Rasing Money

Thanks to a friend, I am invited to contribute to a silent auction for a good Jewish cause. As a Tupperware Consultant, I am donating a gift certificate. As fundraising goes in the Jewish community, it is easier to get your needs met from a multinational corporation who has driven your expectations off shore than it is to gain financial support at the grassroots level from congregation members that we see all the time. The multinationals profess to be better able to give you what you want from afar as it is tough to expect people to support what they want in their own community and then to contribute money and make it happen.

The non profit silent auction is like a multinational corporation when the issue is money. People see the items and immediately, they learn to ignore needs, their expectations shrink as they connect their role to the objective and resist raising money for their community. Multinationals are successful as they diminish the needs of employees and customers, increasing their position as they go. They keep hold of their gelt and are richer for it. Much like how a multinational corporation depends on people to keep them afloat. In our small shuls, these community members wonder how we ever get by without their unyielding help and support.

As a result of this opposite world behavior, the "I can get it cheaper at (insert Big Box store here)," supporters quickly become consumers and forget all about their community's needs as they withhold their expendable income for no good. Thinking only about the bottom line, the personal need to minimize their spending now, of all times and places. Such people are cleaver to appear caring and supportive as they attend key events that address their group's needs for money while they risk nothing. We are taught to kvetch about the goys, as foreigners?

I often wonder about the Yiddisha strangers in my landscape who pose as supportive icons of the cause just as they are seen leaving (early) from any number of fund raising events to go pick up a few things that they "need from (insert Big Box store)." Jews release tensions that acquiring goods and services causes them when combined with being seen at fundraising events where they didn't fully support the goal, to raise money, to give as we can. As these Jews are en route on a simple drive out to the nearest (Big Box store) to acquire even more drech I have to wonder, who let the dogs out?