Giving to Charity
Who amongst you rolled your eyes when you saw that title? It’s OK to admit it. As a child, I was routinely told “charity begins at home”, and therefore never got round to really doing much about ‘giving’. Giving to charity is something rich people do, right? Something you’ll “do next month”. You may want to give but can’t because it’d set you back against getting out of debt. But giving to charity isn’t limited to donating £2 a month to the RSPCA or PDSA or WWF or whatever advert pops ups on your TV in the next 30 minutes.
Give Time
There are hundreds of ways you can give meaningfully without having to actually spend a penny. Organisations are crying out for volunteers with all sorts of skills from IT, to communication, to just being an ‘adult’ at kids clubs. When you donate your time rather than the loose change in your pocket, you get to see first hand at the difference you are making. A handful of examples based on my field of expertise: Community First Responders work with their local NHS Ambulance Trusts to provide life-saving treatment to those in their immediate vicinity, bridging the gap between that emergency call and the ambulance arriving. Full training and generally, full equipment are provided. Police Special Constables give up their free time to police their community, but are otherwise fully-fledged, fully trained police officers who do it because they want to help people, and not because of the paycheck. I salute you. Volunteer firefighters do much the same for the fire and rescue service in their area.
Whoever you choose to donate your time to, it’ll be mutually beneficial I promise.
Give Blood
Do something amazing. Give blood. As the saying goes! It doesn’t cost you anything to do, and each donation you give can save up to 6 lives. It takes an hour to do, and you get free juice, tea, coffee, biscuits and crisps in exchange. I put this off and put this off for almost a decade. “I’ll do it next time”, or “I don’t like needles” or one of a thousand other excuses. I gave for the first time in July and it was an amazing experience. The people are wonderful, and you are directly helping to save lives. You can’t beat that feeling.
The National Blood Service website has more details if you want to get involved.
Don’t Make Any More Excuses
Trent over at The Simple Dollar has a different view – he does keep money for giving to charity. If you can afford to do it, then do it! But there are many more ways you can help and ‘give’, without it costing you anything in physical monetary terms, and help save or improve people’s and animal’s lives all the same. You can argue you “don’t have time” but really, is that true?
Charity doesn’t begin at home. Financial Wellbeing begins at home.
