When is Enough to Give Away?

02 May When is Enough to Give Away?

When is enough to give away? Some folks never feel they have enough to give and that there are others whose job that is. Don’t be one of those folks!

When is enough to give away?

I was floored by this research finding about giving away money (philanthropy), published April 23, 2012 by Grey Matter Research Consulting:

Most non-donors feel “people with a lot of money” should give so they don’t have to, but also harbor a number of concerns about the efficiency and effectiveness of non-profit organizations.

Perhaps not “most”–but some people think they don’t have enough to give away!

We always have enough to give away.  Countless teaching and true stories tell us this.  The story of the “widow’s mite” is just one.  There are a lot of approaches to using money wisely for healing and a lot of approaches to having enough.

I have come close to giving it all away in my own life, many times.  Many times I have then received so much I didn’t know what to do with it!  And I have had to change myself from the inside out to understand that my clarity is to to learn to work with money as well as without it.  (In our society, working “without” money means doing great things with very little money!  Have you noticed that?  Almost no one actually has “no money.”  Do you notice this too?  How much do you work with?)

When we feel we have “not enough to give away,” as Grey Matter’s research says itself, it just means we feel what we have to offer is “not enough to count.”  This is discounting ourselves and what we bring to the table–Life’s table.

Next time you feel you don’t have enough (and notice this can feel like you are not enough yourself), try giving away some money.  Don’t give a lot–don’t scare yourself.  Just give an amount that feels right to you as an experiment.   It’s ok if it’s not enough to “count” in your eyes, and in your mind–that’s what’s going to change with this experiment.  And if you raise money, check out my paper on what a famous fundraiser who works a lot with very wealthy donors has to teach us all about “enough.”