The ABC's of Philanthropy

Marvin Olasky makes the point in Renewing American Compassion that the American welfare system gives too little. Shocking huh? Not quite. Sure, significant sums of dollars flow to welfare programs throughout the United States, but, are they giving enough of the right thing? According to Olasky the modern day welfare system does not hit the target when it comes to giving the burdened and suffering what they really need: care and restoration. He offers a historical perspective on how churches and other Christian charitable organizations approached charity in the early part of the 20th century ---a method I like to think of as the ABC's of Philanthropy.

A Affiliation - The central idea of "affiliation" is asking the questions, "What community and family does this person belong to?" Then, every aim of the philanthropic activity should be to, "restoring family ties that have been sundered," or "strengthening a church or social bond that has been weakened." The second question, "How can those bonds be restored?" 


B Bonding - This involved a deep desire to know and love the person in need of charity. Past charities sought to develop a relationship with a person. Those involved in giving charity encouraged the suffering to break away from their circumstances to achieve more --and, ultimately greater dignity-- by finding work.

C Categorization - This was an attempt to personalize charity for people with different needs. Categorization also served the purpose of monitoring "the principal-agent problem". This second point is what I will discuss here. Dispensers of charity wanted to offer aid to those who showed themselves "able and willing" to work. Olasky says that "work tests" were, "a key self-sorting device . . . When an able bodied man in almost any city asked an agency for relief, he often was asked to chop wood for two hours or to whitewash a building. A needy woman was generally given a seat in the sewing room (a child care room often was nearby)". The crucial thought of categorization was that by seeing if people were willing to work and understanding their needs we could give charity responsibly.


D Discernment - "Only discernment on the part of charity workers who knew their aid seekers intimately could prvent fraud." We must be careful not to deceive ourselves into thinking that all gifts are good. Olasky cites a charity that stated, "Intelligent giving and intelligent withholding are alike true charity."

E Employment - To help someone get to the point where they are able to support themselves is thought to be the kind of charity that is sustainable and restores the dignity of the recipient of charity.

F Freedom - Finally, all of the charitable work is done towards this end goal of freedom. Freedom, real freedom, is only found in Christ. By challenging people with their life decisions, not offering a handout but genuine responsibility, Christians have demonstrated real love for the person and led them towards faith.

This post has been a brief reflection on these philanthropic ABC's. Though I did not do them justice here a full fledged book review of Renewing American Compassion will be forthcoming. Also, I think it will be interesting to compare and contrast this with the kind of modern day welfare programs ---so watch out for that.

More on Haiti

Most of the day I work through large stack of books, journal articles, practice problems, and tidy my power point slides for lectures. The earthquake in Port-Au-Prince did not reach my awareness until my fantastic news-junkie friend reported the story at Bible Study later that Wednesday night. Our collective response was in prayer for Haiti ---I do not know each person's individual response. However, throughout the Florida State University campus there were visible signs that Haiti was on our student's minds. There was a troubador strumming out Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" outside the union with an open guitar case and an 8.5x11 piece of paper posted to the inside stating the cause. In front of Strozier library a young girl was collecting donations in a plastic jug and passing out information about the various donation texting campaigns to make contributions easier (Red Cross received $18 Million in donations via text!). The outpouring was enormous. But, in the wake of the disaster there are the simple problems Mark reported in the last post: coordination between the many agencies and allocation of correct resources (for example, only 40% of the drugs given during the Tsunami Relief effort in Indonesia were drugs needed by the people we were trying to help).

Here is an article by Laura Freschi at NYU titled, "Getting Humanitarian Relief Right" about what we can glean from previous natural disasters. More than anything I hope that the devastation that came from the earthquake creates a fluid situation in which major informal reforms of the heart and formal reforms of governance and policy flourish. Along these lines is a quote I read from my friend Brandon Vogt's blog (The Thin Veil):

"Hopefully this tragedy will bring about a new national unity among the Haitian people who have been long divided over class and or political lines. And for us in the United States, let me say that geography has made the U.S. and Haiti neighbors; now is the time that we show that we also are truly brothers and sisters." -Bishop Thomas Wenski

Wealth and Saftey II

Here is another thoughtful post on Haiti. The more I read about this, the more I wonder if unprecedented action is called for. If the United Nations ever has any role to play, it ought to be here. I'm beginning to believe that the U.N. Security Council ought to declare Haiti an Emergency Mandate. And, no, I don't think the people at the U.N. are able to run Haiti. But France has a good track record in stabilizing former colonies. If the cultural problems of having France temporarily govern a country that fought early on to liberate itself from French rule are too immense, then there may some other country with similar skills: Japan? Brazil? Great Britain? Norway? As I said, if this isn't where the U.N. can do something bold and constructive to quickly address an international disaster, I'm not sure why we even have a U.N..

