Donating money to a beloved organization or cause offers much-needed support to the professionals who know how best to allocate it.
| 2018 Q3 | story by Jackie Hedeman, Lawrence Arts Center | photos courtesy Lawrence Arts Center
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about my sphere of influence. I’ve been meditating on the power I have and where I wield it. So far, this has mostly been useful for staving off anxiety; I may not be able to personally do anything of significance about rising sea levels or North Korea, but I can recalibrate my own behaviors. I can support people who can do something about it.
If you are motivated by alarm or excitement to support a specific cause or organization, the choice to provide financial support can sometimes feel like a cop-out, the equivalent of sending your niece a gift card for her birthday because all she cares about is video games, and you know nothing about video games. I would argue that charitable giving is one of the best ways to extend your sphere of influence. In particular, unrestricted charitable giving signals your support of meaningful causes, while allowing professionals to do the work they do best. To extend the metaphor, sure, your niece, connoisseur of video games, will be able to pick the video game that makes her heart sing.
General operating support is a vote of confidence in that organization and an acknowledgement of its expertise. In addition, such gifts are an acknowledgement of the reality of the work that goes into running a nonprofit. Grantmakers for Effective Organizations puts it this way in its General Operating Support Action Guide: “Flexibility. Predictability. Stability. The same words come up again and again in conversations among grantmakers and nonprofits about the benefits of general operating support. Two questions are at the heart of these discussions: How can grantmakers expect nonprofits to deliver on their missions when many of them are struggling just to stay afloat? How can grantmakers expect nonprofits to perform effectively when they don’t have the funds they need to invest in decent salaries, technology and other infrastructure?” These gifts have a direct impact on both that organization’s ability to carry out its mission and on that organization’s participants. Donations earmarked for a particular project or program are valuable, of course, but those projects and programs rely on their organization’s ability to keep the lights on and employees fed. Consider making general operating donations in honor or in memory of someone important in your life. This can be a way to lend significance and specificity to an unrestricted gift.
Gifts made to financial aid funds also maximize impact. When schools and educational organizations charge tuition, they must offer a program of financial aid if they are to consider themselves a service to the community. If education is ever really going to be the great equalizer, equality of access is essential. A robust financial aid program, ideally built on grants and scholarships rather than loans, can go a long way toward bringing people in the door.
Donations made to financial aid funds are another way to hand your metaphorical niece the metaphorical gift card and set her loose. Those most in need gain the ability to customize their classroom experience without being financially burdened as a result of their curiosity and eagerness to learn. At the Lawrence Arts Center, a donation to our Financial Aid Fund is a donation to the financial aid recipient, with no restrictions placed on the type of class or activity they may use financial aid funds to access.
I hear financial aid success stories on a nearly weekly basis at the Arts Center, so I am eager to see more organizations unaffiliated with educational institutions offer financial aid. Offering financial aid can be an opportunity to allow donors to rise to a challenge. More significantly, offering financial aid indicates an organization’s classes and activities are essential and worthwhile. Essential programming is necessarily available to the community at-large, not only the most affluent.
Beyond providing assistance for individuals and families, a financial aid fund allows for community engagement with public education and social service institutions, and for students from those institutions to attend classes at a free or significantly reduced rate. At the Lawrence Arts Center, we have been enriched by our relationships with USD 497, Boys and Girls Club, Head Start, Little Nations Academic Center at Haskell Indian Nations University, The Children’s Shelter, Douglas County CASA, Lawrence Community Shelter, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Family Promise and Douglas County Housing Authority.
General operating support allows us to do what we do. Financial aid support allows our students to do what they do. As School of Dance coordinator Olivia Hernández puts it, “There is such joy [in being]a small part of that process for them, to be the one who mails them their scholarship acceptance letter, or to be the person who encourages them to come to the forefront, come to this audition, being able to reach out to low-income families who think that there’s not a space for them and really let them know that we have financial aid here. I’ve been in that position before. This is a space for you.”