Giving Tuesday: Ask. Don't Tell.

This post is part of a series in which Influencers and members share insights around Giving Tuesday. Read all the posts here and write your own; don’t forget to include the hashtag #GivingTuesday in the body of your post.

“You caught me at a bad time, I’m heading out the door,” I said right before I hung up on a telemarketer from a local police-oriented charity this weekend. This being Thanksgiving and all, I felt kind of rotten about it. Then again, I knew I wasn’t giving him any money so by extricating myself quickly I suppose I was wasting less of both of our time.

It is because I resent these phone calls – and the ones for new energy companies that are looking to sign me up as well as those from miscellaneous survey-takers – that I’ve put myself on the Do Not Call list. Clearly, it doesn’t always work. You have to re-up every six months or so, but by and large if you’re persistent you can escape them.

That’s not true of the annual push to give to charity at many workplaces. There, the appeal often comes from higher-ups (if not managers, then bosses, if not bosses, then CEOs). You may be enticed to contribute with everything from matching dollars to days off. But there’s also often some sort of record keeping. You only get the day off if the entire department ante’s up. There’s clearly a list of the holdouts and a perception – if not a reality – that dragging your heels could put your relationships with your colleagues and your bosses in jeopardy.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m a big fan of giving to causes you believe in. It’s not only good for the recipients, but also for the givers. Research (my own and others) has shown that giving results in a boost to happiness, a reduction in stress, and an overall feeling of well-being. More recently, the work of David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University has shown that channeling gratitude can help stave off impulse buying urges – the idea is to try to feel good about what you already have rather than focusing on what you want to acquire. “Our work shows that evoking a feeling of gratitude makes you value the long-term benefits of stuff more. That makes it easier to resist short-term temptations,” he told me for a recent Fortune.com column.

As well as we all think we know our colleagues and employees, there’s no way to know the financial pressures that are weighing on them at home. Are there adult children or older parents in need of financial support? Has a spouse gone years and years without a raise? Is the family pet ailing?

I think we need to acknowledge, as my friend, financial advisor Tim Maurer likes to say, that personal finance is more personal than finance.

So this holiday season, how about a softer sell on charitable giving in the workplace? Ask, in other words. Don’t tell.