I still remember the time I ran into Woolworths at 7am right as the door opened to buy $400 worth of their paper bags because the delivery of bags our food bank was expecting the previous day never arrived and we had 800 hampers to pack that day.
I was wearing my uniform and I had my card with me to get the wholesale discount as part of the agreement our organisation had with woolworths.
The store manager recognised me as I walked in and ran off to grab some unopened boxes of bags for me.
When I hit to the checkout the cashier ran everything through, applied the discount, and even engaged in some mindful small talk about how busy we were expecting to get today and if Aldi had stopped giving us green bacon (they had not).
Then when we were almost done the cashier asked if I wanted to donate to Food Bank.
While I’m standing there holding a Food Bank charity partner wholesale card, wearing my Food bank charity partner uniform.
I said “uh, no, thanks” and I suspected the the cashier was on autopilot when she said “really? But it’s for food security” I said no again and they asked why not, at that point I realised that they weren’t on autopilot, they genuinely didn’t understand why I would not be using the food bank charity partner debit card to donate to food bank via woolworths.
She said it wouldn’t matter because the money would “go back to food bank eventually” (ignoring admin and financial management costs, it’s a net loss)… So why would I donate it if it would litteraly do nothing to benefit food bank other than give Woolies the opportunity to say they donated x money to food bank, bich that’s basically fraud.
Leaving the fact that you were working for a charity organization - is it even legal to make a donation-of-opportunity when you buy something on behalf of someone else, using their money?
This is a really good point that I hadn’t considered at the time.
I’m always wondering this when my current boss (working at a different organisation now) will tell me to uber somewhere because it’s too far for me to cycle and use the company debit card.
I hate that American style tipping culture is becoming more common in Australia, but I hate the idea of someone not being paid a fair wage even more, and my boss is on the same page, but I still second guess myself every time I go to enter the tip because its not my money, so I’m always trying to decide how much to tip based on what I think is fair but also what our accountant might say.
Not to mention how many carers and support workers and financial powers of attorney would be asked to make donations of opportunity. I wonder if there are sort of “financial intentions” documents people can prepare in advance with trusted people to say “these are my values, if a charity aligns with my value’s, my carer can donate up to $y of my money or x% of my income per year”
Dang, not sure I’ve cooked green bacon, but I’ve cooked grayish bacon and it comes out ok. It kind of makes me feel better to know they donate expiring meat. It’d be better if they donated it a little earlier, like no one’s buying the gray bacon, but it’s still edible.
So you explained it to the employee and they still didn’t get it? You are already donating your time to the food bank, I feel like most people would understand if it were framed like that.
I was a staff member, so it wasn’t exactly donating my time (though I won’t deny I put in a lot of free overtime and rarely took the allotted breaks, so some of my time at that organisation was donated, but I was a paid staff member)
The bigger issue was that they money I was using did not belong to me, it already belonged to the charity that I was being asked to donate to.
I still remember the time I ran into Woolworths at 7am right as the door opened to buy $400 worth of their paper bags because the delivery of bags our food bank was expecting the previous day never arrived and we had 800 hampers to pack that day.
I was wearing my uniform and I had my card with me to get the wholesale discount as part of the agreement our organisation had with woolworths.
The store manager recognised me as I walked in and ran off to grab some unopened boxes of bags for me.
When I hit to the checkout the cashier ran everything through, applied the discount, and even engaged in some mindful small talk about how busy we were expecting to get today and if Aldi had stopped giving us green bacon (they had not).
Then when we were almost done the cashier asked if I wanted to donate to Food Bank.
While I’m standing there holding a Food Bank charity partner wholesale card, wearing my Food bank charity partner uniform.
I said “uh, no, thanks” and I suspected the the cashier was on autopilot when she said “really? But it’s for food security” I said no again and they asked why not, at that point I realised that they weren’t on autopilot, they genuinely didn’t understand why I would not be using the food bank charity partner debit card to donate to food bank via woolworths.
She said it wouldn’t matter because the money would “go back to food bank eventually” (ignoring admin and financial management costs, it’s a net loss)… So why would I donate it if it would litteraly do nothing to benefit food bank other than give Woolies the opportunity to say they donated x money to food bank, bich that’s basically fraud.
Leaving the fact that you were working for a charity organization - is it even legal to make a donation-of-opportunity when you buy something on behalf of someone else, using their money?
This is a really good point that I hadn’t considered at the time.
I’m always wondering this when my current boss (working at a different organisation now) will tell me to uber somewhere because it’s too far for me to cycle and use the company debit card.
I hate that American style tipping culture is becoming more common in Australia, but I hate the idea of someone not being paid a fair wage even more, and my boss is on the same page, but I still second guess myself every time I go to enter the tip because its not my money, so I’m always trying to decide how much to tip based on what I think is fair but also what our accountant might say.
Not to mention how many carers and support workers and financial powers of attorney would be asked to make donations of opportunity. I wonder if there are sort of “financial intentions” documents people can prepare in advance with trusted people to say “these are my values, if a charity aligns with my value’s, my carer can donate up to $y of my money or x% of my income per year”
Wtf is green bacon?!
It’s from a dr Seuss book
Well I don’t like it! Seriously!
But it was just eggs & ham
Bacon that’s old enough that there’s nothing else to do with it but give it to a food bank I suppose.
Dang, not sure I’ve cooked green bacon, but I’ve cooked grayish bacon and it comes out ok. It kind of makes me feel better to know they donate expiring meat. It’d be better if they donated it a little earlier, like no one’s buying the gray bacon, but it’s still edible.
Well, I’m hoping, it’s a Saint Patrick’s Day special, because there’s nothing environmentally friendly about bacon…
So you explained it to the employee and they still didn’t get it? You are already donating your time to the food bank, I feel like most people would understand if it were framed like that.
Not even just that, the money they were spending was the food bank’s money, and the card was labeled as such.
I was a staff member, so it wasn’t exactly donating my time (though I won’t deny I put in a lot of free overtime and rarely took the allotted breaks, so some of my time at that organisation was donated, but I was a paid staff member)
The bigger issue was that they money I was using did not belong to me, it already belonged to the charity that I was being asked to donate to.