Tag: money

Giving what we can

This post is 2,000 words long, so here’s a brief summary:

  • Every year I give 10 percent of my gross business income to organisations that I believe promote equality and justice.
  • The Jewish word for financial giving is tzedakah—not ‘charity’, but ‘justice’.
  • Financial giving isn’t virtuous do-gooding; it’s an acknowledgement of what I owe for benefiting from often invisible inequalities.
  • For every hour I work, even modest financial giving could more than double the daily earnings of two people living below the extreme poverty line.
  • By committing to giving 10 percent of my income, tzedakah is not only part of what I earn—but part of why I earn.

Giving what we can

A few weeks ago a friend suggested that I write about financial giving. Although I appreciated her suggestion, I decided that sharing the reasons why I give money to charities and other organisations might really piss people off. No one likes a preacher.

Since then, I’ve been taken aback by astonishing demonstrations of public generosity, as ordinary citizens seek to challenge injustice with their money:

Covid-19 seems to have stirred a spirit of social consciousness. I might still piss people off, but I’ve changed my mind on writing about financial giving.

I’m far from being an expert—and I’m sure that many of you are way ahead of me in both thought and action—but this article is why and how I structure my financial giving to promote equality and justice.

Not charity

I’ve written before about the distinctions between charity and solidarity, so I won’t repeat myself but, quickly, here’s why I don’t like to call financial giving ‘charity’.

‘Charity’ includes giving that does little or nothing to promote equality and justice.

Giving money to a nominally charitable institution like a church so that they can fix their damaged roof is very generous, but I’m not convinced it does much to help those who need support most.

Sometimes registered charities (sometimes even churches) are worthy recipients of cash, but sometimes the world would be better off if we granted that money to community groups, online movements, small businesses, entrepreneurs or simply people we believe in.

The word charity also excludes the possibility that we actually owe this money to others.

Giving as repayment on debt

Charity, caritas, is one of the seven virtues of Christianity, but Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas had in mind a definition closer to universal love than to financial largesse.

Unfortunately, the sense of virtue has stuck to charity’s modern definition. But the story of slave trader Edward Colston, whose statue was recently torn down by Black Lives Matter protestors in Bristol, reminds us that charitable giving is far from a guarantee of ethical good standing.

In his career as a dealer in the lives of humanity, Colston was a member of the Royal African Company and, over the course of twelve bloody years, played his part in trading 84,000 African men, women and children. It’s estimated that 19,000 of these people died on their journey to the Americas.

Colston made a lot of money from this business, which he later gave away to found various charitable institutions in Bristol. But Colston’s financial giving had nothing to do with virtue or universal love; it was a debt that he owed—and one he could never fully repay.

So it seems to me quite right that Colston’s statue was torn down: debtors aren’t usually celebrated in bronze. (Otherwise, where are the millions of plinths dedicated to payday loan victims and university students?)

Invisible debt

I’m optimistic that I don’t have quite as much blood on my hands as Colston, but living as I do in a highly developed country, I still owe some sort of debt for my position.

My quality of life is founded on almost invisible inequalities and injustices that existed long before I was born.

The seductive invisibility of these inequalities makes me vulnerable to self-flattery, giving myself far too much credit for my good fortune. I’m not alone: this is a well-studied psychological phenomenon called the attribution bias.

To me, it felt like I worked hard to do well at university. It felt like opportunities came my way only after years of hard work for little or no reward. It feels like I work hard for the money I now earn.

The most I’ll concede is that there has been an element of luck.

But it’s not luck: it’s inequality and injustice.

The truth is that other people in my local neighbourhood, my country or elsewhere in the world simply didn’t, don’t and never will have the same opportunity to be rewarded so richly for their hard work.

Side story: cacao farmers in Cameroon

In my work for the Center for International Forestry Research, I’m lucky enough to speak to people all over the world about their lives.

I’m currently working on a piece about ecology and socio-economics in forest villages in Cameroon. One of the indicators that the researchers collected is called the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale.

Despite great success growing cacao as a cash crop for international markets, only 21 percent of households in the Cameroonian village of Bokito were considered food secure. In the poorer village of Talba, that figure dropped to 12 percent.

Four families out of five in these villages said yes to questions like: Did you or any household members go to sleep at night hungry because there was not enough food?

