Having the Cake and Eating it Too

Seems to me that Americans who are concerned about any of our contemporary issues, and who express that caring by volunteering and giving financial support to nonprofit organizations, tend to want their cake and eat it, too. Here's what I mean.

On the one hand we read a lot in the press, see it in the media, and read it in the blogs of so-called "charity watchdogs," that Americans have a proclivity to want every last dollar they give to charity to go directly to whoever the target population is: the homeless, the poor, the needy, the people who we're trying to help. And this appears to be true whether the people we're trying to help are here in the U.S. or halfway around the world.

What do we want? We want our dollars to go where they will "do the most good " And I assume that by the phrase "do the most good" we generally mean that we want these charities to be effective in accomplishing their stated mission with their targeted client populstion. Right? Certainly a laudable motivation, to want your money to be used wisely, prudently, and in ways that get the most effective results for the dollar.

But then look at the other side of that coin. We also don't want our money to go to fundraising, salaries, overhead, etc. We've been trained that this is not good.

We've been cautioned that it's not good to have our contributions used for the salaries of those who help the poor and needy; we don't want our dollars to go for advertising and promotion; we don't want them to go for training for program staff or boards of directors. The charity dogs of the watch tell us, in their wisdom, that these things are wasteful. They caution us to use those "ratios" of money to recipients vs. money for the organization itself. As if any charity's staff and its capability were not synonomous with service.

You see, charities are not like businesses. In charities the people who work there ARE the service. Without the staff, without the boards, without the fundraisers and the fundraising, there would BE NO SERVICE. So you want to cut the charities off at the knees? This is nuts! But it's happening.

Consequently America's charities are operating, as Paul C. Light says in his book "Sustaining Nonprofit Performance," with less capacity than they need in order to be effective. Just look at the miserly way boards of directors pinch pennies on training and professional growth for their staff, or for their better governance, and for fundraising infrastructure and staff to do the fundraising job. Look at the ways these "charity watchdogs" try to get donors to use business ratios in deciding which charities are going to get their money. It's ridiculour!

What's wrong with it? It keeps the charities poorly equipped, it leaves them without the capacity to succeed. That's what's wrong with it.

And, at the same time, the baby boomers and Gen-Xers are very particular about giving to charities that they judge to be "effective" in mission accomplishment. They want to give to those enterprises that are succeeding, that are making significant and measurable dents in the problems they're trying to solve.

So can we have it both ways? Can we insist that charities use every last cent we give them to shower "services" (whatever we think we mean by that word) on the homeless, the poor, the needy, etc. and still expect that they be effective and produce measurable results, when we aren't willing for them to use some of our money to invest in doing those jobs well? That's what's ridiculous about it.

Take, for instance, the op-ed column in today's New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof, entitled "The Sin in Doing Good Deeds." He discusses some of the points made by Dan Pallotta in his book "Uncharitable, as he "seethes with indignation at public expectations that charities be prudent, nonprofit and saintly."

The point Pallotta is making (and Kristof, I assume) is that if you want to raise a lot of money for charity in today's marketplace, you have to spend some money to find, identify and get a powerful, motivating message out to those who have a proclivity for the kind of charitable services for which you're trying to raise money. But in order to do that, it takes professional expertise and experience. It takes people who know design, printing and media production. It takes professional fundraisers who know how to give donors the kind of relationship and attention that keeps them excited about a project and giving to it. And then what do we want? Do we want all these people to work for free?! We don't want any of our money to go to pay for their expertise? This is nuts!

Charities cannot succeed in their mission without training, without sustenance, without the tools with which to do the job. And they can't do it without enough money to allow them to make serious and lasting inroads on the social problems they're trying to attack. And yet we insist "no money for training, salaries, fundraising, advertising, publicity" or anything else that might help get the job done in a businesslike fashion.

What is the American public, as led by the media and the "watchdogs," thinking of? We've got things confused here. We wouldn't operate a business that way. Why should we expect this of the charities we support?

Incidentally, as Pogo would say, "We have met the enemy, and they is us." 100 million of our 300 million people in this country work for, volunteer for or give to charity every year. So who is this "American public" anyhow? And since at least a third of us are presumably reasonably familiar with the ins and outs of charitable work, why would we have such contradictory attitudes about giving?

It's ridiculous!

OK,now, it's your turn.