Make your voice heard -- again -- on Giving Tuesday -- Nov. 26, 2020 column

 By MARSHA MERCER

The election is over. Let’s get to work building a better world.

Americans made their voices heard in the election and can again on Giving Tuesday, Dec. 1, the annual day of global generosity after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

Giving Tuesday encourages us to take a breath after days of consuming to reflect on what’s important to us and act on our values.

Charitable giving is more important than ever during the pandemic and recession as nonprofits have suffered a decline in donations and loss of in-person fundraising opportunities.

Wildfires, hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters have wreaked havoc on our fellow citizens. Millions have lost their jobs, leading to higher levels of food insecurity. We’ve all seen the news footage of thousands of cars in line for food. 

Nearly 26 million adults – 12% of all adults in the United States – said their household sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat in the last seven days, the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey reported this month. 

Among adults with children, the situation was worse – 16% said their household didn’t have enough to eat, compared with 9% of those without children at home.

A federal moratorium currently prevents landlords nationwide from evicting renters, but the moratorium is set to expire Dec. 31. Food banks, shelters, health clinics and other social service organizations are straining to meet increased demand and would welcome your help.

You don’t have to give cash. You can contribute your time, energy or talent to a cause or a neighbor. During the pandemic, many organizations are seeking in-person or virtual volunteers. Check out volunteermatch.org to find opportunities in your ZIP code.

Giving Tuesday isn’t political; it neither accepts nor distributes contributions, and anyone can participate free. The idea is for each person to choose a charity, donate on the charity’s website and publicize the choice on social media with the hashtag #givingtuesday. Since Giving Tuesday started in 2012, it has spread to 220 countries worldwide.

Americans donated an estimated $511 million online on #GivingTuesday last year – up from $400 million in 2018.

If you have the wherewithal, there’s a new incentive to be generous. By doing good, you basically can reduce your taxable income in 2020.

In the past, only taxpayers who itemized deductions could take charitable contributions off their federal taxes. But the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security -- or CARES -- Act allows taxpayers who don’t itemize to take a charitable deduction of up to $300 for cash contributions to qualifying organizations.

Qualifying groups are those that are “religious, charitable, educational, scientific or literary in purpose,” the IRS says. More details. 

Last year Americans gave almost $500 billion to charities, and about 69% of the total came from individuals, according to Giving USA 2020, a report researched and written by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

A recent survey found 40% of donors plan to give more to charity this year than last. The survey by Classy, an online gift processor, found that the pandemic was a big motivator for charitable giving, followed by the political climate and racial justice issues. 

If your inbox, like mine, is overflowing with Giving Tuesday requests, deciding which nonprofit to support can be daunting.

A word of caution, though. Scammers are also after your money. Experts advise against clicking on the handy links that come in emails. Instead, research the organizations, then go directly to their websites to give.

To make sure your donation goes to a legitimate charity, consult Charity Navigator, GuideStar (now Candid), the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance or Charity Watch, which monitor charities.

One person can make a difference. Dolly Parton has received well-deserved praise for her long history of charitable giving, especially her recent $1 million donation to help develop a coronavirus vaccine. Her Imagination Library initiative has given 147 million books to children since 1995. She started it as a tribute to her father, who couldn’t read.

Few can sing or be as generous as Dolly Parton, but each of us can make our voice heard on Giving Tuesday.

© 2020 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Be your own Bloomberg: Start small -- Nov. 22, 2018 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The year after he graduated, Michael Bloomberg donated the princely sum of $5 to Johns Hopkins University. It was all he could afford.

Donating became a habit. Over the years, the 1964 graduate contributed $1.5 billion to the school for research, teaching and financial aid.

That was the warmup for his latest eye-popping gift.

Bloomberg, billionaire business tycoon and philanthropist, former mayor of New York and possible 2020 presidential candidate, just gave his alma mater an additional $1.8 billion – with a B – solely for student financial aid. It’s believed to be the largest donation to an educational institution in American history.

Why?

“No qualified high school student should ever be barred entrance to a college based on his or her family’s bank account. Yet it happens all the time,” Bloomberg wrote in an op-ed Nov. 18 in The New York Times.

“Denying students entry to college based on their ability to pay undermines equal opportunity. It perpetuates poverty. And it strikes at the heart of the American dream: the idea that every person, from every community, has the chance to rise based on merit,” he wrote.

Most elite schools consider a student’s ability to pay during the admissions process and turn away qualified students from low- and middle-income families.

