Tis the Season to Give....

A couple weeks back I received a letter from the ASIAN AMERICAN FEDERATION soliciting contributions for their 20th anniversary. What caught my attention was the last sentence of the first and the fourth paragraphs of the letter, they read: 1) ….as reported in the Federation’s 2008 poverty report, "Working but Poor", one in three Asian seniors in New York City lives in poverty; 2) Right now your contribution will count even more because all gifts that we received through December 2009 will be fully matched dollar for dollar by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (of the breakfast cereal fame, whose foundation mantra is “to help people help themselves).

The letter opened with a story on Mr. Lin, who is 85 years old and living alone in Chinatown for 40 years. He suffers from arthritic hands and knees that he developed as a cook and can’t really climb the 3 flights of stairs to his apt. He lives in seclusion and his only human contact is with a former co-worker who delivers groceries to him once a week. His story is all too common in the immigrant community. I shudder at the thought that if my father were still alive and had no children to look after him, he could have been Mr. Lin. But it isn’t about my father who could have been Mr. Lin that tugs at my heart string; it is the stunning statistics of one in 3 Asian seniors actually live in poverty in NYC. I know what poverty is as I grew up poor, but thank goodness I never felt isolated or in seclusion. But even though life wasn’t always easy, especially when I was growing up in Hong Kong and in the South Bronx, I always had a roof over my head, a meal on the table, and clothes on my back. Imagine if you have no means of putting food on your table? According to CITY HARVEST, nearly 1.5 million New Yorkers live in poverty, struggling to afford basic necessities such as rent and medical care while trying to put food on their tables. Each day City Harvest deploys a fleet of 17 trucks and 3 cargo bikes rescuing more than 68,000 pounds of food and deliver free of charge to 600 pantries and soup kitchens in all 5 boroughs, feeding 260,000 hungry New Yorkers each week! For a mere $36 (one Venti flavored Starbucks coffee daily for a week), you can help feed 28 children for an entire week! For $135 ($.37 a day), you can help feed 2 seniors for an entire year!

BEFORE you decide which non profit organization to give, analyze where your money will go and how much of every dollar you give will end up in the actual program vs. in the administrative (compensation) arena. While it may satiate your visceral need of feeling good to give base on an event or on a particular cause, do you really want to give an organization your hard earned money if the bulk of it may go towards paying someone half a million dollars in compensation to administer where your contributions will go? Check out these 2 websites that analyze various charities and read thru Form 990 to get a sense of the deployment of programs and expenses, and make your own judgment: 1) Charity Navigator; and 2) Guidestar.

FINALLY, times are difficult for everyone; there is a way to give without spending your hard earned dollars: participate in charity programs that are sponsored by major organizations. One such recently caught my eyes is the Chase Community Giving and Facebook partnership, where they have teamed up to give away $5 MILLION to nonprofits across the country. The nonprofit that gets the most votes wins $1 million, the 5 runner-ups win $100,000, and then the next 25 win $25,000. Over 500,000 charities are included in the program, and you can add to the list if the charity of your choice qualifies. Each Facebook participant is given 20 votes, first round of voting is underway and the final round will end on Jan 22, 2010, with the million dollar winner announced on Feb. 1st.

Reflect on how blessed we all are on a daily basis if we are able to afford not only the basic subsistence, but also the finer things in life.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING.