For my birthday, I recently decided to make the offer to match my friends' charity donations. Since it was a spur of the moment decision for me, it's actually lingering longer than I originally intended. That being said, I am having a lot of fun seeing the things that call out to my friends and make their hearts yearn to do good.
Before I continue, I will say that I know my mom has good intentions. Really, she's just trying to help. However, I still feel like this is one of those examples that left me thinking "Who does that?"
When I made my offer, I did not originally include my mom in what I envisioned being the dollar commitment that might be required by making such an offer. My mom instilled in me my passion for donating, and so to include her on the list of people to "match" could potentially be quite the undertaking.
That being said, I didn't specifically not include her either. She found out about my offer and said she'd donate $x amount of money. Without giving specific numbers, this dollar figure was over twice the highest dollar figure any of my friends offered. Though I didn't expect to take her donations into account, I was ok with the dollar amount she requested. If everyone donated that amount of money, my money would go quickly, but who cares, right?
Moving on... then she found out that my company matches my donations. She emailed me and said "I'm going to up my donation to 4x $x!" Uh... Wow. Ok. Um... I'll have to wait to see what I have left over after my friends make their donations and I'll let you know if I can match that new 4x number.
Moving on... when I called her to discuss the above, she interrupted me and said "Oh, and I forwarded your offer to all my friends so you should be hearing from some of them soon."
This is where my real frustration comes in. I realize she thought that I was just trying to make the most of my donations, but still... who would forward an offer like that to people who don't even know me??? On top of that (and this is definitely an assumption I'm making), her friends are in Estes Park. People living in Estes Park only do so because they can afford to, right? Who knows what kind of money requests would come from these friends of hers?
Be honest... many of you received my offer to match your donations. Did you consider forwarding it to people I did not know?
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6 comments:
Wow. That's pretty shocking. And, No!! It never occurred to me to forward your matching offer to anyone else. I have no idea how much money you have set aside to donate (I'm not asking), and I would really fear going over your limit. And I would think if you did have money left over after matching your friends' donations, you just *might* enjoy deciding for yourself what other organizations you'd like to give to. Have you talked to her yet? How did that go?
Who wrote this? =)
Your comment about fearing going over my limit relates to a question I will most likely be asking my friends once everything is said and done. I wasn't sure if I should mention what my limit was because I didn't want to discourage anyone who couldn't afford to donate anywhere near that dollar amount. Yet, not mentioning the limit would also discourage those who would want to donate more. I was torn. So I'll be asking people for their opinion on that soon.
That was (and still is) the plan. Whatever money is left over I will donate to the organization that I enjoyed the most. I have a few in mind. In fact, a couple of them are charities that my friends introduced me to through this whole adventure, which was the original goal - to find new inspiring causes.
As for the talk with my mom. I told her that it really upset me and she was surprised. She was just trying to help me make the most of my donations. I clarified that the purpose was to find new charities and try to do something nice for my friends. She apologized, but nothing more came out of it. I am matching one of her friend's donations because it wasn't too much. She asked how much Covidien matches and I told her $20k a year, but I didn't have nearly that much to donate. She seemed to imply that we would just make it work. So at this point in time, I'm just seeing if it will become an issue. I will not (can not) go above my limit (still not close to reaching it - by most people's standards I think) and I certainly don't want to exploit their offer to match my donations, so the money needs to be mine. But, like I said, at this point in time I'm just waiting to see if the effects are really an issue.
P.S. If you (who ever you are... lol) are one of those who fears going over my limit to my offer, email me and we can discuss in more details what my limit is.
That is really a shocking story.
I wonder if your mom was telling this story of this interaction, what she'd say.
If you were to do this again, would you word your email differently to try and avoid this situation?
I definitely plan to word my offer differently if I do it again. This being one of the reasons why. It was such a last minute idea that I didn't know what rules would be needed. I'm also not sure if I would mention what my dollar limit is. I did not mention it this time because I didn't want to risk having those who couldn't afford to donate a large amount feel intimidated like their donation wouldn't matter. However, I also got the feeling that there were some people who would have donated more but feared asking for too much.
My friend, Mani, guesses that my mom was just proud of me and bragging about me and thinking she was helping. I don't doubt she had good intentions. I just also don't think anyone else would have made the same decision. It would be interesting for me to know how she would tell the story, though.
Sorry, Jen - that first comment was from me. And I wasn't afraid I personally would spend too much, but would worry about that happening if I passed around your offer to everyone I knew.
JEN R!!! =)
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