Learning to Receive

Rebecca Meyer Carr is a Wexner Graduate Fellowship alumna, (Class III) and the Manager of the Patient Services department of HelpHOPELive, a nonprofit organization providing fundraising guidance to transplant and catastrophic injury patients.  Rebecca can be reached at: rebeccamcarr@verizon.net. 

For many of us, asking for money is just part of what we do in our daily work lives.  No matter how much training we’ve been given, or how often we’ve done it, it’s never easy.  We’ve been taught that money is an awkward subject and that asking for it can feel uncomfortable at best and humiliating at worst.

In my work, I teach people how to fundraise.  My clients are experiencing a medical crisis and they need community financial support to get them through it.   I frequently have to work with them to get past their pride of not wanting to ask others for financial assistance.  Often, their very lives are at stake and they still just don’t want to ask others for money.

My client, Jenny, had to travel 1500 miles from home to a specialized transplant center for two organ transplants.  Living away from home with a caregiver for close to a year was not financially feasible for her family.  So, she came to me to help her with fundraising.  But it was Jenny who taught me a lesson about asking for help in this eloquent blog post to her community: 

Remember not only to give what you can to others, but also to receive.  It is a lesson I am continually learning.  One of my dad’s favorite paintings is the one by Picasso that shows a bouquet of flowers being grasped by two hands.  From the viewpoint of the observer it is impossible to tell which hand is giving and which is receiving.  In giving we receive and in receiving we give.