Requests For “Gifts”

Dear discerning pigeons, I got this in my inbox the other day.

Shocked and Old Fashioned
Subject: Shocked and Old Fashioned
Message: Is it ever okay to ask for gifts for oneself? Even if you’re deserving and you do it nicely? I was raised to believe that it’s never polite to request gifts for yourself – even if you’re in need. Instead, what you’re supposed to do, (I thought) was rely on close friends or family throw a fete on your behalf or spread the word about your need. In this day and age, you can even create an online registry, which savvy folks who want to give you a gift will find if they do a search for your name.

[Describes being solicited via Facebook message for a financial contribution toward a specific gift by a member of the clergy]. I feel a little shocked and even offended by the request. Are these feelings inappropriate? I know their circumstances, and had planned to get them a different gift, of my own choosing on the right occasion. Should I just shelve my feelings and close my dropped jaw and give them some $$ for [said gift]?

Still, I can’t help but miss old -fashioned manners and gentility.

Dear Shocked and Old Fashioned,

First and foremost, I have to express my hope that you will speak to the gift-seekers directly. I am uncomfortable about being put in a position of triangulating or of assisting someone in an act of passive-aggression, but I inquired of a group of friends as to whether or not I should respond to this letter here and they encouraged me to do so. Because you made up an e-mail address, I was not able to respond to you privately, which I would have preferred to do.

As it turns out, you are not the only one who is offended by being solicited for financial contributions via social media. This is a new phenomenon and one which irritates many. Have you dumped the bucket of ice over your head? I didn’t. Neither did I write a check. My charitable giving is something I work out along with my annual budget, and I am therefore not usually responsive to emotional pleas or clever ploys. I attend about half a dozen fundraisers every year, and am connected to about twenty organizations that I consider “partner organizations” in my life, and I support those on a rotating basis. That’s how I roll.

Our economy has not recovered from the recession and the financial squeeze on individuals and families is scary and stressful. Clergy debt and financial peril is real. As I mentioned the other day on Twitter, I, who have been employed as a full-time parish minister for the seventeen years since ordination and well-compensated by congregations for twelve of those years, am still paying off div school loans at about $1,000 a month. SEVENTEEN YEARS LATER.

GoFundMe and Faithify (which crowdsources funding for Unitarian Universalist congregation and beyond-congregation initiatives) and Kickstarter and the like have provided easy ways for folks to put out a request for financial aid into their community of friends and supporters. This is all new, and we are figuring out the best practices for it as we go along.

I have a few essential guidelines about such requests that help me discern whether they feel appropriate, legitimate, fair and ethical:

1. My money is the tangible result of energy. It represents my hard work and labor. Is the project I am being asked to fund something to which I want to send my life force and energy? If so, then I may choose to contribute to it.

2. Do unto others: is this request something that triggers a basic “do unto others” response from me? Is this request coming from, or on behalf of, a banged up person on the side of the road who needs immediate assistance? Then I give it, and as much as I am able. I would certainly hope to be helped in such dire straits myself.

3.Is this a “me only” kind of project I’m being asked to fund, like a trip or a special experience or a material item that won’t be shared? If so, then I will likely ignore the request and send a prayer instead.

I am not sure what you mean, “Shocked,” by creating a registry which people can find when they happen to randomly google their friends’ names.

Generally, though, “Shocked,” we agree. Gifts are wonderful. Gifts are manna from heaven. But we don’t lobby for gifts. They should be freely given and thought up by the giver, not the recipient.

If someone wants to raise money for their own benefit or someone else’s, the appropriate thing to do is to solicit contributions and not hint to So-And-So that wouldn’t it be nice if they made a gift to such-and-such. However, in this day and age of constant solicitations and pleas, soliciting contributions for one’s own personal or family benefit without some kind of mutual aid or services rendered is not a likely source of largesse.