Frugal Giving

A great deal of being frugal is making choices based on the economics of two different options. Often, this means living on the cheap, but it also has to do with making your dollars go farther. Faced with the decision of how to give to charity, the Frugal Couple is trying to figure out how to make our dollars work the hardest. One way to do this is to find a charity you can help and stick with it for a defined period.

The Frugal Couple gives to their church on a regular basis, but we’re exploring making additional gifts to another charity. With so many good causes out there, where does one start in a search for a charity?

I began a list of categories for giving and I realized there are three decisions that can be made that may help filter down the plethora of charities to a more manageable handful.

Who, How, and Where

Ideally, the end result of giving is making a difference in someone’s life. I began by listing a number of candidates. In this list, I wrote: addicts, animals, artists, children, missionaries, the poor, professors, scientists, and students. I suppose I could have added Earth to the list, but I would rather help people than the environment (although an argument could be made that in helping the environment, we would be helping all people).

I then listed Hows. For this, I listed arts, education, health/medicine, human trafficking, religions indoctrination, and self-subsistence.

Finally, I listed geographic areas: our city, region, state, the U.S., and the other continents.

Mrs. Frugal and I haven’t talked about this list yet since I made it at work on my lunch break, but the rest of the process is kind of like the old board game Clue. Instead of Mr. Mustard in the Dining Room with a Candlestick, it may be Educating Children in Africa, or Indoctrinating The Poor in Our City. We will look at our choices to try to narrow things down to one selection in each of the three categories. From there we will try to find an organization that we believe in.

My list is not close to all-encompassing, but it should give you a place to start when it comes to choosing where to give. Tomorrow I will write more on how to find the right organization once you’ve made your selection of who, how, and where.