constitutes real rating is something different. What in reality makes a charity superior has nothing much to do with its ratings. There are characteristics that make an organization, whether charity based or otherwise, stand out from the rest.
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Society
About B1G1 – A New Global Giving Service
Buy1GIVE1 is the home of transaction-based giving.
STOP. Take a breath. And imagine you were part of a world where every transaction made a difference.
Imagine, for example, you bought a TV, and automatically a cataract-blind child got the gift of sight. Automatically. Or imagine if today you bought a cup of coffee and someone in Africa got access to clean, pure water as a direct result. Again automatically.
It’s all happening right now. Already Buy1GIVE1 (B1G1) has become a true global giving ‘village’, bringing together businesses, their customers and worthy causes in a way that’s never been done before.
It’s happening globally, every second, every day and in every way with a staggering 556 projects already underway and making a difference.
That’s because in the Buy1GIVE1 world, every single transaction, be it buying a beer in Jamaica or renting a car in Reno (and everything in between) gives forward in a well-defined, resonant and measurable way.
Nowadays, when both corporations and charities have seen a decline in gains and contributions, cause-related marketing seems to really be catching on. Cause-related marketing is a business scheme involving a partnership between a company with a merchandise to trade and a charity with a cause to advance. As opposed to “corporate philanthropy,” which simply includes a company making a tax-deductible charitable donation, cause-related marketing benefits both the company (by helping to increase sales, and therefore, profits), and the charity (by giving donations and calling attention to the cause.)
You buy a book, a tree gets planted. You dine out, a child gets fed. Buy One Give One – simple. The list goes on forever and the giving simply happens automatically, every second, every day and in every way.
And it is beautifully simple. Buy1GIVE1 is now becoming a global movement as more and more businesses jump on board and enjoy the incredible benefits of transaction-based giving.
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Society