Despite working long hours on cacao plantations, these families are unable to feed their children, with all the knock-on effects that has on health, education and life opportunities.

All of a sudden, it doesn’t feel like I worked particularly hard.

30 percent of all people in Cameroon live in extreme poverty. If they lived in the United States, that means they’d be surviving on less than $1.90 per day.

Coincidentally, that’s about how much I’d spend on a quality bar of the chocolate the people of Bokito and Talba help grow. Something to think about the next time I bite into a bar of Green & Blacks.

Here’s something else: in Judaism, charitable giving is called tzedakah, a word that better translates as ‘justice’. I really like that translation. Financial giving is not virtuous charity, it’s an attempt to balance the books of justice.

Giving as politics

When someone sets up a charity, community project or social enterprise, they’re saying: I believe the world can be a better place in this specific, measurable way.

The enterprise doesn’t work unless they bring people along with them: the founders must become politicians for their vision. Donors and volunteers are their citizenry, who vote with their money or their time.

Together, these third sector politicians and citizens can change the world. Last month, a small charity that didn’t exist three years ago won a high court challenge to a vile government policy that prevented working migrants from accessing welfare support during Covid-19.

I’m not saying that governments can’t do much more to make the world a fairer place. Economist Joseph Stiglitz makes a strong case that politicians could do a lot more to fight inequality by forcing multinational companies to pay tax at a global minimum rate, for example.

But when governments fail us or when we disagree with the general drift of our politicians, it’s amazing that enterprising citizens stand up and say: no, we believe the world should be more like this.

And we, operating independently of our politicians and the state, can give money and say: yes, we’re behind you.

As we’ve seen so strongly over the past few months, we can’t rely entirely on the state to balance the books of justice. We all give tzedakah. The only remaining question is how and how much.

Quick reminder…

In this article I’m only talking about financial giving, but there are of course many other ways that we all try to promote equality and justice.

  • Voluntary service, including advocacy
  • Political action
  • Paid work
  • Work in kind
  • Raising and educating the next generation

Our giving in these different areas naturally fluctuates over our lifespan. For many, many years, I didn’t do much financial giving. I’m not beating myself up about that fact.

With that said, here is what I do now, along with the resources that inspired me.

Taking the pledge

In July 2017, I took the Giving What We Can pledge to donate 1 percent of my earnings that year to effective charitable organisations. I promptly forgot all about this pledge and have, instead, donated 10 percent of my earnings every year since.

The 1 percent pledge, it turned out, was a classic ‘foot in the door’ sales tactic. Once I’d made the decision that I was the sort of person who would give in a structured way every year, 1 percent felt insignificant.

I don’t have any dependents, I live in a country with a more or less functioning welfare system that includes free healthcare, and I come from a home-owning family. All this means that I feel more comfortable committing to 10 percent.

For clarity: that means 10 percent of my business income before deductions:

  • Before tax
  • Before National Insurance
  • Before business expenses
  • Before living expenses

This detail is important to me. When I formalised my financial giving in 2017, I wasn’t earning a huge amount of money and calculating from my business profit would have meant years of zero contributions.

Social problems like inequality and injustice get exponentially worse and harder to fix as time move on. I wanted to start giving immediately and, more importantly, get into good giving habits on the off-chance that I do one day start earning millions.

Working from gross income is also a lot less complicated to administer.

The mechanics

I’m freelance so I have a separate bank account for my business income. At the end of the financial year, I siphon 10 percent of the balance into another bank account dedicated exclusively to financial giving.

This creates a fund from which I give over the course of the next financial year. If there’s anything left in the account from the year before, I usually grant that money out after doing my tax return—or it rolls forward to the next year.

What difference could I make?

Median income in the UK is £18,630. I fall some way below that, but globally I’m in the top 11 percent of all earners. Even after giving away 10 percent of my income, I’m still in the global top 12 percent.

Yep: we live in a very unequal world.

Apologies for the excessive use of italics, but I find it hard to get my head around the following fact:

My 10 percent giving is enough that, for every hour I work, I could more than double the daily earnings of two people living below the extreme poverty line—perhaps two of those cacao farmers I’m writing about.

That shows what could be done with whatever sum a citizen in a wealthy country can afford to give.

Working for justice

By committing to structured giving, I can almost always say yes when friends ask me to donate to social causes that they believe in.

