Giving to Family and Friends

Many people want and feel they have a need to give to others – particularly a community group or a great cause. That is fantastic, but should it be at the cost of spending time with your own family, children, elderly parents or your partner? On the other hand, community groups support families and provide a place for family members to let down their hair, relax, cool-off and go back to family and family issues refreshed and thus more able to be a constructive family member. The main thing is to keep things in balance and to make sure that family and friends are not sacrificed to community causes.

From a workplace giving point of view, the new trend for corporate giving is part of the push for triple bottom line accounting. It has also been more recently stimulated by the year 2001 as the International Year of Volunteering.

Corporate giving for some corporations means staff volunteering; for some corporations it means staff donations matched by the corporation; for others it is both.

The push for family work place balance has also had recent impetus with the strong demand for paid maternity leave. Less controversially it involves workplaces allowing job sharing, family leave – acknowledgement that workers are also family members.

It is vital that all of the efforts for workplace giving are integrated and do not work against each other. For example, there are some workplaces in Australia with staff volunteering programs where the volunteering effort is selected within a charitable rather than a community model. This means that staff are volunteering for a day or more each year, giving time to charities. At the same time they are unable to volunteer at the local school to hear their own and other local children read. The corporate giving program has in these cases been completely separated from family giving.

Formal charitable giving has been split off from giving to family and friends – and often it is also split from giving to local communities.

It is as though charity is valued more highly by these corporations than prevention which is ensuring that families and local communities are strengthened.

Strong families and communities means that disadvantage will decline and the need for charity will also decline.

Consider the following points:

	Keep some sense of balance between time given to community interests and causes and time with family and friends.
	Try to find some community interests that allows your family to participate with you – this is especially good with children as it involves them from an early age in giving back to the community.
	In workplaces, try allowing staff to use staff volunteering time to volunteer to family or local issues, for example: Reading to children in school or helping out with kinder and school excursions Visiting ageing parents and helping them with chores Running after school sporting and arts programs Helping out with before school breakfast programs
	Acknowledge staff contribution as volunteers on weekends and after work, for example: Coaching junior sports Sitting on the board of the local neighborhood house Member of the school council Member of the local progress committee Member of the landcare local tree planting group Member of the local historical society Member of the local choir or community theatre group
	Ensure that programs encouraging staff donations enable staff to select local community groups that support their own family and friends for donations. For example staff should be able to select: The local school The local scouts or guides group The local environment group The local adult learning centre The local disability self-help group The local senior citizens centre
	Give to families and community by ensuring that family/community friendly policies are in place; for example: Family leave available to all staff Job sharing opportunities Part-time working opportunities without a glass ceiling Flexible working hours allowing to have people work at home where needed and possible Family friendly shifts and rosters Paid maternity leave Training for supervisor levels in family development and issues that affect staff, such as babies, adolescent problems, divorce, ageing parents etc. Close the workplace at 5pm one night a week - try and have the CEO go home to be with family or to contribute to the local community as a participant, as well as all the staff. Back to top