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Boulder Daily Camera
Making Money Matter
by Enid Ablowitz
 

July, 2004

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

I learned something new about giving this month—from my 18 year old daughter.  She spent a week as a volunteer counselor at a summer camp for children.  That in itself is notable, but this camp is very special. All the children who attend have cancer.

She shared her experience by reading her daily journal entries to me.  The first night, before the campers arrived, the staff and counselors sat in a circle as small slips of paper were handed out.  Then, they read the names aloud.  It began to dawn on the newcomers what this tradition was all about: the names were of the children who had attended the camp over the past 17 years and had died.  In hushed tones, the group talked of death and grief, mourning and sadness. After they remembered and faced the reality, and cried, they looked to the week ahead:  how could they make this next 7 days about joy and fun for these campers, turning them from children who may be dying of cancer to children who are living with cancer? They spoke of hope and caring and giving.

Camp Rainbow and many others like it around the country function entirely on donations and volunteers.  As my daughter and I talked about her experience, I reflected on a number of things.

Giving comes from the heart:  No one can force another person to give.  While there may be different reasons people give, there is always intent. A true gift is given with the intent to make something better through the gift. 

Giving can be taught: Children learn about giving by imitation, through values demonstrated and discussed.  And, once they have the urge, they need to have opportunities to give so that they can feel the satisfaction and see the impact.  If giving wasn’t part of early experience, adults can learn to give if there is exposure, education and demonstration that giving really does make a difference.

Giving comes in many forms.  Time, energy, and focus that is given to help another person or a cause is the gift anyone can give. Gifts of kindness, or shared expertise, or personal services are often as important as gifts of personal property or monetary assets.

Giving can be collective and directed.  Organized giving is the rationale for non-profit organizations. They are created to capture and marshall the giving instincts and resources of givers.  They provide the overarching vision, the mechanism and the delivery system to take many individual gifts and combine them for greater impact. 

Giving can address serious issues and solve real problems.  The “C” word scares us all.  Cancer.  It was once a death sentence. Now cancer survivors abound.  Cancer affects real people, and real people are facing it, head on, by giving.  The hospice volunteer. The donor who builds the cancer treatment wing. The researcher who dedicates his or her life to finding a cure.   Each is giving in his or her own way.  We can give one-to-one.  We can give to organizations to improve quality of life as people live with cancer. We can give to support access to treatment, improved treatment facilities or financial relief to cancer patients.  We can give to stimulate research in new treatments, or in the basic science that seeks to understand the underlying causes and can lead to a cure.

My daughter’s volunteer experience helped improve the life of one 6 year old girl, Hanna, at least for a little while.  For a week, Hanna almost forgot the doctors, the pain, the loneliness and the fears of the known and the unknown.  For a week her only focus was to have fun, and she had one person who was all hers to help make that happen. 

And, from the pictures I saw and from the journal entries I read, I know that her acts of giving enhanced my daughter’s life too.

Enid Ablowitz is the Vice President for Advancement at the University of Colorado Foundation, Inc., and Director of Advancement for the Coleman Institute for Cognitive Disabilities.  She has been working as a donor advocate for nearly 15 years and has written a book for donors called Making Money Matter:  Eight Steps to Thoughtful Giving. For information on how to obtain a copy, contact her at enidablowitz@hotmail.com.

You may contact Enid Ablowitz by email at enidablowitz@hotmail.com

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