Christmas may traditionally be the time for giving, but a shift in consciousness means we are becoming more likely to embrace that spirit of generosity all year long.
Australia and New Zealand lead the charge, beating 151 other countries to rank equal first in the 2010 World Giving Index, recently released by the Charities Aid Foundation.
The largest-ever global study of charitable behaviour, the index measured what percentage of inhabitants of each country gave money, donated time and assisted a stranger in need, and compared a nation’s generosity with its wealth and population’s happiness.
Australia and New Zealand topped the chart to earn the title of the most giving countries in the world and not just because of our relative wealth – the link between giving money and happiness appears to be stronger than the link between giving money and a nation’s GDP.
Modes of generosity ranged widely in the study. In Australia and New Zealand, about 70 per cent of people had donated money in the past month, 40 per cent had volunteered and about 64 per cent had helped a stranger. The incidence of giving money to charity around the world ranged from as low as 4 per cent in Lithuania, to as high as 83 per cent in Malta.
Volunteering was common in Turkmenistan (61 per cent) but rare in Cambodia (2 per cent). Each country gave in unique ways – three-quarters of Liberians helped a stranger every month, for example, yet only 8 per cent gave to charity.
Altruism Australia director Shane Holst says the trend towards greater generosity, kindness and compassion is the result of an awakening to what fulfils us. “That shift in consciousness is coming about because there is a sense of dissatisfaction over what we’ve been told will make us happy,” he explains.
Holst says love, compassion, enjoyment and empathy are no longer seen as the “fluffy things” they once were. “They are seen as extremely important things, and there is a growing awareness that empathy and compassion work a lot better than what we’re doing at the moment. We do have hearts and we do have feelings. We are communal creatures; we are meant to be helping each other out and caring for each other.”
GENERATION G
Forget Generation X and Y, global trend forecaster trendwatching.com suggests there is a new generation making itself known – Generation G – which captures the growing importance of generosity as a leading mindset and is forcing corporations to start showing they care. “Consumers are disgusted with greed and its current dire consequences for the economy,” says trendwatching.com founder Reinier Evers. “Challenging times see people craving care, empathy, sympathy and generosity.”
The emergence of Generation G, which transcends age, has unlocked a movement, especially online, that shares, gives and collaborates in large numbers to meet the needs of people to feel appreciated and loved, as well as their need to contribute and to feel part of the greater good. Evers says companies need to mirror this societal shift if they want to regain respect. “We’re talking about truly becoming a caring brand – one that is generous to customers, generous to employees, generous to the environment and generous to social causes.”
There are countless examples of businesses responding with innovative programs to show they care. Online US store Toms Shoes sells ethical, slip-on shoes and for every pair sold donates a pair of shoes to a child in need.
British grocery store Waitrose enlists customers’ help in choosing the best way to spend £1000 each month by having them choose between three local organisations. The money is then divided up according to customers’ votes. And in Dublin, Ecocabs is providing free pedal-powered taxis in the city, paid for by corporate sponsors. In Australia, Macquarie Group matches dollar for dollar any donations its staff make to charity, on top of its own philanthropic endeavours.
Many businesses are also bypassing the dusty tradition of giving clients and staff a bottle of wine for Christmas in favour of something that reflects their commitment to making the world a better place. ChildFund New Zealand CEO Paul Brown says businesses are increasingly opting to support causes instead. ChildFund’s gift guide allows people to buy mosquito nets
and even goats and sheep for poverty-stricken families on behalf of a gift recipient.
“There is a shift back to grounded principles, a shift towards making a difference rather than chasing the dollar,” says Brown. “We see it across all generations and there is also this hankering towards the simple things in life – it’s the simple things that are the most important.”
WEALTH FOR GOOD
For businesses and wealthy individuals, giving may well be the new status symbol. “Being generous is seen as a class act, while greed is, well, out,” says Evers. “Over the past few years, billionaires around the world have been upping the ante for other financially independent individuals by giving away really big chunks, if not all, of their fortunes.”
In fact, Evers says it’s now impossible to be very rich and not to donate to charity. “The benefit to one’s social capital completely trumps the monetary gains from keeping one’s financial capital sitting in an account,” he says.
In September this year, 40 of America’s billionaires signed up to be part of The Giving Pledge, where they commit to giving the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes and make the pledge publicly in the form of a letter. Spearheaded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, The Giving Pledge is an effort to help address society’s most pressing problems.
