When will we stop praising people for giving “stuff”?
Posted on May 24, 2012 at 4:41 am
An article in the Huffington Post’s Impact section caught my eye as the HuffPo once again heralded what is essentially questionable donor behavior.
In this particular article a man went down to a Kmart which was closing it’s doors and purchased every single item in the store and donated the $200,000 worth of goods to a single charity. What on the outside seems like a very charitable act brings up a lot of concerns for the problems the nonprofit is likely facing as a result of this unsolicited donation.
- First - were all of these items wanted or even useful for the charity? How much of the stuff is going to have to be given away to another charity or thrown away by the nonprofit that received it? Donors make a huge mistake in assuming that anything they donate is useful, it’s not. Imagine all the thong underwear, bottles of cosmetics, and other random stuff they likely received. Donated goods can be more of a burden than a boon to the organization receiving it.
- Second – does the charity actually have the storage space to house all of these items or is it going to cost them money to store all the stuff? Nonprofits may have to rent extra space or rearrange their entire office to store unexpectedly large donations.
- Third – did the person donate any funds to the charity to help cover their costs of transporting, tracking, storing and distributing all of these additional goods?
I’m guessing the donor did not even consider any of these questions. People that focus on giving “stuff” feel that their “stuff” is always wanted and needed and do not realize what goes into storing, tracking, distributing, or discarding all that “stuff”.
The nonprofit that received the donation is not going to complain publicly about this donation because if they did they would appear ungrateful and could lose a lot of other donations. But I’ll bet you there’s a lot of grumbing going on behind closed doors right now because of the extra burden caused by the unwanted parts of this donation.
So what could this well-intentioned donor have done to improve the quality of his donation.
- He could have donated all the money he spent on purchasing this stuff to the charity instead. It’s estimated to be $200,000 worth of goods but it’s unclear is this was the actual amount of money spent. But whatever the amount, this would have been an enormous help to the charity which they could have used to meet their clients greatest needs instead of just what the donor thinks are the greatest needs.
- He could have checked with the nonprofit first to find out which items were actually needed and which items were useless to them, this way he would ensure that he only purchased useful items.
- He could have matched his purchase with an equal amount of money to cover the nonprofit’s costs in storing, tracking, and distributing the donated goods.
While charitable intentions are good, it’s important that the desire to help is matched with the knowledge of what actually provides the greatest help. Continuing to praise all donations of stuff perpetuates questionable donor practices.
Update: A reader has pointed out that in the video linked to in the article (I read the article but did not watch the video assuming it contained the same information) the donor did pay to rent a building to house the donated goods. I’m glad to hear that he did take that issue into consideration but still question buying out a store’s entire inventory and donating the goods.
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Great point. I had just this article (http://mashable.com/2012/05/24/e-readers-worldreader-fc-barcelona/) before seeing this post, and I think your comments apply to that too. Somehow it’s easier to get behind donating “things” instead of money, when it’s quite possible that the things are less useful than the money the things cost.
In the video at the huffpo site, the presenter says he also rented a building for the charity to store it all in.
Thanks for the additional information, I read the article but did not watch the video assuming it contained the same information.
An efficient approach would have been for the donor to cover the cost of sending an agency representative to the store to select goods that would be useful and manageable.
Does our “stuff” give us a sense of security? Have our emotional and social lives become so vacuous that “stuff” fills these gaps? Does “stuff” provide a sense of worthiness or power? Does “stuff” allow us to live superficially, preventing us from going deeper?
I suspect that our relationship to the “stuff” in our own lives may be directly correlated to how much “stuff” we believe to be necessary to send to “those in need.”
See: http://www.how-matters.org/2011/09/17/stuff-what-is-it-good-for/
Hi Saundra,
I bet the donor thought it was a good opportunity to get a better price on the “stuff” than could normally be secured, because the store was going out of business. He probably thought this was a chance to magnify the good his money could do. Still, it seems like he should have asked the non-profit first, and they would have told him whether it would be more useful for them to have the money or the stuff. This is the critical problem with charity (which you have pointed out before): People think they know what poor people need, without asking either the poor people or those who work closely with them. How easy it would have been for him to ask!
Great post and so important for donors to understand. Jennifer’s point is one that I believe we can all gain from if we would do a little introspection around our need for “stuff” and its relation to power.
What always makes me feel uncomfortable is our need to give away our old used “stuff” to people in” far away places.” To me, the message seems to be ” We don’t want it but we think poor people will and they should be grateful to get it.” Just a thought. Thanks for the thought provoking post.
Donation of useless stuff reminds me of the stories I heard from the head of MSF Hong Kong after the tsunami. People were coming by the office with dirty linens, two tins of canned food, one pair of old socks, etc etc. More seriously, they wouldn’t take “No thanks” for an answer. Instead, they got angry at their intentions being thwarted. I blogged something about our psychological attachment to giving about a month ago. http://www.humanicontrarian.com/2012/04/13/model-business/
Also, bingo to Jennifer on her point.
I recently recieved a donation from a “caring” person. Sets of bed sheets badly covered with cat hair, out of style clothes that did not fit, two broken counter-top kitchen gadgets. There seems to be a false belief around that “poor” people will be very happy with anything you want to pawn off on them. I wasted laundry detergent trying to get the cat hair out of the sheets, and several trash bags throwing the stuff away, plus my time. The kitchen gadgets can’t be put in the regular trash, they are supposed to be taken to a recycling center, which charges money for drop offs. I’m not poor by world standards, but apparently people in America think I am.
i applaud you for trying to enlighten people about these problems with charity.
from what i’ve heard most charities have the problem of ‘constantly receiving useless stuff’ (which often ends up costing them money to dispose of), but not being able to complain out of fear of being branded as ‘ungrateful’.
if that’s because some old granny is confused about how useful her home-knit sweaters actually are than that’s one thing, but some companies go as far as dumping all their left-over or upgraded inventory in the charity-basket (10-year old computers that don’t work anymore, books that are 40 years old, rusting bicycles, etc). and seem to be honestly surprised when someone points out that the proverbial ‘starving afrian children’ are not THAT desperately in need of *stuff* that they’d like receiving garbage.
Hi, Saundra, from past conversations you’ll recall some of the challenges facing the events industry. At present, it’s seen as leading practice to donate salvageable items from big shows (Last month, we had a project where 67,000 lbs of building supplies were donated to 8 different community organizations). My thought is that with greater collaboration with NGOs, this practice can help to avoid unnecessary waste (I wrote a bit about it here–shameless plug for my new blog– http://fightinggoodfights.com/2012/06/28/social-responsibility-for-events-good-for-you-19/)
What’s your take on donations of this type?
with thanks,
michael
Very interesting read… ‘giving stuff’ is something that we see and hear about so often when we are working in various communities. From what we have observed, ‘giving stuff’ seems to make the giver feel good, but is often not the most beneficial way of helping. Another aspect of ‘giving stuff’ is that it is not a way to empower people and assist them with sustainable development. Aid work (with the exception of emergency relief) should be assisting communities to develop their own future in an empowering and sustainable manner. “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”
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