Wealth and Safety

There are numerous links across the web today to well-respected aid NGOs who are providing relief for the devastation in Haiti: Compassion International , Food for the Poor , WorldVision , and Presbyterian Global Fellowship are just a few of the sites with which I've had some acquaintance.

In addition to our generosity, we should remember Paul Collier's warnings from the time of the Asian Tsunami: westerners (and I suspect that Americans would definitely be included in this category) are extremely generous in times of great natural emergencies. The crunch comes after many months when the emergency has dropped from the news, and long term problems remain.

In Haiti's case, there were already long term problems. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, and one of the poorest in the world. And, as is starkly evident, economic prosperity brings with it technological and cultural realities that can drastically mitigate the damaging effects of natural disasters. Examples: in 1989 an earthquake of magnitude 7.1 struck the San Francisco bay area. 67 people died. A similar death toll came from the 6.7 magnitude earthquake in Los Angeles (Northridge, 1994). If we want to help Haiti after the emergency crews go home, we need to think seriously about what we can do to bring Haiti's prosperity up to the level of even other moderately poor countries.

Through Instapundit, I found that Tyler Cowen at Marginal revolution is tackling these questions head on. How is economic prosperity related to safety? Why is Haiti so poor? In the latter post, be sure to read the free-wheeling discussions in the comments section. In a newer post, he links to a New York Times article about building construction in Haiti.

Assymmetric Obligation

Remember the kindergarten cut-outs? “Fold along the line of symmetry,” the teacher instructed. We did and it was good –as long as we used the stencil and cut along the lines. Otherwise we would be asymmetric with two sides that are different either in proportion or design.

Symmetry seems to produce a feeling of equilibrium and beauty we value in our art and architecture. But, relationships are not often symmetric, especially in the Kingdom of God. We are instructed in Luke, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even "sinners" love those who love them. And if you do good for those who do good for you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that . . ." In fact, the very nature of Agape love is that it moves first! Agape always advances. Like the Father that saw his son still a long way up, lifted his robe, and sprinted in an unroyal race to greet his son the Kingdom of God is not symmetric. He did not move in perfect rhythm with his son, but went the extra mile to greet him. This love is graceful, committed, and full of unmerited favor -not symmetric.

Brief aside: I do believe that God desires a symmetric relationship with us like the lover is Song of Songs says, "I am my lovers and he is mine." He desires for us to feel completely loved and for our hearts to be in complete desire to be like His heart. That is why he is always telling us such things as "Be holy as I am holy" and "Be merciful as I am merciful".

But, I often wonder what Agape looks like for our political system. Does this seemingly personal command to practice Agape love transfer to a collective voting process with government programs? Our system transfers money, goods, and services without requirement to those in need. In contrast, many earlier Christian charities required minute tasks such as wood chopping, whitewashing walls, or sewing garments in order to receive charity. Essentially, if these charities knew that work was not available for the alms asker they put them to work.
Those who refused the tasks, "gained classification as "Unworthy, Not Entitled to Relief" [or] "those who prefer to live on alms . . .". Does the requirement for some work disqualify the lodging, food, etc. from charity or agape love? Or, does the requirement deepen the respect and dignity both parties have for each other?

Since the human response to love is not always gratitude that leads to action we can not live in the ideal world. The ideal world being that each person so motivated by the love they have been shown demonstrates their appreciation by asking what part they can perform. Instead we seem to be forced into obligating those people to work or continually giving money without placing any obligation to the taxpayer placed on the recipient. The latter has turned into entitlement which is certainly undesirable because people cease to view the help as charity. The former may be undesirable because organizing mass amounts of people to work would also cost money and again there is the question of whether it is really charitable. Are the least of these able bodied men and women?

