Miss Manners: Is it wrong to refuse to donate to a friend’s passion project?

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a good friend who is the polar opposite of me on politics, religion and almost every other subject. We are cognizant of these differences, and refrain from debate or argument on these subjects. Amazingly, we still have things to talk about!

However, she sent me a letter in which she requested that I support a nonprofit organization that she actually started and is running — which I admire, but do not support. What I mean is: I admire that she had the initiative to start the group, fulfill her own desire to help the community and do the work. But it is not an organization that I personally would ever send money to.

While I support a number of charities with money every month or so, I choose them carefully. If I do not send money to her organization, how do I politely explain why not?

I wish she had not asked her friends to donate money for this venture; she should know that if I did support it, I could do so on my own. I’m not sure how to deal with my refusal to bend my principles for friendship’s sake.

GENTLE READER: You have already mastered a valuable and increasingly rare skill, in that you can be friends with someone whose beliefs do not exactly align with yours. You have only to extend the subjects on which you need not justify your position.

Miss Manners is aware that some, perhaps many, people contribute to charities to please the people who ask them. But this seems a waste of the opportunity to offer support where one believes it is truly needed.

In any case, and despite those who want their names on buildings, donations can be a private matter. You can merely commend your friend for her effort without getting out a pen to write a check. As she is apparently as discreet as you, that should be the end of it. But if more is necessary, you can say, “I have other causes I support.”