Thinking about getting involved in nonprofits?

Are you starting to look for nonprofit causes to get involved in?

Are you looking to volunteer or donate or just get involved somehow?

Are you wondering what causes truly deserve your support?

There are over 1.2 million nonprofits in America. Surely they can’t all be equally deserving of funds!

Just look around. There are so many things to be outraged about! Which things are most worth your attention?

So often donors find that what gets their attention is what they have a personal connection to.

And this is well and good. But if you’re looking for a new cause to care about, may I direct you to this helpful guideline?

Is this cause a small versus large moral problem?

What does this mean?

A small versus large moral problem

This is one delicious large moral problem right here!

 

What is a small moral problem?

A small moral problem is, let’s say, the fact that some movie made from a comic book wasn’t totally true to the original. Or how eco-friendly is your local farm. Or how well-paid are the workers at the corner grocery store. Or, let’s say, if cosplay is racist. 

Here’s an example. I used to be a member of the Japanese-Americans Citizens League. One day, one person on the mailing list got in a flutter because they saw the item “Japchae” on a Korean restaurant menu. They thought it was a slur on Japanese people. They wanted to have the League release a statement about it. They wanted to get up in arms. They wanted everyone to back them up on it, and they got a few people rallied around.

Until I pointed out that I had lived in Korea and that this word is simply a Korean word for some very tasty noodles. Then it died down like nothing had ever happened.

It’s like what they wanted to get worked up about was something relatively minor, and pointless, instead of a larger moral issue, like, say, the harassment of Arab Americans (including having their bank accounts closed or being put on no-fly lists) or Hispanic people in ICE detention that mirrored some of the treatment of Japanese-Americans in the 1940s.

 

What is a large moral problem?

The fact that according to Amrita Sen, there are 100 million missing women in the world because of parents aborting their children for being girls, or giving girls less care than boys.

The fact of the right of Palestinians to their own land versus the rapaciousness of Israeli settlers

The fact that our government has taken away our rights in the bill of rights, the rights to peacefully assemble, the right of habeas corpus, and the right to free speech, as well as the right to communicate in privacy at any time in any way.

 

 

 

The fact that hungry seniors live in every neighborhood in America despite the fact that America is one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fact that student debt outpaced credit card debt to pass the 1 trillion mark, when school should be free for students.

The fact that our schools are so chronically underfunded and misguided in “teach-to-the-test” “no-child-left-behind” policies that the real learning often has to take place in after-school programs.

 

 

 

 

The fact that people can be bankrupted and hounded into an early grave by medical debt, even WITH insurance.

The fact that 10% of the people in America hold 80% of the wealth.

 

Do you see the difference?

I’m not telling you that whatever you care about is wrong,
I’m not prohibiting you to be upset or angry or passionate.

But, just because someone cares about something doesn’t give it the same urgency or moral heft as significant moral problems.

How do you determine what is a large or small moral problem? You can ask yourself this.

If at the end of your life, and you’re sitting there with your grandchild, who is now grown, and they ask you,

“What’s your legacy? What are you most proud of doing in your life?”

And you can say, “Well, I sure posted angrily on the internet about racist cosplay a lot” it doesn’t really have the same weight as “I fought for human rights for the Palestinians.”

Which one would you be prouder of?

If you say you care about social justice, it had better be meaningful.

If you’re going to work for change, why not think about truly improving the world for many, instead of working on a small moral problem?

Think about it.

Do you have your own experiences on big vs small moral problems? Please leave a comment.