Charities use Economy as excuse not to expand fundraising efforts

I well remember Lawrence Lindsey, a Governor of the Federal Reserve Board, who spoke to one of the first assemblies of the National Conference on Planned Giving, which was probably about 1984 or 1985. He said to us that if you give charity $1 as a contribution, you're likely to get something in the neighborhood of $6 worth of service back from that gift. But if you give the IRS $6 in taxes, it is unlikely that you'll get back more than $1 in service. I thought that since he was a governor of the Federal Reserve Board, he probably knew whereof he spoke.

That's a pretty good reason to keep philanthropy alive in one's heart. If you're the kind of person who likes to give, has been brought up with that set of values that reaches out to others in need, or gives back to the community, or simply wants to advance the human plight to new levels of accomplishment, there is the answer: charity does what government cannot, and does it more effectively than government could.

Why is that the case? Lindsey went on in that speech to say that the reason this is so has to do with the effectiveness of volunteer boards. (Yes, those same boards that we just got done saying last week can only do two things: brainstorm and tell stories, I know!) The involvement of volunteers in a nonprofit organizations governance is key to that nonprofit being able to accomplish its mission. Because the board brings planning from a huge diversity of backgrounds, perspectives and skills sets; the board members give generously and get others to give financial resources to the mission to be accomplished; and the volunteer board provides fiscal and programmatic oversight that is far superior to that in government agencies, even under our democratic system.

So that helps set the stage for nonprofit's getting into and staying in the marketplace with a plethora of good, creative, compelling, motivating ideas about why we should give any money to a particular cause. We all know that the results of our giving will be productive.