Bloomberg’s gift will ensure a “need-blind” admissions policy at Hopkins, where tuition and fees for undergraduates tops $53,000 a year. Students will receive scholarships instead of taking out student loans. The idea is to create a student body that is socioeconomically diverse.  

Bloomberg, founder of the financial data services firm Bloomberg L.P., credits his success to his undergraduate education. His father was a bookkeeper who never made more than $6,000 a year, but the son was able to go to Hopkins with the help of a National Defense Student loan and a job on campus.

“My Hopkins diploma opened doors that otherwise would have been closed and allowed me to live the American dream,” he wrote. He earned an MBA from Harvard in 1966.

Now a registered Democrat, Bloomberg, 76, served three terms as mayor of New York as a Republican and independent. After considering a presidential bid in 2016, he gave millions to help Democratic House candidates in the midterms and is weighing a presidential bid in 2020.

As massive as Bloomberg’s gift is, though, it will help lucky students at only one university. To change the shape of American higher education generally will take changes on the state and federal level, so don’t hold your breath.

But the rest of us can step up on Giving Tuesday. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving has become an antidote to the spending excesses of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

Now in its seventh year, it’s the day people around the world contribute to worthy causes. Last year, more than $274 million was raised from more than 2.5 million contributions, an increase of $97 million or 55 percent overall, from 2016.

Giving Tuesday isn’t political and doesn’t accept or distribute contributions. People donate on their favorite charity’s website or through a social media platform and publicize their choice with the hashtag #givingtuesday.

It was founded by the 92^nd Street Y, a cultural and community center in New York, in partnership with the United National Foundation. Founder Henry Timms, president and CEO of the Y, is co-author of the best-selling book, “New Power,” and the son of one of my closest friends.

Bloomberg has done his part to help his college, and he hopes others will help theirs – “whether the check is for $5, $50, $50,000 or more,” he wrote.

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Giving Tuesday invites us to reflect on what’s important to us. Maybe your cause is health, poverty, social justice, the arts, or the victims who’ve lost everything in the wildfires in California. Maybe you’d rather give your support to local groups.

Give carefully. When you send money, be aware of scammers. You can research organizations at CharityNavigator.org, GuideStar.org and CharityWatch.org to make sure your money is put to good use.

We can’t all give like Bloomberg, but we all can do something to make the country better – and make ourselves feel better. Happy Giving Tuesday.

©2018 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Giving Tuesday accentuates the positive -- Nov. 23, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

After the post-Thanksgiving buying spree of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday, a day to give back.

On the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, we remember the wisdom of the Beatles: Money “can’t buy me love.” But giving it away can make us feel better.

Now in its sixth year, Giving Tuesday raised a respectable $10 million online for charities and nonprofits in 2012. Fueled by social media, it has grown and spread worldwide.

People in about 100 countries participated last year, raising $168 million for worthy causes, an increase of 44 percent from 2015. The average contribution was about $108.

Giving Tuesday encourages us to take a breath, reflect on what’s important and act on our values by contributing time, energy or cash. Companies also participate, recognizing that customers, especially millennials, like doing business with companies that share their values.

Giving is so strongly associated with our culture that the Museum of American History launched a Giving in America project two years ago, collecting artifacts such as a March of Dimes collection can and a bucket from the ALS ice bucket challenge that swept the country in 2014.

The museum will sponsor a day-long Giving Tuesday celebration in which kids and adults can share how they give and why.

Facebook and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will match up to $2 million in donations to U.S. nonprofits through Facebook, which is also waiving its fees for donations made on Facebook that day.

Observers credited the rise in Giving Tuesday contributions last year partly to a “Trump effect” of people speaking with their wallets following the election. The ACLU, Anti-Defamation League and Planned Parenthood were among groups that reported spikes in donations.

The Trump effect worked both ways. The Donald J. Trump Foundation raised $2.9 million last year, nearly as much as it did in the previous four years combined. It donated about $3 million to nonprofits, mostly to veterans groups, distributing more last year than it had in the last three years combined, The New York Times reported Monday.

Trump hasn’t actually contributed to his own charity since 2008, but a couple of deep-pocketed donors wrote checks for $1 million each. Trump announced he’s shutting down his foundation, though he hasn’t yet, according to the Times.

Giving Tuesday isn’t political and it doesn’t accept or distribute contributions. It encourages each person to choose a favorite charity, donate on the charity’s website and publicize the choice on social media with the hashtag #givingtuesday.

It was founded in New York by the 92^nd Street Y, a cultural and community center in New York, in partnership with the United Nations Foundation. Founder Henry Timms, executive director of the Y, is the son of one of my closest friends.

