Every charity has to start somewhere.
Many people seem to think that starting a tax-exempt charity is easy, but it’s not. There are a lot of federal regulations and rules for every aspect of the charity. It is complicated, time-consuming, and expensive. Any charity which solicits funds from people outside the immediate group has a lot of bookkeeping and accountancy and accountability to document and prove.
If you don’t care about the tax-exemption part, are very small, and want to provide “small time” charity, anyone can do that. It’s actually quite easy.
With the New Year coming up, and people making New Year’s Resolutions, consider starting your very own small charity.
I’ll tell you how we do it.
First, identify what your resources are. This step is critical to the success of your charity. You have to know exactly what you can give, week after week, month after month. This ranges from a set dollar amount to the number of people participating.
The next step is to find a focus that incorporates your resources.
In our Sandwich Saturdays, we don’t have a lot of resources: a few loaves of bread, some cheese and lunch meats, baggies, and two or three people. We supply sandwiches for anywhere from 5-25 people once a week. We don’t accept outside donations, all of the funding for Sandwich Saturdays comes out of the pockets of the people who prepare and deliver the sandwiches each week. Because we aren’t a federally recognized tax-exempt organization, we don’t have to keep records on how much we spend for bread, spreads, cheese, lunch meats, baggies, mileage, and numbers of people fed. The only downside is that we can’t deduct what we do as a charity donation, and I personally don’t count that as a downside compared to all the pluses: all of our money is spent 100% on making and delivering sandwiches. Not one penny is spent on buildings, wages, advertising, recordkeeping, fundraising events, licenses, permits, governmental fees, postage, paperwork, conventions, printing, or utilities.
Making your own Sandwich Saturday is easy: determine how many sandwiches you can afford to make and deliver each Saturday, locate where the people who will need those sandwiches gather (talk to the local shelters and food missions for ideas, or cruise the abandoned buildings and semi-wild areas like hidden banks of a river or semi-wild areas of parks – look for places that appear to have some sort of habitation) and bring the two together. Tell the people you’re bringing sandwiches to that you aren’t keeping any records, that the food is theirs with no strings attached. Also tell them that there is no federal or government oversight on the sandwiches, so they take the food at their own risk, especially where allergies are concerned.
The same thing can be done for soups, except bowls with lids and spoons are much more expensive than baggies.
Our Pagan Pantry Project is run along similar lines, but services far fewer people. Most of the people we help here are other Pagans, but we aren’t above helping out neighbors or co-workers. For them, we deliver a casserole or soup as an opening gift. If they will need meals for an extended period of time (a week or more), we arrange to get with them, plan out the meals they would want to eat, shop, cook those meals in their kitchen each week (this keeps the County Health Department happy), package them up in single servings, and then stop by to make sure they are eating, or perhaps to heat those meals up for them. Again, this is done entirely at our own expense, with no solicitation for donations or fundraising to support it. It’s not tax-exempt, but it also allows us to donate 100% of the money and effort to our chosen cause.
The Pagan Power Project is a bit different. When our neighbors lose power due to storms, we generally still have power, so we run power cords to their homes to allow them to run crucial electrical equipment – refrigerators and freezers mostly, some medical equipment – until power is restored. We don’t ask our neighbors to pay for the energy they use (and so far, none of them have volunteered to re-imburse us the cost) because we consider it a charity. We had three gasoline operated generators, which we used successfully for 8 years with various families, and had the generators returned when the power was restored, Last year, two of the generators were “lost”, so our ability to help is currently reduced until we can afford to replace those “lost” generators. It’s one of the risks we take when we help people who aren’t adherents of our own religion, and one we accepted when we started doing this.
The Pagan Movie Night is a fun mini-charity for fellow adherents and friends. We (and that’s a collective “we”) buy movies and store them in one location, the same place where we gather to watch them on Pagan Movie Nights. For us, that’s Blue Moon Keep. On Pagan Movie Night, we invite people from other Pagan religions to drop in (with a friend or two) to watch a movie and, at our expense, we provide them with popcorn, tea, and soda. Sometimes we add other movie treats such as nachos or M&Ms. It’s a social night where we can all mingle without worrying about ritual protocols and differences. We use the same concept for picnics, tea parties, ice cream socials and the like.
The man who started Modest Needs began his charity by tithing himself each month and using that money to help someone else. He helped others until he ran out of money every month. There were no strings attached. All the other person had to do was tell him why they needed the money (to fill a prescription, to pay rent, to cover a utility bill, to put gasoline in hte car to get to work…), and if he had anything in his “kitty”, he gave it to them. There was no expectation of repayment, no conditions set on how the money was to be spent. He expected a few people to take advantage of him, but felt the people he genuinely helped balanced things out.
This is exactly the right attitude to take when running any charity.
