Making Donations to Nonprofits Can Be an Effective and Productive Way To Make a Difference in the World
Donations to nonprofits is an effective way to impact your world.
Most organizations involved in community development or water resource development overseas rely upon financial donations and faithful givers who reliably support their cause and their projects.
Most of these organizations offer many options for the person who wishes to make donations to nonprofits. They make it easy for you to get involved and have structures in place to inform you about how your finances are being used.
Their goal in providing such feedback is to demonstrate to you that your donations to nonprofits are being used wisely and really making a tangible difference.
Money: The Medium of Exchange
Currency is one thing that we can all relate to. It is something that all of mankind has in one form or another if even in differing types and amounts.
It is a sort of common language that binds together people all over the world. People may fight over it, work their whole lives to obtain it, wish they had more of it, or decry the problems it brings upon them.
One thing for sure, not much that we want to achieve in this world can be accomplished without it. However we may feel, personally, about wealth, greed, and the good and evils of money, we all need it, in some form or another.
Whatever goals or aspirations we have as individuals, communities, corporations, or nations, money is the fuel that moves the wheels of any progress we hope to see.
When we give our finances and hard-earned money as donations to nonprofits and to a cause that we believe in and want to support, we are not just simply giving “money”.
Currency is a medium of exchange. What is more important is what that money represents.
In the context of clean water, sanitation, and hygiene, that amount that you donated to that NGO or that project may mean clean water and an education for a child.
Donations to nonprofits may mean a water well for the community or water filters for several families. It may represent community hygiene education or a new latrine.
Whatever we give is translated into tangible improvements in another person’s or community’s quality of life.
Our donations to nonprofits, especially when combine with donations from others, can work in ways you may never imagine.
Financial giving is, in many ways, more efficient and productive than offering your time, labor, and energy.
Imagine one person with the desire and heart to go to Africa for ten days. Now imagine how much money that would take. One could easily spend three thousand dollars on that experience. Air fare and meals would be the largest part of that expenditure.
The same organization that sponsored this person’s trip to Africa could use that three thousand dollars in a hundred more useful and meaningful ways if combined with the donations of others and applied directly to the needs of a community abroad.
Small groups of people often go on volunteer trips together. Imagine the amount of money involved in sending eight or ten volunteers to Africa.
Imagine what could be accomplished with that money if it were used on projects that directly impact communities.
The willingness of people to travel, and work, and sacrifice time, money, energy, comfort, etc., is an important element in reaching out to others, in the fight against poverty and in making the world a better place.
Many people are called to make a difference. Some pack their bags and go, and others are called to give financially.
Allowing God to Guide Our Financial Giving
The Bible describes giving as a “lifestyle” of consistent and sacrificial giving to God's work.
Even if we receive benefits from our donations to nonprofits (tax benefits, self-fulfillment, etc.) our giving will never make rational sense. Financially speaking, we give up what we give away. Biblically speaking, the more we give, the more we receive.
You can take a look in the Bible at Mark 6:30-44 for some key principles concerning the process of financial giving.
Principle 1. The first step in determining your giving plan is to get alone with God and listen to His still, small voice. This is the starting place. We must be willing to stop and hear what God has to say about our giving.
Principle 2. The second principle is that our plan and our reasoning must be open to change and the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Rigid, stubborn commitment to a plan that we have devised may be a mistake. We must be willing allow God to work in and around our plan and to change it anyway He may want to.
Principle 3. Do not look merely at what is practical when it comes to giving. Let God do things His way and in His time. We must realize that worldly, rational advice may be logical but not necessarily what God may be wanting us to do.
Principle 4. If God says to give, then give. This is the principle of obedience. Whatever we heard from God, He has a purpose attached to it and is counting on us to do our part so He can do His.
Principle 5. If you have heard from God, certain things may occur.
1) Understand that you may not be able to see how your giving is going to accomplish anything,
2) you may not have the funds immediately available to meet the objective,
3) you may not see what the next step to take to fulfill what God has told you. This is a walk of faith and it proceeds one step at a time.
Principle 6. The results of walking out this plan, one step at a time, according to what you believe God has told you, are that the goals will be reached, God will be glorified, and personal growth will result.
It is best not to leave God out of your plans for giving. Don't close your mind to what may look like impossible goals; do not miss the miracle.
God simply wants you to take the first step. Then you can take the second, and the third. As a result, your giving will accomplish what God has purposed, it can bring joy to you and it will bring pleasure to God.
The bible has more to say about money and possessions than any other topic and no little webpage can scratch the surface.
Please use the information on these web pages as a personal motivation to learn more about the biblical principles finances and of God’s purposes in our giving donations to nonprofits.
…if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.
Isaiah 58:10
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