Charitable Giving Advice

Jennifer writes:

Kelly's husband, who has worked at nonprofits for many years, shares what he's learned about how to give and how to decide which charities to give to.:

Many organizations today raise money by renting out their donor lists to companies who then sell these lists to other nonprofit organizations. That might seem a bit odd to you – why would an organization sell the names of people who support them to “competing” organizations who will then ask the same donors for money, seemingly taking away money the donor might give to the original nonprofit?

The logic? Nonprofit organizations only sell the names of their “least profitable donors.” Keep in mind that for many organizations, the average gift size of the checks they receive in the mail ranges from $12-$40. A $50 gift is therefore considered to be a substantial-sized gift, particularly if the donor makes such a gift two, three or more times each year. Accordingly, nonprofits typically only rent out the names of donors who make gifts under $50, keeping the names of the donors who make $50+ donations carefully under wraps. So if you want to limit the number of direct mail pieces in your mailbox, make fewer, but larger, gifts.
* * *
Given that fundraising can be extremely expensive for nonprofits, help them out by making their fundraising more efficient...As much as possible, make donations by check versus credit card, as it costs an organization less money to process a check gift versus a credit card gift. A $50 gift by check might cost an organization $0.20 to process the donation, but a $50 credit card gift might cost them $1.50 to process the donation. While studies show that donors who give by credit card are typically younger and send in larger gifts, both demographic variables extremely important to organizations and therefore they gladly accept credit card gifts, keep in mind a large credit card gift of $1,000 might cost your nonprofit $30 vs. the $0.20 for a check.

Assistance to Myanmar

Caritas, the international Catholic relief agency, is providing help to cyclone victims.

CRS Chairman Responds...

Concerning Catholic Relief Services and support of usage of condoms

Query from "Et tu? - Diary of a Former Atheist"

How Do You Decide Which Charities to Support?

On Charities Personal and Impersonal

Link here:

I got a mailer yesterday urging me to provide $2,600 or $175/mo for fifteen months to finance the building of a family home in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti or Guyana. Now, I don't know any of the potential beneficiaries of this work, but looking at the blue prints for solidly built 300sq/ft shacks, and comparing those to the pictures of the conditions under which these families are currently living, I'd have a pretty good idea what I was getting involved with if I take this on...

I'm a marketer, and to an extent, this kind of specificity is good marketing. But I think it's more than that. Marketing, at root, seeks to create or simulate a relationship between the potential buyer and the product or producer. In this case, the description of this particular program at Food For The Poor is intended to create a relationship between the donor and the people the donor is being asked to help. I'd argue that relationship is real, which is why that kind of giving is an act of charity.

This is in part why I'm skeptical as to whether massive government programs aimed at combatting statistical groups can be considered "charity" in any meaningful (as in relationship-based) sense of the term. One cannot have a relationship with "the bottom quintile of lifetime earners" or "those involuntarily without healthcare for more than twelve months".

Why Almsgiving?

Charity: Luxury or Necessity?

Charitable giving and presidential candidates.

Mark Shea: "My Catholic Relief Services Donations Will Now be Earmarked for Some Other Charity"

Via Mark Shea, Catholic World Report on CRS as told here:

Why does Catholic Relief Services forbid putting its logo on the “educational” materials it provides about HIV and condoms? It is time for the US bishops to investigate their charitable agency.

Divine Mercy Ministry

New ministry:

"We are a program designed to help women after they are released from prison sucessfully re-enter the community and unite with their families. We offer a safe living environment with life skills training, employment training, employment, and housing to women ages 18 years of age and older. Statistics show that over 40% of these women will go back to prison without help, and 75% of these women have children. Statistics also show that a very high percentage of these children will follow the same pattern that their mothers have taken and end up in prison. Please consider helping us make a difference in their lives and change this pattern of destruction. These women, and especially their innocent children, need your help to break this cycle."

