One Person’s View of the Collection Basket: “O reason not the need!”

By Mardy High

A recent coffee hour conversation gave me several days of thought about our collection basket and our charitable fundraising in the UUCUV. How do we share the basket with our partners? What is the relation of this giving to other fundraisers such as the Raffle Tickets at Pods for the Pulpit? How will that be shared? These were all good questions, and I think many of us have them in the back of our minds. How does the basket work?

Though most people seem to be giving cash, putting an offering in the basket in the form of a check allows you to track it for tax deduction purposes, and a few people take advantage of that. Some people put their pledge checks
in the basket too, but those are not counted as part of the collection, so a separate check for the collection is necessary. Perhaps we could have envelopes labeled “Pledge” and “Collection” for people who want to put their checks in with some measure of privacy. This might help the treasurer, who sometimes notes there is no comment in the memo line to indicate what kind of payment this is!

I am glad that we are working on a new way of partnering with a select number of organizations through sharing some of our weekly offertory collections and inviting them to come to our services. We will understand them better, and see what we can do to help them in more ways than just monetary. However, I hope our combined charitable giving from raffle tickets and sharing the collection basket will still come to 3% of our total budget by the end of the year, and if it does not, I hope we will do something to fix that.

Do we view the collection basket differently now, as a result of this new approach? I wonder how everyone decides what to put in the basket, apart from random bills we happen to have in our wallets? If we pledge a certain amount annually, paid directly in checks to the treasurer, how does that relate to what we put in the basket? Aren’t these actually two very separate kinds of gifts to our congregation? One is based on an overall notion of annual pledging, and the other relates to our attendance. If we come every week, does that mean we can put LESS in the basket (spreading
a finite amount over more services)? But we’re actually getting MORE out of the experience by coming frequently, so perhaps we ought to put in MORE. Are we to decide based on how much salvation we receive? Or is it like public radio? Should we support it because we want it always to be there for us when we turn it on: if we listen daily, we should give accordingly? That’s another whole discussion, about whether we are tuning out when we should be tuning in!

We might be tempted to put in $10 in the basket on Sunday, partly because this is a great religious community and we want to support it, and partly because we love being together on a Sunday, and partly because our kids love the Sunday School and the sermon is terrific and the choir sings beautifully. We are moved. But on the other hand, these are all things that are supported by our pledge, so maybe we can just put in $5. After all, the average amount that seems to be dropped in the basket is smaller than $10. Come to think of it, even smaller than $5. Maybe we can just put in $2. Or even $1.

This process of “reasoning down” the gift reminds me of King Lear, when his daughters Goneril and Regan were paring down the number of knights in his retainer. Why did he need 100 when 50 would do? Why even 50? Why not 25? or 10? Why even 1? Lear cries out in utter anguish, “O reason not the need!” For him it is an existential question. Without a retainer, he is nothing.

Without a collection basket full of gifts, who are we? When we declare on a given Sunday that the basket will be shared with Cover or LISTEN or Good Neighbor Clinic, it declares even more generously who we are. In time we might get a new view of the collection basket. It is organic, and should overflow like the magic pasta pot in the Strega Nona story.