Obviously this is a hot topic in the news at the moment, but while its easy enough to grasp the principle, sometimes the amounts involved are hard to get a real feel for. The human mind does have trouble truly comprehending large numbers anyway, and to many people the difference between .1% of GDP and .4% of GDP is just meaningless.

I find it easier to think of it in terms of GDP being like a person’s salary. Looked at that way, the international target figure of .7% of GDP is like someone earning £15,000 a year paying £105 (or just over £2 a week) of it to charity.

A lot of people earning £15,000 a year probably do give at least an average of £2 a week to charity, whether it is through putting money in a tin, lottery tickets, raffle tickets or sponsoring friends and relatives.

For someone on a reasonable salary of £40,000 a year .7% is like giving £280 a year, or a bit over £5 a week to charity. It seems like a lot, but doesn’t make much of a dent in the take-home wages of well over £2000 a month, and as that person would be likely to have a lot more disposable income than the £15K earner it would hurt the pocket less than their £2.

The fuss at the moment is about the US only putting 0.16% of their GDP into overseas aid. It is still a lot of money because their GDP is enormous, but it is the equivalent to that £15,000 earner giving £24 a year to charity. Or someone earning £100,000 a year giving an average of £3 a week to charity. Doesn’t seem so much in those terms does it? Most people on even half that salary will be givng that much when you add up the various sponsorships, raffle tickets or donations.

I pointed out before how, when doing street collections for charity, it seemed like those with the least to spare were giving proportionately the most, and it appears that the phenomenon is scalable.

Mind you, I’m still not sure that any cause justifies inflicting Annie Lennox on us again!