Personal and Community Responsiblity

A few people have pointed out that I advocate a lot for private and corporate donations as opposed to forced giving through government programs.  The criticism I receive is that I seem to look down from my moral high ground and expect others to do the heavy lifting for me.  Some people don't believe that I practice what I preach.  In this post I'll go over the strategy my family is taking to contribute our part to make our community a better place and to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

This strategy is not indented to be the best for everyone - this is one area that has more than one right answer.  I guess the best place to begin is to choose the best way for you to contribute which generally boils down to two categories: Time and Money.  This is most likely the hardest decision to make.  The common problem is that you need money to buy the things you need and you need time to make that money.  Making a budget is an easy way to identify how much money you can donate.  Eventually, I want to be at a point where I can donate 10% of my income.  Obviously I need to be financially stable on my own before I can help other people.  I define financial stability as having the following things:

1. Being able to cover all of my monthly bills.
2. Emergency fund capable of covering all living expenses for 3 months (Bills plus some discretionary spending).
3. Full contributions to long-term retirement savings capable of maintaining my current lifestyle after I retire without help from Social Security.
   

At this stage in my life I do not consider myself financially stable, but I am definitely on the way to being so.  Right now, I'm not able to give the full 10% of my income as I'd like, but my budget allows for small contributions here and there.  This means that my money is more valuable than my time, so I volunteer.  Eventually as I get older, my time will begin to be more valuable (like when I have kids) and I will need to re-evaluate my position again.


This leads me to the second decision: where do I donate my time and money?  I am a strong advocate for community support.  There is no point in perusing lofty goals of saving the world if the people down the street can't get a good education.  I also believe in supporting programs that have some meaning to me personally.  Really, anything you think is important is a target for your contribution.


My community volunteer support focuses primarily on education and pursuit of the sciences because that is what hits closest to my interests.  I am the team coordinator for a local FIRST Robotics Competition team which promotes science and technology education in high school students.  I also mentor in a program called STOMP which promotes science and technology education in fifth graders.  Both of these programs also get some of my money as is sometimes the case with volunteer efforts.  I have also donated money to Alternative Gifts International which helps fund engineering projects in places around the world.  All of these activities revolve around my local community or promoting science and technology. 


As I mentioned before, once I become financially stable and my time begins to be more valuable to me than my money, I will have to choose to re-allocate my resources as is appropriate.  I'm sure that my ideas of what to contribute to will be different from yours.  Some people may not wish to contribute anything at all which is of course their right (except in today's world).  How do you decide the way in which you donate?  How do you decide where your donations go?  Drop a line in the comments section.