A Chance to Feel Really Great About Yourself

On a rainy day a few years ago, I was not feeling great about myself at all. I had just read a post about tithing and I started to reflect on my own personal giving.

As you may know, tithing is a very old tradition of giving ten percent of one’s earnings to charity, usually a religious organization. Based on passages from the Old and New Testament, the original idea seems to have been to donate one-tenth of one’s crops to feed the poor.

Over time, many religions have suggested similar approaches to charity and many people consider tithing as a monetary contribution to charities of their choice. I had certainly been one of them and earlier in my career, I was proud to be donating ten percent to charities I wanted to help.

Fast forward to that rainy day. Despite doing well in business, I had a strong feeling I wasn’t donating nearly enough to charity. I had set up regular donations years earlier but had not thought about them or updated the amount I was giving to reflect my increased income. I did a quick calculation and discovered to my horror that not only was my giving nowhere near ten percent (even of my net, after-tax income) but it was not even reaching one percent of my income.

That one moment of reflection created many emotions in me: sadness and guilt for not staying on top of my contributions to those less fortunate than me. I immediately amended my regular donations (monthly standing orders or automatic payments from my bank) but I knew there was more.

Charitable donations have experienced a significant decline in recent years, due to the pandemic, economic uncertainty, increased fear, and the rising cost of living. In fact, according to Benefact Group’s inaugural Value of Giving report, the value of charitable donations in 2022 fell by more than 50% (￡4.3bn) in the UK, from the previous year.

So I began sharing my insights about giving with friends and clients. Without exception, every conversation led to the other person saying “I never really thought about it” or “I don’t know how much I am giving”. So, with the help of some clever and generous business colleagues and friends, I set about creating Giving 1 Percent, a website where people can quickly and anonymously calculate their own personal regular giving, as a percentage of their net income.

I am so grateful for the response to the soft launch we have been running since the end of 2023. Then today, I see that UK Fundraising has featured my project on their website!

My dream is to get every individual to think about their giving in a strategic way, to be aware of their Giving Number and to make donation decisions based on that number. This will help charities get back those lost donations so they can do their best work, and we can all feel really great about ourselves for making that happen.

Links for resources mentioned in this article:

UK Fundraising article https://fundraising.co.uk/2024/02/29/new-social-impact-initiative-aims-to-encourage-more-people-to-assess-their-giving-habits

Giving 1 Percent https://www.giving1percent.com

Benefact Group Value of Giving report https://benefactgroup.com/fundraising-resources/charity-fundraising-articles/value-of-giving-report