Fundamentally this comes down to a question a very bright friend of mine asked me, "Doug, do you believe you can systemitize the Kingdom of God." My reply, "I'm not sure, but I don't think you can." Then, I do not think agape love is for the government but for people. Surely, this is one of the most interesting experiments: Place a self interested human, with free-will, in the world, show him/her the message of truth and see if they can learn how to love.

Taking Aim at The Independent Sector (!)

Perhaps it was because Doug and I are doing research on "reverse crowd-out" (research in which we have cited repeatedly the work by Gruber and Hungerman on the New Deal), but I wrote my February 26th post, below, only a couple of hours after reading about the Obama Administration's double-pronged attacks on private charitable giving. Not surprisingly, many other people dove in and have written on this subject.

One disconcerting note is that there are people in the world of charitable giving (a few, but not mostly, church-connected) that offer the apology that we have to remember the indirect effects. The Obama tax increases will go into the general U.S. revenue pool and that there will be some corresponding increase in "good things for the poor" (that assumes that the massive increase of government presence in our health care system will actually help the poor, but that's a debate for another post). The problem with this argument is that these folks are actively accepting the "crowding out" of private, voluntary charitable activity by coercively-based, government programs as, at worst, some kind of value-neutral trade-off. Despite the fact that this trade-off is pretty much gospel (pardon the pun) among many of the social activists that populate my own denomination (Presbyterian Church USA), I think that this was a terrible deal with the devil (and I don't mean that as a pun) in the 1930s and and equally so today.

Thanks to a link from Kathryn Jean Lopez, I found an extensive and forceful discussion of the broader consequences for Christianity of a new wave of crowding out. The author is Prof. Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, and it is linked to the Wall Street Journal. The title is great: "God Will Provide --- Unless the Government Gets There First."

Discerning the appropriate response to such a march of secularlism is not an easy call, and I hope to explore the issues more in future posts.

Taking Aim at the Independent Sector?

If a government increases the marginal tax rates on its citizens, will that lead to more or less money being donated to non-profit organizations (churches, charities, and so forth)? In the United States, that has been an interesting economic question because, for people who itemize deductions (mostly higher income individuals), such donations are tax deductible. Therefore, a change in marginal tax rates has offsetting effects. For example, when marginal tax rates decline, individuals have more money to contribute to charity, but the value of the tax deduction goes down (effectively increasing the “price” of the deduction). Empirical evidence has been ambiguous as to whether one of the effects dominates the other.

If the reports in today’s newspapers are correct, we may have the opportunity to have a “natural experiment” in this regard. Apparently, the Obama administration is proposing to increase our top marginal tax rates but to “cap” the corresponding deductions for charitable contributions as if the marginal tax rate had not changed. If this happens, Americans would have less money to contribute to non-profit organizations, but without the favorable “price” effect.

If I were involved in a non-profit organization that relied on donations, this proposal would make me feel like the deer in the classic Far Side cartoon who was born with a bull’s eye on his chest. “Heck of a Birthmark, Hal”, another deer comments to him. If the Obama administration has a deliberate goal to reduce Americans’ contributions to churches, charities and other non-profit organizations, this proposal would seem to fit the bill. But, that’s a testable proposition; perhaps there are general equilibrium effects to the overall economy that will countervail. I’m always ready to look at the data.

All in the Family: A Frayed Part of the Safety Net

Every year I have my undergraduate "Principles" class try to find someone who lived through the Great Depression and interview them. (I don't know how much longer this will be easy, so the alternative is for them to go to a Depression-Era book, movie, or play and discuss the lives depicted there). When I read the reports, I'm getting both a look at what the people who lived through the Great Depression remember and what of that made an impact on my students.

Maybe this has been the case in years before, but I was really struck this year by how many times the report that families moved in together (parents with adult children and grandchildren, sibling with siblings, and so forth) was mentioned. As I said, this probably meant that it happened a lot, that it was remembered, and that it was striking to my students. I know that my mother and her sister were "farmed out" (as she put it) with her aunts and uncles in another state for many summers during the Depression. My father's Dad spent some time working for his brother. My Great Grandmother and Great Grandfather moved in with my great aunt Bernice.

