pdp1@EARTHLINK.NET on sat 14 aug 04
Thing is...
Over the years, I have donated a great many hours, and
sometimes quite
valuable material resources, and or my skilled labor, or
skills otherwise, in
various
capacities, to various non-profit
Organizations, Charities or Churches as may be...as
well as to
private persons, families or others as I felt disposed to
do.
Sometimes I was less than satisfied with the outcome, so far
as what they did with, or made out of, what ever it was I
gave...sometimes, I was allrighty enough with it, osmetimes
I was happy with the outcome.
But I have noticed also, how demeaning and servile it is of
some organizations, when doing their so called 'pledge
drives' ( as say, of non-profit radio,) when they
keep unctiously or plaintively or otherwise getting into
repeatative
hand-wringing on how
one's contribution is 'tax deductable'...
I feel embarassed for them, where, they should feel this for
themselves.
The money, time, skilled labor or material resourses I gave
at times to various Charities or non-profits, or whomever, I
did so
because I wanted to help them, or help them
accomplish something.
That simple.
I never wrote any of it off, or claimed or sought to
claim these things as tax
'deductions', nor had that influence my motive...and I never
once accepted or retained the
receipts representing the donation I had made, when receipts
were offered, and usually they were offered.
Too, if some Charity likes you, or likes what you have done
for
them, if they have any thing going for them at all, they
will also, adroitly or
otherwise, on their own, inflate, even embarassingly, the
value
they assign to your contribution, "for tax purposes", as, if
they posess any conscience or decency at all, that is about
all they can offer sometimes, quasi-materially, as a gesture
of
thanks, in the realities of the bullshit games which taxes
are. They will certainly do this unbidden, if they have
any respect for you, or themselves, at all.
Almost all non-profits and Charities play the
tax-paper-bullshit-game, and, if they are to survive at all,
with their status, they learn to play it fairly well, too.
Anyone who has ever been on the board of directors of any
non-profit or charity should be in a position to know this.
Maybe they play it to line their own pockets in various
ways, as is
likely the case close enough with many, while, many do not
do that at all.
But as for me, I felt the whole matter of solicitations or
pandering for,
or of anyone's scheeming or cloying or wheedleing to obtain
'tax-deductions', to be
overall completely
repugnant and
disgusting.
If you want to help some non-profit or Charity or Church, or
private person or family or other,
help them.
If you want 'deductions', then invent, find, or discover
them elsewhere according to the rules of the bullshit-paper
game you are
playing, or, feel obliged tacitly to play, or to be
victimized no matter what you might have wanted, to play, or
from your sense of
feeling coerced, grudgingly, to play, or however the hell
you feel like doing it, or elect to do it.
If you are trying to get free advertiseing under pretext of
helping some organization, then maybe that is what you are
doing.
That or
make
some deal with a charity expecting publicity for your
'work', who you expect is going to play
up your contribution or highlight it, then just accept that
whatever you do or do not get in that regard, is the
value-in-return you are going to get, and stop worrying
about
the 'deduction'.
Phil
el ve
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