Should we donate abroad when there is so much need right here in America?

I often ask myself that same question. I refuse to donate to other countries. Instead, I donate to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital and other American charities.

Welcome to Fluther.

What makes you think that ‘donating’ in any sense is a good thing to do?

But if you think that it’s a good thing, then what is it about ‘Americans’ that makes them so especially worthy of your support?

I also donate to American charities first and local ones specifically. That doesn’t mean I don’t donate to charities in other countries at all, but I try to first donate closer to home. If I was a resident of another country, I’d donate there first as well. My preference has nothing to do with thinking Americans are more worthy, but with believing that charity begins at home.

@diavolobella Perfect answer.

@CyanoticWasp Exactly what diavolobella said. It’s not that Americans are “more worthy”, it’s that if I’m donating money to a charity or any cause, I prefer to donate to my home country. I also think it’s quite strange to adopt foreign children when we have so many children here who are in need of a home. Why send my money overseas when it’s needed here just as much?

I live in the UK which is not as wealthy a country as the USA but it does have a proper health care system and benefits system and so I tend to do the opposite and donate to causes overseas.

If you feel an affinity toward a particular cause and you’re confident your money, time and/or items will do some good, who cares where the hell they are located.

Helping people is helping people. Nationalism (or xenophobia) be damned.

I’m with @cprevite. People are people, I don’t care where they live. I have just never been able to get on board with this mindset that we should base our decision to give on the location of the receiver.
Of course we have people at home that need help. Everyone does, and always has, and most likely always will.

@tkrengel Welcome to fluther…but we’re very diverse. Not all of us are Americans.

Interesting question. It depends on your theory of giving. I think that people often are susceptible to emotional appeals. The Red Cross can raise a lot of money when there are disasters in other parts of the world. It is clear that there is a desperate need and people respond to that.

Closet to home, the needs are less clear. It’s interesting. Poorer people seem to give more than middle class people, perhaps because they are closer to people in need and can see it more clearly. I think that people tend to want to help those who seem to be clearly in need, and that means you need to see the need in their faces. TV is one way to see that. Meeting people in need is another way.

I give money to the charities I know. I know what the need is. Most of them are local in one way or another. Either they are local organizations, or they are national organizations that work on a problem that someone I know has faced.

Charity is personal. Since we spend more time locally, we are more likely to give to local needs. But if we are exposed to needs outside our area, we are just as empathetic and just as likely to give to help folks who are far away from us.

There is no “should” to where we donate. There is no “should” to donating, period. We give because we choose to, and we give where we choose to. There are no rules about charity. It is a personal thing. If we wanted there to be rules, we’d tax people and support public services for the needy.

Oh. Wait. We already do that.

It is very difficult to choose where to spend our charity money. On the Goodsearch site I use to do my searches, powered by Yahoo, that donates to my favorite charity with me spending any money at all, there are over 80,000 charities.

Right now any cash money I have goes directly to family, with one son on disability, one unemployed for over a year, with a family of four to support, and one adult grandson currently unemployed, they need all the help they can get.

There is no such thing as “my people”. Borders are imaginary; people are people. Geographic proximity does not dictate how much I care about people.

@psychocandy: Exactly. GA.

My opinion is that with as much need as there is on the Earth, we should donate where we feel called to. I find it eternally galling for people, many of whom give nothing or very little to charity, to find fault with the where or how of those who do contribute to the less fortunate. I do not think the people who feel called to monitor and criticize the giving of others will ever be satisfied until the generous stop giving and quit embarrassing those who want to keep all they can get for themselves.

@psychocandy Because I choose to give to local charities first doesn’t mean I care less about people elsewhere or @cprevite that I’m xenophobic or a Nationalist. I simply prefer to actively donate, giving my time, as well as my money and it’s easier to do that in my own community. I don’t have the funds or ability to travel elsewhere, so I help build Habitat for Humanity homes in my town, donate to my local food bank and battered women’s shelter. I also used to work for the local Legal Aid Society. There is nothing wrong with preferring to donate locally because it allows you to give of your time and skills, which is especially important to me because I don’t have a lot of money.

One of the national charities that I do donate to is online. Every paycheck I contribute toward funding a project on www.donorschoose.org and I LOVE getting the handwritten drawing and thank you notes from the children.

@diavolobella I did not address you or what you wrote in any way. I was answering the question.

@psychocandy Your remarks seemed to suggest that you consider people who take proximity into account when making charitable donations to only care about people who live in their area. So, in a way you did address me. Perhaps you didn’t intend it that way and if I misunderstood your intent, my apologies. I did want to make clear that I give locally, not because I care more about local people, but because I can do more closer to home. Giving locally does not mean you don’t care about people the world over.

Should New Yorkers donate for Katrina victims in New Orleans when there is so much need right here in New York?

I prefer to help out and donate to people I know, or know directly of. I like to see the result and know that none of whatever I gave them got shunted off into someone elses’ pockets.