He Leads the World's Biggest Charity

Interview With Cor Unum President, Cardinal Cordes

On Junk Mail

Here:

Denying Charities Your Support

Yesterday I was asked by a friend if I have a way of getting rid of charity junk mail from organizations that I don't want to support. Below is the text of the letter that Mary Alice and I send to some of the charities we can not in good conscience support. We have similar letters on file for groups and organizations that are involved with other activities and violations of human dignity and social justice. If you want to use this, just copy and paste into a Word document, add your address and, voila! No more amoral imbeciles begging for funds and filling up your recycling bin.

To Whom It May Concern:

While I greatly appreciate your virtuous intentions to help those who are in need in our society, I am writing to advise you that I cannot in anyway support your activities or programs on the basis of moral and ethical objections....more:

Diocese of Little Rock backtracks from warning about Komen foundation

Here:

Little Rock, AR, Mar 12, 2008 / 08:09 am (CNA).- A Catholic leader in Arkansas has apologized to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation for warning Catholics that fundraising activities for the breast cancer charity sometimes support Planned Parenthood.

A Winsome Humility

Food for the Poor website:

Finally, we stress the need for regular prayer to guide and maintain the purity of our mission.

Aid to the Church in Need

Their current appeal is to build a new church and community center in Ukraine. Checking their website, perhaps here is an organization that will help Christians in the East without the slight taint of the political that CNEWA has (as blogged here). All things being equal, I'm switching from donating to CNEWA to Aid to the Church in Need.

Papal Message

Charity workers are called to be witnesses of the value of life, says Holy Father

Vatican City, Mar 1, 2008 / 01:46 am (CNA).- The Holy Father received participants of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum"on Friday, who are meeting to reflect on the theme: "Human and spiritual qualities of people who work in Catholic charity institutions". The Pope called on them to never let their work simply become ‘philanthropy’ but for them to always be “witnesses of evangelical love.”

The Pontiff spoke of how “charitable activity occupies a central position in the Church's evangelizing mission. We must not forget that works of charity are an important area in which to meet people who do not yet know Christ, or who know Him only partially. It is right, then, that pastors and those responsible for pastoral charity work ... should concern themselves with the human, professional and theological-spiritual formation" of people who operate in this field.

With this mission, "Those who work in the many forms of charitable activity of the Church cannot, then, content themselves just with offering technical services or resolving practical problems and difficulties. The assistance they provide must never be reduced to mere philanthropy but must be a tangible expression of evangelical love."

Question...

...from the EWTN Q&A forum. Someone asked,

"was it better for Bill Gates, when he became a millionaire, to have given away his money? Or was it better that he become plough the profits back in the business, become a billionaire, create well-paying jobs and later give tens or hundreds of millions to charity?"

Medical Aid to the Poor

Stan Brock is the founder of Remote Area Medical, featured on a recent 60 Minutes piece:

Brock is British by birth, and an adventurer at heart. He was a cowboy in the Amazon and then, incredibly, he was discovered by TV's "Wild Kingdom." Brock was a star - sort of a naturalist daredevil - for the program in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Today Brock is devoted to RAM - completely devoted. He has no family, takes no salary, and has no home. Brock lives in an abandoned school that the city of Knoxville leases to RAM for $1. Until recently, he took showers in the courtyard with a hose.

How does he pay for all the care and supplies?

"In the first place we really know how to stretch the dollar. We operate entirely on the generosity of the American people. I'd like to say that we had big corporate support in America but we don’t. So it’s the little checks from those people who send in the $5 and $10," Brock explained.

RAM operates on a shoestring budget of about $250,000 a year. Yet, last year, it treated 17,000 patients.

Aid in South America

Blogger Terrence Berres annually visits Guatemala in what he calls "Frijole days of obligation". His parish group accepts donations (email). Amy Welborn writes:

You might be put off by the bigness of certain charities. They serve their purpose, sure, but you want to make sure that your money and assistance is going as directly to those in need as possible. So you might always be on the lookout for ways to directly help out struggling schools, orphanages, clinics and so on. A lot of parishes and dioceses have just such direct relationships.

So..as an example of such a worthy object for our charity, here's SCOPE: Salvadoran Children of the Poor Education Foundation - a group that funds a single school in El Salvador.