If I’m paid £300 for a writing job, then I already know that £30 will go toward promoting equality and justice.

This is a huge relief: no more awkward moments, worried I can’t spare another twenty quid. I know I can afford to give because it’s baked into every penny I earn.

Financial giving is part of what I earn—but it’s also part of why I earn.

As a writer, working in the highly theoretical field of abstract thought can make me feel disconnected from the injustice of daily life for farmers on cacao plantations in Cameroon.

Without overplaying my modest contribution, my work feels more meaningful now I know that a sliver of justice is served every time I sit down to write.

~

My contribution, however modest, only began when I stumbled across the Giving What We Can pledge in July 2017.

Much of what I’ve written here has been said more eloquently and with more academic rigour by the philosopher Peter Singer, one of the foremost thinkers on financial giving.

Singer’s book, The Life You Can Save, helped create the Effective Altruism movement behind the Giving What We Can pledge. In a new edition for 2019, The Life You Can Save is available as a free audiobook download.

Finally, thanks to TD and DRL for conversations that inspired this piece!

The Next Challenge Grant: Applications for Adventure Now Open

For the past two years, I’ve supported The Next Challenge Grant, a wonderfully simple idea to crowdsource donations from people like me so that impecunious adventure-newbies can take on the kind of challenges that I’ve been so lucky to enjoy over the years.

My £200 donation – enough to fund one adventurous grantee – is dedicated to my nan. This is the dedication I wrote on the grant’s donor page:

My first big adventure, cycling 4,000 miles around the coast of Great Britain, was only possible thanks to support from my nan. She’d absolutely love The Next Challenge Expedition Grant so now it’s my turn to help you find your own awesome adventure. As nan used to say: Do it while you can!

This rest of this post was written by Tim Moss, the founder of the grant. Read on for the incredible stories of some astonishingly imaginative adventures made possible thanks to donations from the general public, people like you and me.

5 years, 60 adventures funded

Here’s a look back over five years of the Next Challenge Grant and the 60 adventurers that have won it…

We’ve had plenty of running expeditions like George Shelton running the Isle of Man ‘TT’ route, Dan Keeley running a thousand miles from Italy to England, Tina Page running the UK Three Peaks and Amanda McDonnell running across the Channel Islands.

Mike Creighton is running between all of the UK’s national parks as I write, while Ruth Thomas is preparing to run the Thames Path and Valerie Rachel is preparing to run the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Cycling’s been just as popular. Mikey Bartley rode up the legendary Alpe d’Huez eight times in a row, Dylan Haskin went round Costa Rica on a beach cruiser (sounds cool, looked brutal), Megan Cumberlidge bikepacked the GR247 and Geraint Hill explored “Everyman’s rights” in Scandinavia.

Karl Booth pedalled 2,500 miles to the top of Europe, off-road and then declined to accept any money from the grant. He said that he got so much sponsorship after telling people he’d won a Next Challenge Grant that he didn’t need the cash and I should give it to someone else. Legend.

Paddle sports have featured too. Graham Clarke tackled the Shannon on a home-made raft, Val Ismaili kayaked through Kosovo and Albania on the Drin, Anna Blackwell kayaked from the UK to the Black Sea, Jo Laird paddled the longest lakes in England, Scotland and Wales, Joanne McCallum paddled the longest lake in North Ireland, and Emily Fitzherbert and her daughter Lua paddle-boarding every lake in the Lake District.

There have been a few trips that combine sports too, like Heather Jones’ Welsh Three Peaks by bike (which ended in a snow-covered bivouac), Hajo Spathe’s home-made IronMan triathlon in the Rockie Mountains and Ed March-Shawcross’s triathlon around Arran.

We’ve let youth do it, with teenagers walking the Tour du Mont Blanc, canoeing the Rivey Spey, cycling across Europe, cycling across Jamaica, walking all of the UK’s National Trails, hiking from the Lakes to the Dales, and crossing a desert island.

We’ve had some really creative ideas, like Carmen Bran camping out for 100 nights in a year (around finishing a PhD), Oli Warlow climbing up and cycling between every route in the Classic Rock guide book, Nick Stanton cycling the length of the Berlin Wall on a hired bike, Joshua Powell running a marathon at Marathon (in ancient Greek armour) and Kate Symonds-Joy cycling to the northernmost point in the UK to perform a one woman opera in a lighthouse (!).

