How Should Hard Times Affect Our Gift-Giving?

I have been wrapping a few gifts to send off to friends for the holidays, at the same time thinking about how to tie several ribbons of ideas together on the issues that gifts and giving bring up this time of year. Here are some of these ideas:

1. The old saying "charity begins at home" has taken on new meaning this year, as at least one of my relatives has lost his job, and several friends (more than I can count) have connections to the auto industry.

I have been trying to think about how as an individual, I can help Michigan out. My hands remind me of the state as I sit here typing and can't help but visualize the mitten. Winter reminds me of the U.P. too where last January, my husband and I went dog sledding at Nature's Kennel (www.natureskennel.com) near McMillan. The beauty of that area, and the rhythmic pace of the dogs (who admittedly knew the trail just like the Mackinac Island horses know their way around the island) made the 7 below zero temperatures irrelevant.

So, how can I make any one contribution relevant? And how can one person help Michigan? I suspect there are alot of Michigan residents who have such passing thoughts. And I imagine that many shared their ideas and views around the table over the Thanksgiving holiday.

And too, some Michigan residents spent at least part of their day over Thanksgiving helping with food banks through their gifts of time: their way of helping the increasing numbers of our neighbors unable to meet their food budgets.

Such contributions to deal with urgent needs are vital.

At the same time, economic crises like the one we are living through now have structural causes, including the one caused by the way we grow, deliver, eat and dispose of our food. This troubling fact became only too clear to me when we were talking last month with 3 women whose commitment to helping people eat locally grown, accessible, affordable, healthy food, is worth mentioning (Check out the podcast, Local Farmers in Chief: www.a2ethics.org/node/475).

Not only is it important to make our contribution relevant to groups devoted to dealing with a food access and affordability emergency, it is equally important to give to groups trying to alter the structural causes, in this case, the food crisis.

So, the ideas about giving I am trying to tie up here I will pose as questions:

Should I be giving and volunteering to the groups that help the most urgently needy?

Or should I be focusing on giving and volunteering to groups who are dealing with the root and cause of the need?

These are hard questions to answer even in the best of times.

2. Another question that comes to mind, and which is related to the decision to give to one organization over the other is this: how can the contribution I give, whether in money, time and effort, be remembered as " the contribution well spent?"

Alot of talk over the past few years has been expended over this question. By private philanthropies. By accountability-oriented foundations. By business-minded social entrepreneurs. The trend toward "money well spent" and intelligent giving has found its way into the name of a very recent book, Money Well Spent: A Strategic Plan for Smart Philanthropy, by Paul Brest and Hal Harvey, two well- known foundation executives.

Of course, no one wants to be a dumb philanthropist and gift-giver. I have to say that over the years, however, I have given people some very dumb gifts, from Jesus Loves Me soap bubbles to transvestite sheep costumes.

But these gifts were to individuals. And they were given in frivolous times. In Michigan, our hard times began long ago. But now they are even harder.

I am talking now about helping to prop up a state. So, under these circumstances what is the most responsible gift? The most responsible bailout? The most responsible loan?

Think about it. These are questions everyone around the nation, and the world, has been asking for the past four months.

And this week, in Michigan we are especially on edge about whether Congress will decide to contribute money through loans to the Detroit Three. The questions that politicians want to get answers to from the second round of hearings are pretty much the same ones Michigan residents are asking:will the money that the government plans to loan to the auto companies be money well spent?

3. While we are waiting to hear about what Congress decides in its own giving for the rest of the year, here in Michigan our efforts to prop up the state notably have included another "money well spent" campaign, in this instance, the currently high profile Buy Michigan Now organization(www.buymichigannow.com), whose laudable purpose is to promote local businesses and their goods made in Michigan. Other groups include Think Local First (www.thinklocalfirst.net) of Washtenaw County.

I don't have a problem with the push to "buy local first." But I am not always sure what local really means. On this site, for example, we have spent some investigative effort (not too deep yet) on trying to decide what the various meanings of local are.

Is Borders books local? Or is Shaman Drum, also a bookstore, more local? Is the University of Michigan a home school? Or is Washtenaw Community College truly the local college?

And there is another issue here. Are these businesses that Buy Michigan Now is suggesting we patronize and "give" our money to, the businesses we can expect to have longevity? And therefore are...the most deserving?

The point is this: if gift-givers, who are hard-nosed business people can make nonprofits accountable, then as consumers of goods and services of all things Michigan, shouldn't we be asking the same of Michigan businesses?

As the politicians in Washington are fond of telling us in Michigan (including a former resident, Mitt..was he named after the mitten? Romney) the American taxpayer is not going to bailout and give money to businesses without a plan to survive and thrive.

So, as I think about ways to contribute to Michigan, all of these thoughts about giving and its strings are tying the presents I am wrapping into big knots.

I could, of course, just use bows.

But then I would have to consider this: bow and firearm hunting seasons are upon us in Michigan. Hunting is a significant economic boon to Michigan, even if the number of hunters is decreasing. Does this mean that the best way to contribute and give money well spent to Michigan in hard times is to support hunting?

I need to remember this year not to give a stuffed deer head to one of my anti-hunting friends.