Friday, February 22, 2013

Bah, humbug!

Charities try to encourage donations by offering thank-you gifts in return, but this may be backfiring. Recent experiments involving more than 1,300 adults showed that if a gift was attached as a premium for their donation, they actually gave less.  It also didn’t matter whether the gift was perceived as valuable or desirable. The researchers suggest that gifts may lessen the “altruistic satisfaction” donors get from giving.

I usually decline such gifts, thinking that means more money for the charity. What about you?

Monday, February 18, 2013

Goodbye, Babar....

The Nairobi Star reports that 2000 elephants are killed for their tusks every year in Kenya alone. The Chinese desire for “ivory status symbols” stimulates the poaching that threatens to wipe out Africa’s elephants “in the next two decades.”