Many studies have shown helping others makes you happy. Volunteers may also live longer, manage their pain better and lower their blood pressure more than those who don’t volunteer.

Behavioral economists write about the “warm glow” effect. If you’re generous with your time, talents or money, you’re likely to report higher levels of well-being.

It may be all in your head, literally. Acts of generosity activate a part of the brain linked to happiness, a Swiss study released last summer found.

Participants were promised about $26 a week for four weeks. Half were asked to commit to spending the money on someone else and half on themselves. After deciding how they’d spend the money, the subjects received MRI scans and answered questions.

People spending the money on others reported feeling happier than those who were treating themselves. The scans showed generosity triggered a response in a part of the brain related to happiness.

Interestingly, this happened even though the participants never actually received or spent any money. And it didn’t matter how much they planned to give.

“You don’t need to become a self-sacrificing martyr to feel happier. Just being a little more generous will suffice,” said Phillipe Tobler, one of the researchers.

On this Giving Tuesday, we can all make ourselves feel better by acting on our values and priorities.

©2017 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

It's better than you think -- Nov. 27, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Nobody ever went broke telling Americans things are worse than they think.

A book about the dysfunctional Congress seems unlikely to hit the bestseller lists, but that’s what happened in 2012. The provocative title didn’t hurt.

“It’s Even Worse than it Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the Politics of Extremism” by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein placed the blame for the mess in Washington squarely at Republicans’ feet. Predictably, some readers were enraged, others energized.

And the race to warn people that things are worse than they think was on.

In the last year, pundits and think tanks have declared a wide range of problems “worse than you think”: Iraq, the federal budget outlook, wealth inequality, domestic spying, light pollution, the Home Depot security breach and the health of the homeless, to name a few.

Then there’s the “it’s bad and getting worse” department. Allergies, climate change and public housing are in that category, according to news reports.

But, in the spirit of the season, let’s consider the possibility that some things may be better than we think. For example, we hear a lot about rampant consumerism this time of year. Generosity -- not so much.  

And yet, as measured by our opening our wallets to charity, generosity in the United States has rebounded since the depths of the financial crisis.

Charitable giving rose 3 percent last year, the largest year-over-year increase since the Great Recession, according to Giving USA and Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. It was the fourth straight year of increases, mostly fueled by individuals.  

Individuals, companies, foundations and bequests gave an estimated $335.2 billion last year, nearly as much as before the economic downturn. That figure comes from a study of itemized tax, household surveys and other sources.  

While middle and lower-income Americans give a larger share of their income to charity than wealthier people, the 1 percent is also engaged. Since Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett founded The Giving Pledge in 2010 to spur charitable giving by the richest of the rich, 127 billionaires in 12 countries have pledged to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes or charitable organizations either during their lifetimes or in their wills. Check out the list and pledge profiles on givingpledge.org.

Among them is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who gave the federal Centers for Disease Control Foundation $25 million last month to help fight the Ebola crisis. He has made several eight- and nine-figure donations to education, health and community development groups, The New York Times reported, making him “one of the most generous entrepreneurs of his generation."

But you don’t have to be as rich as Zuckerberg to give.

This Tuesday, Dec. 2, all of us can go online and donate. Now in its third year, Giving Tuesday targets the Tuesday after the mega-shopping days of Black Friday and Cyber Monday as a global day to give back.

Last year, people pledged $19 million on Giving Tuesday, with an average gift of $142. That was nearly double the $10 million raised in 2012, when the average gift was $101, according to Blackbaud, a company that provides software and services to nonprofits.

Giving Tuesday encourages donors to tweet their gifts and to post “unselfies,” pictures of themselves making the donation.

Ten thousand nonprofits participated last year, up from 2,500 the first year. Groups are elbowing each other for support, and that’s prompted a bit of backlash.

The head of a charity in New York recently chastised other charities, saying they should stop begging on Giving Tuesday and start giving.

David Nocenti, executive director of the Union Settlement Association, the largest social service provider in East Harlem, wrote that on Giving Tuesday he and his staff will be “walking the streets of East Harlem, giving away hundreds of single-ride transit farecards to members of our community.

“We will then ask each recipient to give in some way to at least three other people, such as visiting someone who is lonely, bringing food to someone who is hungry or offering a helping hand to someone needing assistance. We’ll also ask them to tell us how they gave and to post their charitable action online.”

By focusing on giving instead of asking for gifts, “we aim to inspire hundreds of people to join in helping others,” he wrote on philanthropy.com, the website of the Chronicle of Philanthropy.  

Generosity is back. Things are better than we thought.

© 2014 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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