Perks of Being Charitable
People are often encouraged to be charitable. Incentives are commonly used to give people a reason to donate. Some occurrences that show this include school collections that offer bonus points to donors and tax deductions for contributing to charities. Understandably, many believe that these incentives are morally wrong because being charitable should be a selfless act done for the benefit of others, but offering incentives for donations is no doubt beneficial to society.
Offering incentives makes donating a two-way street where both parties involved benefit. When there’s a school drive collecting blankets for the Humane Society and all students that participate get an extra homework grade or a couple of bonus points, more kids will donate. There will be the students that will donate out of the goodness of their hearts, simply because they want to help out the animals and the grade is just an added bonus, a pat on the back, to encourage them to keep donating in the future. Then there will also be those students who will donate because they need the boost in their grades. They may not particularly care about helping the animals, but they or their parents feel that it’s a good opportunity to give their grades an upward push. Either way, both types of students are helping the Humane Society. Every donated blanket, regardless of the intent of the donor, is going to help keep an animal warm. The puppy that gets to snuggle into a blanket rather than lie on the cold ground doesn’t care why it got the blanket, just that it has it now. And who knows? Now that the individuals seeking to benefit themselves have been introduced to donating maybe they’ll get a taste for philanthropy and they’ll continue to do charitable deeds for the benefit of others rather than just themselves.
Charitable acts should be done to help others, not yourself. Right? Are you still doing a good deed if you’re doing it for your own gain? Many people believe that helping others should come from your own humanly goodness and not be done just so you can get some earthly benefit. Although this idea is genuine on a moral level, if you’re being charitable you’re being charitable. Someone worse off is still benefiting and you’re still doing something good and helpful, even if that wasn’t your main purpose for doing it. And maybe you’ll get a taste of that moral high you get from helping someone out and you’ll want to keep helping, and not just for the physical incentives, but for the sake of helping others.
Incentives cause more people to want to be charitable. This benefits society as a whole. Although incentives can seem morally wrong, they successfully get more people to donate, therefore helping more unfortunate people in the process. And there is nothing wrong with helping the less fortunate.
