Wear Your Ribbons Proudly

Last Friday I and an assorted selection of colleagues trotted down to the Intercontinental Hotel for the firms All Ribbon Breakfast.  What is an all ribbon breakfast?  Well you know how apparently nowadays one can't have any sort of charitable endeavour without a coloured ribbon to go with it?  This was a breakfast to support charities of various ribbon denominations.  Seriously, there were more ribbons than on a war veterans chest.

My firm, in one of its more noble activities, has held an annual pink ribbon breakfast for the past few years.  This year the net had apparently been widened.  A whole raft of charities were represented and employees of the firm who either possessed an altruistic bent or were not adverse to a free meal at the firm's expense turned up to support/take advantage of it.  Each table represented a different charity and we were encouraged to come up with decorative centre pieces for our tables to emphasise our deep and passionate commitment to whatever cause we had wound up inadvertently supporting.

The table I and my colleagues were seated at was allocated to the Australian Conservation Foundation.  We had riots of artificial greenery and small stuffed animals (largely made out plastic I was amused to note).  I think if fake ferns and stuffed koalas were on the endangered list we must surely have lifted them off it by now.

Speeches were given by representatives of some of the charities involved, the ongoing help of the firm and its employees was acknowledged and thanked and future directions (and of course the desire for money to pursue them) were outlined.  I can't say I was paying a great deal of attention, I spent most of the breakfast surreptitiously reading a blog dedicated to the wit and wisdom of General Sir Harry Flashman, VC.  I tried not to giggle at what appeared to be serious moments.

The old general would have had some sulphurous things to say about the entire affair but then he wasn't noted for his altruism.  He was, however, able to sniff out bullshit at a hundred yards.  Most of the causes present were worthy enough and certainly deserve support from people willing and able to provide it.  Those people are the taxpayers of Australia who will ultimately foot the bill for any generosity that might be displayed as a result of the breakfast.  I donate to a couple of the charities noted.  My firm has a donation system set up which allows funds to be taken directly from my pay which is handy.  They appear on my group certificate to be offset against my tax which is also handy.

Possibly the most useful thing that such workplace giving does is to distribute what would otherwise be tax dollars to various charities without having to set up a government department to administer it.  For this alone it deserves praise.  It is also a handy way of bringing various deserving causes to the minds of people who might have otherwise overlooked them due to not giving a crap.  There were charities mentioned I had never heard of but there they all were sporting enough ribbons to make them look like survivors of Iwo Jima.  There was even one I will be making (tax deductible) donations to in the future.

Such events are necessary if only to bring people likely to give into the presence of those in need.  Intellectually I know this and my firm's support of these charities probably has kick on effects further than I can see.  This is how the world works and such networking is invaluable to those charities who are trying to help people in genuine need.  And yet a small part of me wishes that the firm had calculated the entire cost of the breakfast and all the associated expenses and simply made a donation for that amount to one of the charities, anonymously.