By EK Wills
Call me controversial but I feel that the current climate of fundraising is set up to generate competition at our expense.
Raising money for a cause is done with the best of intentions by all different members of our community for all sorts of reasons. This week I had the opportunity to be involved with two such events, one for a tragedy and one for hope.
Social media is the perfect medium to facilitate fundraising because it can spread quickly and widely in nanoseconds. If the message is a good one then it should generate participation, right?
But it is taken to another level when individuals are named and amounts are displayed because it generates the competitive nature in many of us. This has a positive effect on the amount of donations given but can also leave participants feeling inadequate if they are unable to contribute such large amounts or they over-commit outside their scope.
Arguably, this is not the responsibility of the organizers but when a team gets together in collaboration for a cause, shouldn’t the donations be made to the team, rather than individuals in the team to pit them against each other?
The case in point relates to a primary school group of boys who wanted to join together to do the World’s Greatest Shave. The site has the capacity to set up teams but because they were listed separately, individual donations then came in for particular members.
While the adults reassured the boys that the activity was designed to collectively generate a total to donate, it did not escape the boys’ attention that there was a clear ‘winner’ in their eyes.
This is not to minimize the amazing contribution that the donators made but it is worth mentioning that the incentive may not be so strong for future efforts if the team did not feel collectively like joint contributors.
These fundraising sites supply the option for anonymous donations and for group donations but they are not immediately obvious – and for good reason. Because ultimately when people vie for first place, they spend more. Sure, they want to show they care more but they are also (maybe inadvertently) challenging others to care as much by how much they put out there.
Call me cynical, but surely this is intentional. The charity gets the cash but does the process reflect the initial sentiment of the participants?
It is a sign of the times that fundraising has become such a popular activity. On Friday there were multiple events for causes on the same day- from the Coast Trek designed to get women active and fundraising to the Climate Change Strikes across the globe.
They all have a good cause and important things to say.
The cynic could also say it has become a form of virtue signaling.
The purpose of doing this is to gain esteem, social kudos and elevate social status… a bit like the rest of social media is designed to do.
This then feeds others FOMO and the natural tendency to compete and thus stimulate support for whatever cause is on offer.
And while the middle classes scrabble for attention on social media, where are the charity supporters in the extremely wealthy? Is seems they are buying porches for their wives….or maybe they are not virtue signalling enough.
On a positive note, the boys raised an incredible amount in support of leukaemia research. Ultimately, it raised awareness in the school, enabled the boys to collaborate for altruistic reasons and brought the school community together for the event.
And student protests are generating awareness for climate change and women are getting active in a time when inequality is in the media and should be promoted. Maybe we are reaching a period of real change.
The challenge for me is how to participate genuinely rather than because it is popular or viewed positively by others. Only individuals can make that choice for themselves by which cause to support and how to do it. There are 56 thousand registered charities in Australia alone. You could decide clinically by evaluating their performance reports or you could go by the one that touches your heart, and both would be rewarding. Finding your approach is an individual choice.
And like everything else, it comes with a cost.
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