Although Buffett has pledged 99 per cent of his wealth to philanthropy, his letter of commitment reveals a balanced perspective: “Measured by dollars, this commitment is large. In a comparative sense, though, many individuals give more to others every day.
Millions of people who regularly contribute to churches, schools and other organisations thereby relinquish the use of funds that would otherwise benefit their own families … In contrast, my family and I will give up nothing we need or want by fulfilling this 99 per cent pledge … In contrast, that remaining 99 per cent can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. This pledge does not leave me contributing the most precious asset, which is time. Gifts of this kind often prove far more valuable than money.”
THE GIFT OF TIME
Seeing first-hand the difference your generosity can make is driving many people to volunteer their time and skills. Australian nurse Fiona Davies, the mother of four children under 10, recently travelled to Papua New Guinea as part of AusAID’s Operation Open Heart, which involved a 50-strong medical team working alongside local medical teams at Port Moresby General Hospital to save lives and share knowledge over 12 days.
Volunteers took annual leave to go and paid their own airfares and accommodation, but the rewards were well worth it. “The spirit is amazing,” Davies says. “The locals who work there are so keen to learn and are all very excited when you arrive because they know you’re there to help and to teach them.”
Each year, Operation Open Heart gives an average 50 patients with heart defects a second chance at life. Nearly 70 per cent of them are children. “I just like helping little kids – I’d wanted to do it for a long time just to give something back to the community,” explains Davies, who has booked in to go back next year.
People are not only becoming more generous with their time and money, they are being more analytical about which organisations they support. “The power of information is making people far more aware and conscious and far more keen to give,” says ChildFund’s Brown.
New Zealand and Australia are among 12 members of the ChildFund Alliance, which allows people to sponsor impoverished children in more than 55 developing countries. Like another well-regarded child sponsorship program, World Vision, which claims to direct 75 per cent of its budget on field payments such as food and goods and the rest on administration and fundraising, ChildFund directs 80 per cent of its funding to programs overseas and retains 20 per cent for expenses.
Brown says he is often asked how much of a sponsor’s money gets to the actual child, but he qualifies that donor dollars go to programs that support that child rather than directly into the child’s hands.
“I say to people, I could be 100 per cent efficient – you could give me $1 million today and I could hand out a million $1 coins in Nairobi, but it doesn’t mean we’re giving those children a better life,” he says. “Give me $1 million and I’d rather give $800,000 to sustainable programs and keep $200,000 for us to go and inspect those programs so we can make sure we’re doing the work you want us to do. The whole ‘how much gets there and how much doesn’t’ can be a red herring.”
Before choosing a charity to support, Fundraising Institute Australia suggests finding out how a charity is achieving its mission by checking the charity’s annual report to see what it has achieved in the past year. Finding out what goals it is intending to achieve and how will also give you confidence that your donation will be used effectively and efficiently to aid the cause you are most passionate about.
RANDOM ACTS
As Buffett points out, you don’t have to give away billions to make a difference. A random act of kindness such as paying for the person behind you in the drive-through or paying someone else’s bill when you pay for your own in a restaurant can not only make someone’s day, kindness is contagious and can have a big flow-on effect to others.
In his new book, What Makes Us Tick? (Hachette, $35), Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay says one of the main desires that drives us is the desire to be useful. “Most of us want to play a useful part in society; most of us want to be good neighbours, good parents, good partners, reliable employees, responsible citizens,” Mackay writes. These desires are not usually expressed in noble or dramatic ways.
Offering to take in the neighbours’ garbage bin or look after their mail while they’re on holidays might seem routine acts of neighbourliness, but Mackay says they are small symbols of a much larger desire to make a useful contribution to the life of a fully functioning, civil society. “Altruism is one of the most attractive characteristics of humans,” Mackay says. “We often do things for others with no thought of a reward or even recognition for ourselves.”
Mackay says the biggest influence we are likely to have on the world around us is the way we handle our personal relationships.
“It’s the goodwill, care and sensitivity we bring to our encounters with our customers, clients, colleagues or employees that will be our most influential contribution to making the world a better place,” he says. “It goes without saying that the same applies to the quality of our relationships with our families, friends, neighbours and, especially, the strangers we meet in
the course of our daily lives … Kindness, courtesy and respect: these are the
great bulwarks against a society’s
descent into chaos.”