When I was discussing another long-lost part of the social safety net to my students (religious homes for unwed mothers) one of my students told me essentially that it was impossible to think of America ever going back to such a system. It just couldn't happen. I wonder if the same thing is true of the extended family? Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have not had merely economic consequences; they have had enormous social consequences, for good or ill, as well.

Charity . . . Just a Click Away

Who remembers what life was like before the internet? While it may not be difficult for some, at 23, the internet has been a reality for me for nearly half of my life. Nearly everyday the internet serves some function in my life. Today I stayed in touch with Mom and backed up files on Google's large web database. Tomorrow I may check out the scores for Playoff Basketball and read articles about the Olympic protests. It's all just a click away for me. And, as wireless becomes more prevalent I have access just about everywhere. In addition to making communication and research easier the internet has by some measure made charity easier. From facebook campaigns and website clicks to search engines and automatic withdrawls we use the internet and other resources to make giving easier. The purpose of this post is to provide a syllabus of the types of giving require not much more than the click of a mouse.

Hunger Site: View themselves as a leader in online activism against global poverty. Started in June of 1999. In the about section of their page Hunger Site states that their "Click Here It's Free" button has, ". . . given 300 million cups of staple food" to needy. This is financed by their sponsors. And really, all you do is click on the button and food will be distributed to those in need through Mercy Corps (America's Second Harvest).

Facebook: If you're on facebook occasionally you receive invitations for groups where a person will state that they will give $1 to Charity X for each person that joins. Facebook, in case you didn't know, is a social network where people can communicate with each other in a variety of ways other than a vanilla email.

Good Search: I just found out about this one thanks to an email from Mary. It has been around since 2005 when, "Ken Ramberg (the former founder of JOBTRAK, now a division of Monster.com) and JJ Ramberg (an MSNBC anchor and the former Director of Marketing at Cooking.com) asked themselves a few years ago. After realizing what a fraction of the $8 billion generated annually by search engine advertisers could do if it were directed towards organizations trying to make the world a better place". Just pick your favorite charity and search for something and about a penny will go to that charity. Like some of the people who covered the launch of Good Search said, "This is a business model waiting to happen." If the charity you should give to is not obvious check out Charity Navigator, one of a crop of new agencies that seek to inform the public about the efficiency of the charities that they give their hard earned cash to support.

This is not an exhaustive list. If there are more that were unmentioned please let me know. To me it is just fascinating that charity has become so easy. Now that summer is here I will be posting once weekly on some subject that strikes me. I apologize for my long absence and hope that some of these posts strike your curiosity. Thank you.

Can't Buy the Kingdom

It isn't a zero sum game. I must remind myself of those words anytime I talk about politics and new policy. Partisan rancor can quickly consume a person, especially someone who has the unflattering characteristic that he needs to be right all the time. I've written about this before but I think it bears repeating: People are the pearls of God. He values his creation so much that he would send his only son to die so that we may never have to buy into the lie that we're not good enough to achieve pure, blameless, and special deeds. He is alive and he lives in you!

I'm very against universal health care and mostly against the government doing just about
anything involving the social welfare of its people. I believe that people should be helping people and that we shouldn't allow the government to crowd out the private charity that we should all be practicing. This is part of the reason I get so worked up, whenever a new policy is proposed. Not only do I think, "There goes more of my income," it's also, "There's now a greater distance between interpersonal acts of generosity."

The first line of this post I mentioned that it isn't a zero sum game. It is a reminder because no matter whether it is someone with the same mindset as me or someone who wants the government to assume more responsibility people will get helped. I'm coming around to understand that is what is best. I want to make it clear again to myself and anyone reading this blog that all of what we're working on isn't about me keeping more of my income but it's about helping the greatest number of people. There is a song by Jason Upton that helps renew my perspective when I get too caught up in the details of stuff, it's called "Poverty",

Where will be turn when our world falls apart,
And all of the treasures we've stored in our barns
Can't buy the Kingdom of God?
Who will we praise when we've praised all our lives,
Men who build kingdoms and men who build fame
But heaven does not know their names?
What will we fear when all that remains,
Is God on the throne with a child in his arms
And love in his eyes,
And the sound of his heart cries?