An idea to help those in need

Yesterday at Safeway, I was asked if I wanted to donate a dollar on top of my grocery bill to their cause of the month (or more appropriately, their disease of the month), which this month is prostate cancer. I said no, in part because my personal budget is a little squeezed right now and I plan my charitable giving and actually give outside of the grocery store. But occasionally, when it's the right organization or cause, I give to it. Costco usually hits me up for a dollar donation when I check out as well, and it usually goes to fund research for some disease.

Does anyone else find it odd that grocery stores don't raise funds to immediately help those in need? Perhaps a domestic violence shelter? At last count, about half of those fleeing domestic violence and seeking to stay at a shelter are turned away in Arizona for a lack of space. Isn't this a far more immediate problem that we could fix far more quickly than, say, curing cancer? I'm not saying cancer or heart disease aren't important priorities. But I sat in a meeting a couple months ago with a representative from Arizona's food banks, and she said that they are faced with the dual problem of more families in need due to layoffs, foreclosures, etc., while also having higher food prices and fewer donations to food banks. With the high price of food, retailers and wholesalers are far less likely to donate food to a food bank. A year ago, food banks in Arizona could get 10 pounds of food for a dollar, while now they can buy about 3.5 pounds for a dollar. So why not collect money at the checkout stand for the Association of Arizona Food Banks, the Salvation Army, or other organizations to whom we normally give during the holidays? I think, unfortunately, that part of the answer is that in higher income neighborhoods, people see diseases as something that may affect them. They may have had a friend or family member affected by a disease, or they may be at risk of it themselves. They are helping "us." In helping the hungry, the homeless, or those down on their luck, they are helping "them" out of a situation they feel they will never personally experience. It's easy to blame "them" for not working harder, not making better life choices, etc.