Charity? Ewww! ??

Laurie Pringle, Charity Chatter posts this,

So I ask you, does the word ‘charity’ have more negative than positive connotations?

Mike

See it here or read below

It's NOT Charity!

I am seeing this more and more from... of all places - charities! The great folks at Feed The Children, have a whole video about it. You can see it here:

The organization ACCION uses the URL: http://www.itsnotcharity.org/

Liberty Hill's tagline is "Change. Not Charity."

The word "charity" has always had negative connotations. My grandparents were working poor people. My grandfather was a proud man. One day my grandfathers boss (the owner of a scrap iron facility) heard that my mother and uncles didn't have boots for winter, and he drove to their house with several pairs of boots for them. My grandfather initially refused to take them because he didn't accept charity. The boss convinced him that it was a gift for his 15 years of service. Grumbling, he took the boots and my mom enjoyed dry, warm feet that winter. We hear stuff like this all the time:

• "He's a charity case".
• "I don't want your charity".

I've even met people who have received help from charities who are embarrassed to discuss it.

Time for a change?

We can't change decades of negative thinking overnight. But if we want to change the perception of charity, perhaps charities should stop piling on and further driving the word into the mud?

Or... maybe we should just accept that charity has negative connotations and start calling ourselves something else? If even charities accept that the word "charity" is a bad thing and are attempting to brand themselves as "not charity"... then it's time to either change perceptions or change the word we use to describe what we do.

I realize this isn't the first time this topic has come up, but we don't seem to take the topic very seriously. In Canada, we're seeing record declines in the number of people donating to charity. In the face of serious and consistent declines in the numbers of charity donors... perhaps it's time for a serious discussion about whether or not the sector as a whole needs to drop the name "Charity".

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