Today, thousands of people will be glued to their television sets, watching the hugely popular charity marathon, Strina. Prizes valued at Lm230,000 have been advertised in the run-up to the show, prizes that you stand to win each time you dial to make a donation. There are some people who don’t like the idea of these prizes, and they have been vociferous in their criticism in previous years, over the past few days, and no doubt they will do the same when the day is done and they have nothing else to grumble about. These people think that it is not right to tempt others into giving to charity by dangling potential rewards before them. Pure of mind, heart and soul as they are, they only give, no doubt, when they know for sure that they will not receive anything in return. My own view is: who cares why people give money to charity, as long as they do so, and plenty of it at that? The money is just as useful to the charities which need it when it comes from Guza who wants to win a car as when it comes from Tony who gives disinterestedly. If the money is not being donated by a criminal organisation, and does not come from drug-dealing, white slave trafficking or other crimes, then the charities are free to accept it in all conscience, regardless of the motivation of the people who gave it. Money given by Guza-hoping-to-win-a-car and spent on food and clothes for the needy is better than no money given by Guza-hoping-to-win-a-car. The individuals who nag on about the lack of altruism in many of the Strina telephone donations are probably just the sort who need to find something to carp on about, so as to show their intellectual and moral superiority (“No, we don’t sink to that level.”) and maybe even because they just don’t like Peppi Azzopardi and his business. In that case, they should put their money where their mouth is, and prove that it’s not just the inner Scrooge talking by writing out a cheque and delivering it to the door of the Jesuit Refugee Service, the SPCA, or any other one of the several charities on the Strina list.
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Giving to charity is different to other forms of giving. If you give somebody a present in the hope of getting something in return, or to persuade that person to favour you in some way, then your gift is necessarily devalued in the eyes of the recipient. On the whole, most people know when they are being manipulated or sucked up to – men of a certain age being notable exceptions where women of a certain type are involved. Donations to charitable organisations are not personal in this way, though; there is no individual recipient at the other end to take offence or feel manipulated. The organisations want the money and they are pleased to get it regardless of the donor’s motivation. In some jurisdictions, charitable donations are tax deductible, and corporations give a great deal to registered charities to make these savings on tax expenditure, while also holding to the notion of social responsibility. The charities at the receiving end depend on these mammoth donations and they are always thrilled to receive them. Their reaction isn’t “Oh, you’re only giving us this to get a tax break. Take it back; we don’t want it. It’s tainted.” That’s skewed reasoning. Yet it is precisely the reasoning of those who criticise the ‘prizes for donations’ method employed by the Strina organisers, which works so terribly well.
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Alms-giving is an integral part of the culture of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. We are not speaking about anything new here. The difference is that in Christianity, alms-giving must be silent and secret if any moral credits are to accrue to the donor. This principle derives from Christ’s criticism of the Pharisees, who built chutes at the temple down which they would push their coins, so that they would land with a mighty sound in the alms-box, drawing attention to their generosity. Christ’s reasoning, at least as it has been reported to us, was that such donations drew their reward on earth in the form of the admiration of onlookers, and so there would be no spiritual reward. He laid down the law on this one: when you give alms, the left hand should not know what the right hand is doing. In other words, you should keep your alms-giving concealed from everybody, including those nearest to you. There is another moral reason for this: those who receive charitable donations should not feel they are under some kind of obligation to the donor. If they do not know who the donor is, both parties are comfortable with the situation – though of course, there will always be those who want the recipient to feel forever bound by gratitude towards them. Criticism of the ‘prizes for donations’ system of Strina emerges from an incorrect interpretation of this simple principle of Christian alms-giving. Christ criticised loudy, noisy and boastful giving, but he did not criticise the giving itself. He did not say that it is better not to give alms at all than to give alms and boast about it or do so conspicuously.
Some business organisations consider a donation to charity as a public relations exercise and an excuse for a press release and a report in the newspapers. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though it is on occasion distasteful. Each case has to be taken on its own merits. When a company donates a large sum of money to the Jesuit Refugee Service, as Baxter International did recently, newspaper coverage serves an important purpose for the charity: public endorsement of the Jesuit Refugee Service’s work with asylum seekers and other refugees in the face of so much criticism and anti-refugee sentiment. Baxter International did not just give money to the Jesuit Refugee Service. It also made a crucially important public demonstration of support and of belief in its work and its objectives. Yet when companies and hotels organise parties for institutionalised children, it is my firm belief that they should keep mum about it. There is no benefit accruing to the children or the homes they live in when their ‘benefactors’ put out a press release with a photograph, and sometimes even headline the story as a ‘party for orphans’. This is one clear instance where the left hand should not know what the right is doing. It is in such very poor taste.
It is the same when donations are made to individuals, rather than to charities. Individual recipients should be allowed to keep their self-respect and their dignity, rather than being obliged to trade them in for the money that they need. When you are desperate, it is bad enough being left with no choice but to call for alms through the media, perhaps for an operation for your child. When companies give money to people like these, they should not ask them to have their photograph taken receiving the cheque, so that this photograph may be released to the newspapers. Again, this is in extremely poor taste, besides being highly insensitive, because it chips away at the dignity of the recipient. The resulting photograph is effectively that of a beggar and of an alms-giver, in which the alms-giver plays the role of the Pharisee pushing coins down a chute. Nor does it do anything for the positive image of the company making the donation, but rather the opposite. A couple of years ago, I was thoroughly disgusted when the managing director of a fair-sized company agreed to make a donation to a young man crippled in an accident only if he could be photographed presenting him with the cheque. I suggested that a photograph in such circumstances wouldn’t be acceptable (my way of saying carefully that it would be extremely distasteful, even to the point of reflecting badly on the company), but his decision was: no photograph, no cheque. The cheque was large enough to make a difference to this young man’s needs, and he was embarrassed enough having to beg for alms, so to speak. He thought he might as well go through the further embarrassment of having his picture taken with the cheque and his benefactor. What really got to me was this: the young man in question, crippled as he was, had to make the trip to the company office to have his picture taken because the company officials were reluctant to waste their time going to him. What they should have done, of course, was just write out the cheque, sign it, and get a secretary to mail it to him with a kind note of encouragement and admiration.
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On Strina, most of the prizes are not donated anonymously, but some are. Anonymity is not necessarily a good thing in a situation like this, because potential donors are encouraged to do the same when they see named companies giving out their goods and services. One brings in the other. It’s catching. Last year, Strina raised Lm1 million for charity. Raising that sum would not have been possible without the tactics used. It is not in all situations that the means justify the end, but in this case I think we can say that the means used do justify the raising of Lm1 million for the needy – not any means would be justifiable, but these means certainly are. So much of Strina makes me cringe, as it does others: the false bonhomie, the prancing in costume of ‘personalities’, people making idiots of themselves, the feeding-frenzy atmosphere, and so on. Each year I am asked to participate, and each year I decline politely, except for once when I did a shift on the telephones. It’s just not my thing. Yet I do not translate my personal discomfort into public criticism and objection to the marathon display of largesse. I do recognise the fact that Lm1 million raised in this way is exceptionally more useful than Lm500,000 raised in other ways with which I might be more comfortable. If you are one of those boasting that you will not be donating to Strina because you don’t like the way it’s done, ask yourself this: are you sure you’re not just being a penny-pinching miser and trying to convince yourself otherwise? You can always mail a cheque, but you know you will never get round to it. How much easier it is just to press those buttons on your telephone.