It’s not how much you give, but how wisely you give

They arrive with almost every delivery of mail. Slid in between catalogs for fruit-of-the-month clubs, flannel-lined blue jeans and DVDs of 30-year-old PBS dramas — and the infrequent letters from people I actually know — are pleas for donations.

The requests are mostly for money, though clothing, cars and other material goods also make the wish list.

They come from well-known entities like Oxfam and The Nature Conservancy, as well as less familiar organizations that send pages of information to explain their worthiness and reason for being.

Some take a sentimental approach, hoping to draw a check with poverty-porn photos of a bedraggled child cuddling a stuffed toy or an elderly woman warming her hands by a wood stove in a ramshackled cabin. A few include address labels, too often with your name spelled incorrectly, or small trinkets, as if to guilt you with a gilded pin declaring you a donor though you have yet to give.

The tactics cause you to wonder about the return on investment and how wisely the organization spends the money it receives. They make people wary of giving, which is how it should be.

My guess is that most people are generous, but I don’t imagine that they deal out their cash indiscriminately. Even the 1 percenters, the wealthiest among us, don’t send in contributions thoughtlessly, which is also how it should be.

Affluence, however, does allow them myriad choices.

Mitt Romney, for instance, could opt to take his family on tours of the world, learn to paint, garden, play Tetris with abandon or read every book his heart desires. With a net worth estimated at $250 million, Romney has chosen to reach for the presidency, his charity taking the form of sharing his business acumen and evolving principles with his fellow Americans. His generosity has a self-indulgent return on investment, but it is his money to do as he wishes.

On another track is Bill Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft whose net worth comes in much higher at around $60 billion. He put together a foundation that invests in improving education in-country and out, and research focused on global health issues, such as malaria and polio eradication. His return on investment spreads wider than a run for the White House; leading the free world, as we know, has far more obstacles in-country and out.

Though Gates’ charitable organization has provided Hawaii institutions with grants, Pierre Omidyar’s philanthropic foundation has become more prominent and more relevant here lately. The former eBay founder counts among his enterprises the Ulupono Initiative, with strategies to increase the islands’ abilities to produce food and renewable energy, and maintain the state’s natural resources, environment and social values while moving the economy ahead. It is a formidable venture, even for someone who reportedly has $6.2 billion at hand.

Most of us would never be able to match such monetary contributions, but generosity of spirit has as much, if not more value, if we choose to invest wisely.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.