Charity

I know, I was going to post more stuff about Ireland.  Next post, maybe even later today, but first I want to talk about charities.

I got a call from Washington State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police late last month.  Since I'm a nasty, suspicious person, I didn't want to give them any credit card information over the phone, so I asked that they mail me information.  I felt uncomfortable, because the caller clearly didn't sound like a volunteer.  He used pushy jargon, didn't seem particularly grateful when I said I'd contribute $25, and then asked if I would contribute more when I got my invoice in order to help cover overhead associated with mailed contributions.  I hung up feeling iffy about the whole thing and was glad that I'd have a chance to investigate further once I got the mailed materials.  I hearts teh internets.

The letter I received looks very shiny and promises to contribute to all kinds of things I normally eagerly support:  helping out police and families in distress, developing crisis management and stress support programs,  LEO Torch Run for Special Olympics, college scholarships for children of LEO's, etc.  Seven items were listed as examples.  I thought wow, this is great!  But, being horribly suspicious, I did a web search.

I won't call them a scam like some have.  But they do appear to be a commercial, money-making venture rather than what I would call a true charity.  Their last report to Washington State's secretary of state reveals that 20% of money actually reaches the LEO community.  I've also seen an older figure of 18%, so I guess they've improved.  (Yikes.)  The BBB hasn't received any requested information from them--which isn't necessarily bad, but raises my eyebrows and makes me want to dig deeper.  I'm glad I did. 

The Charity Navigator puts some perspective on overhead and percentage of charitable contributions that actually goes to charity.  My feeling is that 20% going to charity isn't good enough, not even for government work.  $20 of my $25 would have gone to the company for their overhead.  Well.  It seems obvious that if I want to give money to police programs, there have to be better and more efficient ways to do that.  In 2008, Washington State Lodge brought in $816,882 and spent $576,131 on fund raising.  They also spent almost $40,000 on conventions, conferences and meetings.  I totally feel their pain in the convention department, but having said that, with their additional accounting expenses and what-not, have very little left for, you know, charity, the reported purpose of their organization.

I can't support this kind of inefficiency, even if it's not deliberately set up to provide jobs off of people's goodwill rather than help people (or animals) in need.

Always, always check out charities before contributing.  I'm all about feeling good for helping out a good cause, but I want that good feeling to be real and justified, not a phantom thing because I went through the motions and poured money through a phone line.

It's a shame.  I would love to support LEOs and their families, especially when they're in crisis.  I'll just have to find another route, to honor the pledge I made.  It most certainly will not be through the Washington State Lodge Fraternal Order of Police today or next year or ever unless they shape up their organizational practices. 

Saving Souls

I had an amazing time yesterday at the Concert for Cline.  Incredible performances by (I'm writing these in no particular order):

 Lisa Otey (daughter of Cline and an amazing musician)

 Diane Van Deurzen (Lisa's wonderful partner and an incredible vocalist)

David Otey (who has no website, ahem!)(son of Cline, an excellent trombone player and vocalist) 

Gay Otey (former wife of Cline, an exquisite pianist)

John Baker (who still teaches choir at Rex Putnam, performed The Lord's Prayer!!) 

Lavonna Zeller (if you're in Portland, OR go see her at Tony Starlight's this Thursday!) 

and here my swiss cheese memory starts to fail me ... Pat? who played Rachmaninoff (she said she'd see if she could 'get through it' --wow, if I could get through it like that, I'd be one proud camper) and three wonderful women from Marylhurst's music therapy program, one of who played a fun jig on violin accompanied by guitar.  If anyone who was there is reading this, please comment on anyone I've missed or details like names and such.  

And then there was me, little ol' me who read my words about Cline W. Otey Jr.  Although at times I felt like I had no business on that stage, everyone was so kind and said beautiful things about my writing.  Reading amid that much talent collected in one place, I felt lucky just to be there.  Yep, that's me, Guy, just excited to be on the show.  (Reference, Galaxy Quest, one of the best movies of all time for this long-time fan of things SF/F.)

But enough about me, I want to write about these people and this program.  Actually, I take that back.  There isn't room to describe the performers adequately.  I may try in future posts.  Today I want to discuss the music therapy program.

What is music therapy, anyway?  It really is therapy.  Music helps people heal faster, or if they can't heal, it helps them cope.  Kids with disabilities can express themselves, and they learn more and more quickly.  People with pain can escape into music for a while.  People with emotional problems can dig deep or let go through music.  People who can't connect in any other way, can sometimes connect through music.  I heard part of a story about a person who was deaf and sick enough to be cut off from most human contact, but could feel the vibrations of music and responded to it.  Sometimes that's the key to saving a life.  And if a life can't be saved, then think about how music can battle against despair, not just for the sick but for everyone who wants to do so much for the desperately ill, for the family and friends whose reserves run lower and lower as illnesses stretch on and on. 

As I learned about the impact music can make in medicine, I realized these people were doing more than saving lives by assisting healing through music.  They're quite literally saving souls.  

There's no adequate scale to measure the impact on a three year old child with leukemia who can strum a guitar and create something beautiful, something that ripples through the world.  That child's response to making something real and precious when every other part of that child's world is disassembling can have no price.  It does have a cost, though, and so awareness is needed to help promote and develop music therapy programs.  Compared to drugs and specialized equipment and doctors with extensive and expensive ongoing educations and hospital overhead, music therapy is, as they say, cheap insurance.  People not only don't realize its importance, but don't know it's available to ask for.

