Butterflies

Here’s the thing about giving to charity: most of us don’t. It’s your classic “Must go to the gym” situation, your basic “I’ll spend less time on my phone” resolution. It’s the thing we all say we’ll do and never bother with and feel bad about and then forget.

Here at Zero Towers we get our water from a tap, not from a dirty well or a stream that doubles as a toilet. Here in Blighty we eat when we’re hungry because we have food all the time. When we’re ill we catch colds as opposed to malaria. As children we went to school because we could afford to not work and because our mums made us even when we had very genuine tummy aches. Our end of the stick has been relatively shit-free. We can afford to give something to people holding the other end. We know we can. And yet… we can also afford iPads and they’re more fun.

That makes fundraising difficult. It’s why street fundraisers only ask for a fiver a month; it’s harder for us to say we can’t afford it. We still do. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, only about a quarter of us give to charity every month. According to the Charities Aid Foundation, fewer and fewer of us are giving at all. But even if we experience a guilt-based epiphany, even if we whip out a calculator and realise we can afford to lose that £1.15 a week and that if everyone in the country did the same we’d be giving £250 million a month, we should still lay off the back-patting because if we’re honest we know, deep down, that five quid a month is still a bit shit.

There are, of course, millions of people living on or below the poverty line who would genuinely struggle to give more than about 50p a year. I’ve done my time on disability benefits, and I’m aware it’s hard to be generous when life is about saving 7p on a dented can of beans. But the average household income in the UK is about £29,000. Don’t tell me a fiver is undoable for most of us. Don’t tell me a fiver is the most most of us can give. A fiver is shit.

Let’s look at the back-patting extravaganza that was the response to the 2004 tsunami. We saw lives destroyed on Boxing Day and together the UK donated £392 million to the DEC Appeal, throwing around words like ‘unprecedented’. Here’s another word: stingy. We’re talking an average of £6 per person. That’s crap. Even if we’re generous and say a third of the country genuinely couldn’t afford to give any money we’re still talking £9 each. And this is our record breaker! This is us at the height of our generosity! Nine quid while we’re up to our tits in freshly unwrapped presents.

Well not us! Not us Zeroes! We’ll sign up for monthly giving because charities like to have committed givers they can rely on, but we’ll give more than the entry-level fiver. We’ll skip a couple of pints and buy a bunch of trees to slow climate breakdown. We’ll go without a couple of movies and have Care International build someone a bog. We’ll admit five pairs of trainers is enough, we’ll be ashamed of that triple-figure designer T-shirt we’re lusting after and give solid chunks of money to people who’ll do better things with it.

And don’t panic. Our Actually Giving Policy doesn’t mean forcing you into poverty. It means giving more by buying slightly less, helping more but still buying plenty. Rest assured our materialism, our mass consumerism, our attempts to fill our aching, empty souls with unnecessary purchases will continue. I can afford to buy stuff and give stuff away. I just need to get past the mental block that tells me I can’t. I can. You can too. So let’s.

Photo credit: Venom Spartan at DeviantArt