There are also plans to cycle the Netherlands in search of new food technologies, explore the worst-selling Ordnance Survey map, trek around Scotland with a pony and complete swimming escapes from the UK’s three prison islands.

Despite the grant being aimed primarily at smaller challenges, some expeditions have just been straight-up epic, like Jenny Tough running across the Kyrgyz Tien-Shan mountain range, Thommo Hart walking the length of South Africa barefoot and Elise Downing running five thousand miles around the UK (five thousand!). Plus, Sam Hewings is walking a couple of thousand miles along Britain’s watershed right now.

We’ve had expeditions all across the world too, with bikepacking in the Philippines, a circumnavigation of Gotland, a planned walk up Mount Cameroon, a father and young daughters walking in the Indian Western Ghats, a winter hike along the Great Wall, a trek along Ukraine’s Tendrivska Spit, Robin Lewis walking Japan’s tsunami-affected coastline, walking the length of New Zealand and a crossing of the Kolyma mountain range in the Russian Far East.

But we’ve also had plenty of trips closer to home, like Nate Freeman’s wonderfully simple walk to work (25 miles each way), Kerry Anne Mairs’ five bothies with a five year old, Bex Band taking a kick-scooter around the London Loop, Ben & Jude tackling the Caledonian canal in an inflatable boat, and Emily Woodhouse battling up every tor in Dartmoor.

The stories from these adventures would be enough on their own but the fact that they come from “normal people” who have been part-funded by “normal people” somehow makes them feel even better.

2020 grant applications now open

Applications for the 2020 Next Challenge Grant are now open. The deadline is Sunday 5th January. Read more and apply here.

It is open to people all over the world, of any age, nationality or background. Expedition experience is not necessary and, in fact, the grant is aimed squarely at those who are new to the adventure world and “don’t normally do this sort of thing”.

So if you’ve had a look at trips above and thought “I’m not the kind of person that does stuff like that”, then you need to apply.

The application only takes five minutes and – because Tim only has a small readership and typically makes 10 or more awards – the odds of success are high.

What are you waiting for? What is the worst that could happen?

Click here to apply

Click here to donate

Get shit for free

Something remarkable happened to me a few weeks ago. Thanks to the resourcefulness and generosity of my friend and spirit guide Documentally, a rather exclusive, high-end and indeed Swiss tech company sent me their new Punkt MP02 phone. For free. No strings attached.

I’ve written elsewhere about how everything is free, but I’ve never had the gumption to straight up ask people to send me stuff. But The Swiss Phone Incident has inspired me: never again will I spend significant sums of moolah, until I’ve first tried to get it (or do it) for nothing.

Of course, nothing is for nothing. I doubt Punkt would have sent me a free phone if I didn’t have some record (however modest) of writing about stuff on the internet.

The Swiss Phone Incident has made me realise that, although writing isn’t a terribly well-paid job, it does open up opportunities to supplement one’s income.

For example, some friends recently invited me to Love Trails, a running festival in Wales that sounded right up my alley – if it wasn’t for the £130+ price tag. So, in the after-glow of The Swiss Phone Incident, I emailed the organisers suggesting that I give a talk in exchange for a free ticket and travel expenses.

To my enduring surprise (I still think it was all a dream), they said yes. What’s great about this – aside from saving well over £130 – is that instead of merely going to the festival, I am the festival – or part of it, at least. My experience of Love Trails will be all the greater for not spending money on a ticket.

I have found this again and again: spending money is the simplest, but also the lowest impact way of acquiring a thing or an experience.

Hitch-hiking will always be more latent with possibility than buying a plane ticket. Skipping food from bins is so much more fraught with surprise and reward than is shopping at Lidl. Sharing tools and swapping skills with your neighbours opens up futures that are sullied by contracts and cash.

By spending a little time figuring out how we might get shit for free, we not only save money, but also become more engaged with the people and planet around us, learn new skills or practise old ones, and – above all – have more interesting stories to tell of our lives.

Digital minimalism is a niche topic, and I doubt many people can afford to spend £300 for a phone that doesn’t even take photos – but I hope that The Swiss Phone Incident inspires you to look for opportunities where you can spend a little less and live a little more.

For those of you who are interested in what I think of the Punkt MP02, the review is here.