What, you mean you don’t give to charity???

I found myself suggesting to a friend recently that supporting good causes was undergoing a huge change; that it's becoming almost fashionable to support a charity and more and more people are doing it because they think everyone else is, and it’s the thing to do.

This was prompted, in part, because a couple of days before another friend had said to me: ‘I feel like I should support a charity, but I’m not sure which one to support.’

I thought that was really insightful –- because they were clearly not motivated by a cause or a need, or something they believed passionately in.  Instead, it felt like they were saying, ‘I’ve got a great career, a nice car, I wear good clothes, I can afford nice wine these days. Everyone else seems to give to a charity, so it must be what one does; like going snowboarding or playing golf.  I don’t want to be the odd one out.’

I think social media is the big lever in this, because it gives people a platform to show others what they’re doing, where they’re going, who with, what they did, how much fun they had doing it; it gives us all a way to share more about ourselves with the people we’ve got a connection with.  You could argue that there’s an element of competitiveness about some of what people share, but it’s also hugely positive -- because it gives us a deeper understanding about the people we know, through this series of windows into their lives and their psyches, to an extent we never had in the past.

We find out that a business associate we’ve known for years takes the most beautiful photographs, that a friend we haven’t seen for a while is backpacking solo in Japan, that one of our old clients is an aficionado of facial hair, that an old house mate now has two gorgeous children and two enormous pedigree cats, that someone we went to school with likes Jon Spencer Blues Explosion too.  And we find out which charities they all support -- because they invite us to join the group or campaign they’ve set up for the cause on Facebook.

There’s something highly tribal about this –- which is effectively what fashion is all about –- and I think the power it has to spread ideas and information is going make charity giving ‘mainstream’ in a way it has never quite been previously.

I realise this could be perceived as a slightly tasteless thing to say, when so many charities are raising money for deeply serious causes, but I’d rather people gave money to charity than spend it on Louis Vuitton handbags any day -– so shoot me.