When I was 10 years old, my father began to grant me an allowance of $3 per week. Along with my first week’s allowance, he gave me three glass jars labeled “give,” “save” and “spend,” into which I was required to put one dollar each. My father explained that there were three basic uses for money: giving, saving and spending — and that giving was the most important. Every year at Christmas, I would empty the $52 from my giving jar and choose charities and nonprofits I wanted to donate to.
In this way, regular giving became a habit that I’ve kept with me as I’ve grown up, even as my income surpassed $3 per week. When I had my first job, I donated my entire first paycheck. On birthdays, I ask my family to give donations in my name instead of buying me new socks. And every holiday season, I set aside 10% of my after-tax income to give away.
Now, I’m not claiming to be some kind of great philanthropist. This is just a habit I’ve maintained because I was taught the importance of giving from an early age, so it comes as naturally as brushing my teeth. You can do it too! In fact, just like brushing your teeth, you should do it if you’re not already. I’m calling on you — yes, you — to set up a recurring donation to a mutual aid organization of your choice.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a fourth-grader giving $52 per year, or a billionaire giving a small fortune, or anywhere in between — what matters is sacrifice. Christian intellectual C.S. Lewis has some useful wisdom on the topic of giving: “If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small.” This is why we roll our eyes when billionaires cut the ribbons on the hospitals they’ve financed before flying home in their private jets. They’ve given plenty of money, but it cost them close to nothing.
It’s easy to criticize billionaires, but much harder to change our own habits. It’s tempting to procrastinate giving until we have a regular job and income, but I insist that we must start now, whatever now looks like. I know from experience that building habits is important. If you practice tightening your belt to give in college, it will be far easier later on when you’re making six figures.
Why give? Much of the literature on generosity focuses on the scientifically proven health benefits to the giver: lower blood pressure, less stress, a better immune system and a brighter mood. Even putting aside my suspicions of the confounding effects of the placebo effect and social desirability bias — study participants may be more likely to inflate their satisfaction after giving because that’s how it’s “supposed to” feel — I think that touting the health benefits of generosity misses the point. It treats giving as just another consumer decision, on the same order of significance as buying a Peloton. If you’re asking, “How good will I feel after donating this sum of money?” you’re asking the wrong question. Feel-good giving, even on a small scale, is no different from the saccharine elite philanthropy we all love to hate.
The point of giving radically is that it teaches you this critical lesson: It’s not about you. Giving is not a monetary transaction, but a spiritual discipline by which we learn to think of ourselves less and others more.
If you believe, as I do, that the distribution of wealth in this country is fundamentally unfair and predicated not on talent or ingenuity or virtue but the pure dumb luck of the ovarian lottery, then what right do you have to hoard your money? The only sane response that I can see is to even out the playing field, one donation at a time.
There is no shortage of worthy causes to give to. To provide some guidance, I prefer to give to organizations that are local or that I’ve worked with before. In this way, giving can be part of an ongoing relationship between you and the organization. This is an important difference between mutual aid and charity: Mutual aid builds symbiotic relationships, not unequal exchanges between desperate people and powerful organizations. So, to begin that relationship, find a group fighting for a cause that you care about, especially one run by a friend or neighbor. Then, you know the drill: Give until your pockets hurt.
