What motivates you to act?

So, it turns out that getting people to do good things is like pulling teeth.

The world has issues in it. Everyone likes to complain about them. But, when provided with an opportunity to act in a positive way... folks often ignore it, pass it by, click "like", but don't actually *do* anything.

So, here's the question: What does it take to get you, personally, to take action. Let us limit the consideration, for the moment, to charity works. What does it take to get you to give a little of your time or money for a cause that you already think is a good one? What gets you over the hump?

Umbran said:

So, it turns out that getting people to do good things is like pulling teeth.

The world has issues in it. Everyone likes to complain about them. But, when provided with an opportunity to act in a positive way... folks often ignore it, pass it by, click "like", but don't actually *do* anything.

Click to expand...

Here, this explains it.

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

I can't answer the question fully- I don't know myself well enough.

I know that I DO give time, effort and money to certain charitable goals. I just can't say with full clarity WHY those and not others. There is no pattern I can discern other than those "reach me" in some way.

Habit, mostly. I have as much of my life as possible either automated or running on routines - so each month I have some direct debits that automatically make a donation to a handful of charities; and I allocate some time each week to my good deed of choice.

The advantage of this approach is that it guarantees I'll actually make those donations/give that time. There's much less chance I'll forget/make excuses/whatever, because it's already pre-allocated.

The disadvantage is that it means that it doesn't allow for much flexibility - if there's a special appeal due to some special need (which isn't uncommon), I'm not really in a position to give much if anything. But I'm reasonably sure this is the mechanism that is most effective for me - I'm aware that the likely alternative is that I'd have good intentions but would invariably forget/make excuses/whatever.

Every few years I select three charities to support, and pay by monthly direct debit. One reason for this is quite selfish: it gives me a good reason to turn down people collecting door-to-door, because I feel that the main reason why people give money to them is that they're afraid of saying no, not that they actually support the charities.

Umbran said:

So, here's the question: What does it take to get you, personally, to take action. Let us limit the consideration, for the moment, to charity works. What does it take to get you to give a little of your time or money for a cause that you already think is a good one? What gets you over the hump?

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For me, it's the combination of interest, awareness, opportunity, and convenience.

I've got to be sufficiently interested to care about it. Simple enough.

I need to be aware of the possibility and convinced of the need for action. If I don't know about something, I can't do anything. I also like to be recently informed. I'll try to read up on a subject before committing myself. And I try to not act blind: it might happen that after reading about the subject I decide that I agree with the other side!

I must have the opportunity to act. It's no good telling me of a protest march or a park clean-up or whatever the day before. It's also no good asking me to do something I can't do. I'm in IT but that doesn't mean I can create you a website; I can, however, go through the content and correct it. Opportunity can be flexible: searching woodland for a missing child would cause me to put other things on hold. Ask something of me that I can do and have the time or can make the time to do and you're on a winner.

And it must be convenient. Attending a protest march in London, 450 miles away, requires days and considerable expense and is simply not possible. Writing to my MP takes perhaps half an hour of my time (I try to not just dash off a note). Putting money in the charity bucket a few seconds. Helping the local church takes a few hours now and then. Cleaning a beach of litter takes half a day. Physical effort is another side of this. I'm fat and unfit, so it's no good coming to me if you need a group of athletes, though I'll happily act as chauffeur, hand out water bottles, make tea, assist the cook, and the like.

This all sounds very selfish, but really, it's that I'm aware of my limitations.

One man's reason is another man's excuse.

I grew up on welfare and government cheese, which was paid for by tax payers. I kept my grades up and worked my way through college and made the connections and relationships that kept me afloat on my own.

As such, I pay my taxes with the expectation some chunk of it is getting to the next kid in the bread line.
It's up to him or her to take the world and make something with what they got.

I don't give to anybody who comes to my door because they violated the no solicitor sign on the neighborhood entrance. I also don't buy from anybody soliciting or calling.

In general, I do not donate money to charities. As there are so many charities begging for dollars, and thus needing research to identify who will do the most good, the simplest solution is to keep my dollar, which is scarce enough as it is.

All of that of course makes me sound like the grinch.

I take action to help people in direct ways when that action does not over extend myself.

I've spent 3 weekends helping to paint a friend's place because they got sick and were scheduled to move into their new place and couldn't finish in time.

I've routed a few lost kids in the grocery store to the right place

I help people with computer problems

I give jobs to people I find who need a jump-start to their IT career, because I am in a position to do so.

I kept a kid from getting smeared on a roller derby track

I've loaned a friend money when they really really needed it, without expecting to actually get paid back

I still won't win charitable dude of the year, but the key variable is that a situation was right in front of me that I could help directly with my time, brain and muscles. There's no barrier between me and the person needing help, and most often, it does not hit my wallet. I will work grueling 12 hours days for free to help somebody before I pull a dollar out.

Umbran said:

So, here's the question: What does it take to get you, personally, to take action. Let us limit the consideration, for the moment, to charity works. What does it take to get you to give a little of your time or money for a cause that you already think is a good one? What gets you over the hump?

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Something that speaks to me personally, mostly, or that works for a societal change I want to see happen. I'll drop in a dollar here and there for random things, but most of my charitable giving comes through our state employees combined contribution thing, where we can choose from several pages of charitable organizations to split our contribution among. I look through there and pick out what I'd like to support.

Well, I don't have the time to do charity work. In the past I've donated money a few times, but in every case I stopped donating after I've found out more background information about how these organisations actually spent the money. To be honest, I no longer believe any of them can be trusted. It's kind of a shame but the drive to help those in need seems to be overridden by the much stronger drive to look out for yourself first.

Jhaelen said:

Well, I don't have the time to do charity work. In the past I've donated money a few times, but in every case I stopped donating after I've found out more background information about how these organisations actually spent the money. To be honest, I no longer believe any of them can be trusted.

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You don't have to trust them. There are several free third-party services that audit and review charity spending, and then give you the ratings and a breakdown of where the money is going.