Currently in my area music therapy services are provided by a non-profit organization.  For those of us involved in non or not-for-profits, we know this is a blessing and a curse.  You get great enthusiasm, but by their natures these kind of programs are subject to whim and climate and often can't afford to provide as much service (or advertising) as they would want to.  Which means music therapy is relatively unknown, and can be hard to get even if you do know about it.  Programs like the ones at Marylhurst are then caught between a rock and a hard place.  Do you promote the services of your graduates and find jobs for your graduating students who then compete against a very worthy non-profit, or do you wait for a position to open within the non-profit, which may or may not pay--in which case, does that mean there will be few or no full-time paid music therapists in the area?  At the moment, one student has addressed this situation by choosing to move out of our area on graduation to develop a program in another state that doesn't have a non-profit.  I would much rather she stay here, in case I need her, or my son, or my daughter ... my DH probably would pass on the music therapy, but you never know.  I don't think the non-profit can afford to keep her full time, though.  I think they do as much as they can with the monies they have.

So music therapy is stuck.  Spread the word about music therapy.  If you think you may have a need for music therapy, investigate it, ask for it--demand for these services will help get music therapy unstuck, whether it's in a non-profit or integrated situation.

Remember the hospice situation?  I find a lot of parallels between hospice services and music therapy.  It seems like music therapy is where hospice used to be.

David Otey had a good friend visiting from Brazil, a doctor with (fortunately for me) beautiful English language skills.  She said that doctors and nurses play music for their patients in Brazil.  We don't have many of those kinds of doctors and nurses here.  We need music therapists.  Our ancestors know better than we do in some ways.  They understood the power of music better than many of us understand it today.  Because it's so commonplace, and because in the United States it seems like it's all about record sales and times played on the radio, music has been marginalized as mere entertainment.  It's so much more than that.  Give a child a drum sometime.  See what happens.

Every year we hold a party called the August Babies Birthday Bash for all our friends and family born in August and everyone who knows them (or knows someone who knows them.  It's a big, fun party.)  The favorite part of many an August Baby is the bardic circle and passing around the Lobster of Shame.  When you get the lobster, you tell a joke, sing a song, tell a story, or you have to dance with the Lobster of Shame.  (It plays music while you do it, too.  It's really  ... words fail me.)  Sometimes people bring musical instruments and then the belly dancing happens, or we bring down a boom box to dance to drum-heavy songs.  The connection is magical.  I seldom sing in public, but I sing at most ABBBs.  

When my father lay dying, one of the things I got for him was a music video, but not just any music video.  It had the most amazing music, and images from all over the world of waterfalls and incredible canyons and mountains and skies that are so beautiful they make you cry.  He watched that video hundreds of times.  It took him everywhere he might want to go, but couldn't, because his body was failing.  As an artist and a musician, I'm sure he would have played and painted those things for himself, but brain cancer stole that from him.  The efforts of many musicians and photographers gave a little of that beauty back to him.

Music can be many things.  It can be pure entertainment, but it can also be so much more.  Musicians don't always understand the power they have, or some do and disdain or ignore it.  But many musicians do understand, do respect, and absolutely love not just their own music but a diversity of music from all over the world.  It's a primal energy that hasn't fit very well with science until relatively recently in our history.  I believe we're overdue in recognizing the true, primal, potent value of music once again.  Support music therapy.  There's many ways to support it, but perhaps the most important one is to ask for it.

Give it away

I know times are tough, especially for folks who are living paycheck to paycheck.  Gas prices, food prices, air-we-breathe prices are rising and the salary isn't keeping up, if you're so lucky as to have a salary.

But it's harder to get by for the folks who provide valuable services for us too.  It's harder for charities, harder for artists, harder for contractors and yes, it's harder for people running websites like Ralan.com.  So quit yer whining about how tough things are--it's tough all around--and donate even if it's a tiny bit to the people who do stuff that's important to you when there's something like a fund drive, or if it's a free monthly online magazine like Flash Fiction Online.  It's free to you, but not to them.  

If you're not a reader or a writer but you love animals and care about their welfare, think about donating to a shelter.  Pet food and supplies prices (as those of us with animals know) are going up too, which makes it that much harder for local humane societies and no-kill shelters.  

Or pick whatever websites or 'free' services you use or causes you care about.  Don't feel guilty, please.  Don't feel pressured.  Just look around and see if you have a dollar.  Skip the latte or the bag of potato chips or decide to drink water instead of pop for a couple of days.  When money is tight, it's the financially wise thing to do.  

At this point you're thinking huh?  But seriously.  When your budget sucks and you're tearing your hair out, chances you're looking at how much money is flowing out of your hands.  When  you start looking at who else is struggling, a mental shift begins to occur.  You start thinking about how much you have, how lucky you are compared to, say, folks living in Galveston.  And when you start to look for money to help, good grief, there it is!  You're overdrawn, you have credit card debt but there's a friggin' dollar in your car, or there's stuff in your garage that you haven't looked at in years that you could sell at a garage sale--advertise 25% of proceeds will go to charity X.  You may think hey, I'll give up pre-processed, pre-packaged food three days a week, ease up on my grocery bills that way, and in celebration of this decision I'll donate two bucks to the rotary club so that they can send books to Cambodia.

This is why just about every financial advice book I've read strongly suggests giving to charities even when times are tough, be it someone with lots of fame and hype like Suze Orman, or my very own accountant (I love you LaVerne!)  That mindset shift is critical in order to reduce unnecessary expenses without feeling impoverished.  If you feel like you're denying yourself and spiraling under, just like a diet you'll eventually rebound and binge.  If you feel like you have money to give away (or you don't have to starve yourself) you're more likely to meet your financial goals.

If it's a non-profit charitable organization you can take it off your taxes (bonus!) or, as in my case, if it's part of the cost of doing business you can probably take it off as a business expense (check with tax law before making this assumption.)  Even if it doesn't, it'll do you good.  So think on it, choose wisely (please don't buy a pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness--donate directly to the charity) and scrape up some change.  Today!