As a young married in the Clinton years, I joined a women's organization which performed a great deal of charitable work, and which had historically had a membership consisting of exceedingly wealthy, nonworking women. "Wives of good families," was how one of my mom's friends described them. While I may have been a "wife of a good family," I was not wealthy, a young associate with a small law firm ($27.5K annual salary, which was the bare minimum back then, probably equivalent to about $35K now), still paying student loans, and living in a house which would have fit easily into many of the elder members' living rooms. I had joined predominately in order to volunteer with battered women and partly in order to make some connections, in hopes of getting a better job (The former, I did, the latter, I didn't).

In attempting to sell their "endowment fund," the officers of this organization (generally, the trust fund set) would stand in front of the membership and entreat them to donate, "only" $1,000 per year. "You'd only have to give up one $3 cup of coffee a day."

My thoughts at this time were:

1. Who spends $3 per day on coffee?

2. If I did spend $3 per day on coffee, it would likely be because it was my sole pleasure in life to drink that coffee, and I would be unlikely to give it up.

3. How can $1,000 per year be "only?"

4. How can these women not get that $1,000 is a lot of money?

It is years later, and I actually know numerous individuals who regularly spend $4 per day on Starbucks, and they're not all wealthy either. I am inclined to look more charitably upon both my memories of this organizations urgings and the actions of this law firm in urging associates to forgo a $60 a plate luncheon (How can they say no? And surely there will be another one) in order to donate $45 to charity. Of course this law firm can well afford to write a check for ten times their $50,000 fundraiser without the token act of urging struggling summer associates to give up their fun. But the fact is, at least they are thinking about philanthropy. Not all law firms do or, rather, when they do, it is by assigning young associates pro bono work in order to satisfy the state bar.

By requiring associates (and, presumably also the partners who lunch with them) to give up their Edith Wharton-esque lunch, at least for one day, it is forcing them to stop and think . . . which is harder than writing a check.