When you decide to become a philanthropist, on however small or large a scale, you will encounter some pitfalls – some from within yourself,and some from the people you hope to benefit.
Internal pitfalls include a range of expectations such as receiving thanks. Most people won’t thank you, some because they are too distraught to think of it, some because they are embarrassed to need help, others because they haven’t been taught manners, and still others because they feel the world owes it to them. So, never ever expect thanks of any sort. And don’t get bitter because no one thanks you or recognizes what you do. Remember – at all times – that you chose to do this bit of charity. Your thanks comes from within yourself, not from those you help.
Don’t expect to be reimbursed for the expenses of operating whatever charity you start, so don’t over-reach what you can afford to comfortably give – which is why it’s a small charity.
Another pitfall is the gratitude trap. Like thanks, don’t give expecting to receive in return. It’s not a favor-for-favor situation here. Giving help today doesn’t mean you can call upon that person to do something for you in the future. I understand that there are times when extraordinary help is needed and given with the clear understanding that repayment of some sort is expected. That’s totally different from this garden-variety of everyday charity – what I call “pyramid charity”.
There’s also the glory pitfall. Don’t expect accolades from friends and strangers because you do a bit to help others out. Don’t expect to attract lovers because of your charity, or public recognition, or have others be kinder to you because you give to others.
And for all that’s love and dear – don’t fall into the missionary’s pitfall, where you offer the help only if they “convert” to your way of thinking, or if they listen to a speech or sermon about your religion. Don’t try to dictate to the recipient what they can do with your gift, or to control them and their lives through your gift. It’s not a gift if you place terms on it.
There are external pitfalls, as well. There may be times when your cornucopia is empty and you have no more left to give. Be honest with the people you’re helping, especially if you feel they may be depending upon you. Give them advance warning so they can find other help,a nd if you at all can, offer them an alternate help source. In this instance, many people will understand that you are also strapped – sort of a weird reversal of the never-getting-thanked thing. They may not thank you for what you do, but they also won’t be too angry if your help is reduced, and you’ve warned them about it.
Unless you are willing to keep the records and make the reports expected of a registered tax-exempt charity, do not ever collect donations for what you do from anyone outside of the group providing the charity. If you are the only one doing it, don’t take donations from anyone. If it’s you, your co-priest and three other adherents of your religion, don’t set out collection cans, or solicit donations from anyone – even family members. Only the participants in the charity can support it.
Don’t try to claim this charity on your taxes, not unless you register it properly and file all the proper forms and keep all the required records. It will cause you no end of governmental grief.
You can talk about what you do to news reporters, to friends, to co-workers, and you can recruit them to help you, so long as you make it clear you are small, not tax-exempt, and not collecting cash donations. Anyone who helps you must be actively involved on it – making sandwiches, delivering sandwiches, cooking meals in someone’s home, buying and handing out toiletries (can’t solicit toiletries from businesses), etc.
You cannot solciit any donations ever from anyone until after you are a federally recognized tax-exempt charity organization, and complying with all the regulations and guidelines that are designed to prevent charities from defrauding donors. This is for your safety as well as the protection of any potential donors.
At some point, your charity may become popular enough that you need to consider paying someone full-time to operate it, and maybe solicit outside donations, too. That’s when you’ll need to apply for those tax-exemptions and comply with the rules and regulations overseeing charities.
We need both kinds of charity in this country – the neighborly small charities that fly under the government radar, and the bigger charities that can do big things.
Don’t be afraid to make your own little charity.
If you prefer to dip your toe in the water without a steady commitment, you can try the Meal Movement charity: once a month, fast from a meal. Fasting can be in a variety of forms, from actually abstaining from ingesting anything to abstaining from ingesting certain things. In the Meal Movement, we generally mean abstaining from eating out in a nice sit-down restaurant. Instead, we plan to eat out, and then eat at home, but the money we would have spent at the restaurant (including tips) is then sent to an existing charity of our choice. Depending on what you consider a nice restaurant, this can range from $15.00 and up. It’s not much, until you add up how much would be donated if everyone did this once a month. You won’t get the accolades and “gifts” the big buck donors get, but you will get the satisfaction of doing your bit to help. And – it’s commitment-free.
If you’re a Pagan, and you have a choice between helping two similar charities (say, SpiralScouts or Boy Scouts), one of which is Pagan-based and the other isn’t, may I recommend choosing the Pagan one? You don’t have to choose a Pagan charity – especially since there are many worthy charities out there – but, having chosen to be a Pagan, it only makes sense to me that where you can, you’d support other Pagans who are doing good things when those things are in keeping with your own charity choices.
This is why I’m willing to support Pagan charities that are still in the early phases before they are big enough to apply for tax-exempt status, and why I participate in small personal charities myself.
