Charity

Daily writing prompt

If you had a million dollars to give away, who would you give it to?

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Jen and I were just discussing this the other day. Was the daily prompt eaves dropping? I wonder…

With the recent Powerball lottery coming close to two billion dollars, we had a little bit of fantasizing about what we would do with the winnings. Giving to charity was high on the list of things to do with the money but it followed spreading the wealth to our families and friends. First we take care of the kids and set them up for the future. Then we take care of our parents, my siblings, and their kids. Then we take care of some of our friends and their kids. I don’t think we would give enough to set anyone up for life, but colleges and mortgages and things like that would never be worried about again. Then we would set up a trust for ourselves in an attempt to allow us to just live off the interest earned. Sort of like a salary for ourselves that would hopefully keep us at a stable point for our future.

After all of that gets taken care of, then we start giving to charity. Our day dream didn’t include an actual dollar amount to play with, but let us just say it was a cool million dollars, which sounds like a fortune, but once you get down to it wouldn’t be enough to enact any real change for any charity. It’s the thought that counts though.

I think we would focus on medical research. My step son has type one diabetes. Finding a reputable diabetic research group would be my primary goal. I would want to give the bulk of the mil’ to them. Anything that might have a chance to make his life easier in the future.

Another research direction to give to would be finding a research group working on dementia. After what my mother went through in her final few years… I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. If we could be even the tiniest bit of help with unlocking the mystery of memory then that would be money very well spent.

One more obvious point of focus would be cancer research. My mother’s problems started with a brain tumor. One of my friends lost his seven year old son to a brain tumor. We know a few people who are dealing with prostate cancer and different forms of leukemia. Research into any of those would be worthwhile research topics to focus on.

So there you go. If I had a million dollars worth of charitable donations burning a hole in my wallet, and assuming we had already taken steps to make sure our family and friends are taken care of, then those would be a few primary targets. Chances are I would give it all to diabetes research as that would do the most good for my step son, but any of these would be worthy of my money.