Giving time, not money

“Writing a check is simply a matter of figuring out an amount you can afford and sending it off. But actually donating your time, which was not counted by the survey toward the dollars people gave, seemed a far greater level of commitment.” This from an insightful story in todays’s New York Times by Paul Sullivan entitled A portion of the text appears below. For the complete story, see “Some Prefer Giving Time, Not Money, to Schools” in the New York Times.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a group that rated charities for their effectiveness but was surprised when one of the group’s young founders said he had stopped supporting groups focused on education. He had a perfectly rational-sounding reason: the problems were daunting and he didn’t feel his donations would have an impact.

Then, I heard about a recent study of high-net-worth households that found that education was the leading concern among affluent donors, ahead of health care, the economy, poverty and the federal budget deficit. Continue reading “Giving time, not money”