OPINION: Incentives for charity, good or bad?

The idea of participating in charitable acts refers to voluntarily providing various kins of assistance to disadvantaged groups. These acts could include donations or active volunteering at certain facilities, but the main question sparks from how people commit themselves to these acts. There’s no question that the effects of charity are good; groups of people can work together to provide aid to those and need and try to solve issues like poverty and hunger that are prevalent in today’s society. However, since charity is intended to be a selfless act of giving to those in need, incentives for urging more people to commit to these acts are seen as unethical because then, the majority of people only carry out these acts if they benefit from it, which is the exact opposite of what selflessness should be. Even though offering incentives for charitable acts promotes selfishness and self-benefit instead of primarily focusing on the common people, the effects that humanitarian acts have on society by providing things that you have in abundance to those in need outweigh the negative sentiments that incentives might have because selfishness doesn’t matter to material consequences if incentives can encourage more people to participate.

While volunteering and other humanitarian acts are supposed to be for helping others and the community, more organizations struggle with the fact that most people are busy with conflicting schedules and can’t find time to participate. If fewer people commit themselves to help their society, benefits like reduction of poverty and hunger are seen at a much smaller scale. Thus, organizations try to use incentives to promise benefits to the person that’s committing the acts in exchange for helping the receivers. Clubs and organizations incentivize their participants to volunteer by promising “service points” for every event or action done, which are required to run for a leadership position. Although things like canned food drives and clothing donations help those who need these items, the fact that most participants are acting only to obtain their benefits doesn’t affect the final result. This means that it’s a good thing that these incentives exist because more people will try to find time from their busy schedules to participate. Most colleges require or prefer their applicants to have a variety of volunteer hours. The reason behind this isn’t a number-based system, which gives higher priority to those students with the most hours, it’s a way to incentivize students to give back to their community. The sense of giving and selflessness can only be achieved if students actively participate in charitable acts, which means that initial selfishness and greed can eventually be replaced with love and gratitude. If colleges requiring these hours is the only way for students to find time from their busy schedules to commit charitable acts, then the incentives themselves can have a positive effect in the future.

The main ethical question that comes from giving incentives to do something charitable is the sentiment that comes from doing the said action. Committing yourself to do a charitable act is meant to be a selfless act in which a person devotes time, energy, and resources to help someone else. When a person does the act because there’s an incentive, the idea of selflessness goes away because the time, energy, and resources that are spent in doing said charitable act aren’t intended for the assistance of the receiver, although the final effect may be beneficial to the intended receiver. From personal experience, last year when I applied to become a HOSA officer I was running short of one service point. Since it was around the end of the year, the advisors told me if I donated 10 cans I would be eligible to run. The night before, I went to the grocery store to buy as many cans as I could and promptly donated them to the delivery location the next morning. The main focus of the action, though with charitable consequences, wasn’t intended for the good of the people that were hungry and would benefit from the food, it was meant to receive that benefit of earning a service point. Though it’s true that I felt good about donating food to those in need, it’s unlikely that I would have donated that day without the incentive. However, the people who received the food didn’t know that the person who donated to them was incentivized to do so, they were only enjoying the consequences of that action. Although it is true that incentives are ethically wrong because they encourage the sentiments of selfishness, the consequences matter more than the original intent because even if the charitable action was done for selfish reasons, doing so can also promote feelings of gratitude and selflessness to the person performing the action.

The debate over whether or not incentives morally just tend to either call the intentions of the action ethically wrong or say that the consequences of those actions end up having positive material effects. While it is true that solely doing something charitable for your own selfish means is wrong, those incentives do encourage more people to perform charitable acts which means society can see the positive effects of these actions more often.

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Writer: Sandali Srivastava

Editor: Akriti Nepal