Rwanda Fund

Left to Tell:

Immaculee Ilibagiza is a survivor of the Rwandan holocaust. She now works in the Rwandan Office at the United Nations in New York. She has founded a charity, the 'Left to Tell Foundation' - to raise money for African charities.

The Rwandan genocide left many children without homes and families. After surviving this tragic event, Immaculée Ilibagiza vowed to raise money to help not only orphaned children in Rwanda, but all children of Africa to build better lives. This dream has become a reality with Immaculée’s Left to Tell Charitable Fund.

Immaculée shares her miraculous story of survival in this amazing story. A portion of the proceeds will be donated directly to the Left to Tell Charitable Fund.

Also: Alms for Uganda

Remembering Soldiers Overseas

Wartime Prayer Book from the Archbishop Sheen Foundation. Provides booklet of prayers and meditations for soldiers.

Wounded Warrior Project

Daily Mass Readings and devotionals are being sent to the troops by Word Among Us.

A Priest in Iraq.:

"My friends listen to me when I tell you that faith does not only survive out here: It thrives, it grows, and it spreads. In the shadow of this faith, I am deeply humbled and greatly comforted. I look into the faces of these young Marines and Sailors, and I see God gazing back at me with love."

Who Gives?

Carl Olsen of Insight Scoop has the scoop.

Regarding Pro-Life Organizations

Good Counsel Homes - Christopher Bell and author/psychologist Fr. Benedict Groeschel began the first Good Counsel home in New Jersey to give women in a crisis pregnancy a place where they can have the baby instead of getting an abortion. Providing alternatives to abortion is crucial, especially given how long in coming political solutions have been.

Feminists for Life - Whether you call yourself a feminist or not, this organization presents the life issue as it ought to be presented - in positive terms. Pro-lifers are not against something but for something, and Feminists for Life gets the message out. FFL is unique in pointing out how the early feminists were almost universally against abortion, how they understood it quite accurately as harmful to women and indicative of warped priorities. This organization employs clever advertising on college campuses which educate young people about the past and about how abortion is a male-dominated society's best friend. (Caveating that abortion is nobody's 'friend', given that it indiscriminately kills male and female.)

National Right to Life - the standard-bearer political organization works in the trenches in D.C. and NRLC is interested in the "art of the possible". Wanda Franz, president of National Right to Life, said last year that, "Many of us in the trenches have suffered the arrogant criticism of 'principle' pro-lifers who dismiss our legislative efforts because 'they don't outlaw abortion.'" There are also right-to-life organizations in every state. A respected pastor in our town contributes only to the state organization.

Human Life International - This organization obviously takes a worldwide rather than national perspective. I'm not too familiar with it other than it is headed by Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, STL who confronted FOX host Sean Hannity concerning the use of artificial contraceptives.

The Center for Bio-ethical Reform is famous and controversial for their large trucks panelled with billboard images of aborted children. Visual images are more likely to move people: "CBR operates on the principle that abortion represents an evil so inexpressible that words fail us when attempting to describe its horror. Until abortion is seen, it will never be understood."

American Life League (ALL) - With her "take no prisoners" approach, Judy Brown (who has a Q&A column on EWTN's website) fearlessly engages the culture. ALL names names and, unlike organizations like National Right to Life they don't have to maintain relationships in D.C. and so they can do things like shame politicians by publishing ads of pictures of Catholic politicians who support abortion.

A Possible Solution to "Buried in Paper"

No good deed goes unpunished - sometimes if you give to a charity they bury you with mail. Jocelyn writes:

I am about to withdraw my support from a local Christian (not Catholic) charity. I think they are doing a good thing (running a soup kitchen and homeless shelter), but I am wearied and a bit disgusted by the endless stream of solicitations I am receiving in the mail from them.

My first donation to them was several years ago, at Christmas. This put me on their mailing list, and I began to receive their mailings for their major fundraising campaigns: Easter, Summer, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Generally, I sent something. Then I thought it would be better to become a monthly donor, and provide consistent support...

Nevertheless, it doesn't sit right with me. I am going to inform this charity that I will be re-directing my funds to other local charities I already support, who don't feel the need to bury me in paper.

What I've recently done has been to go paperless. I set up a Internet Explorer favorites list of charities (most of which are on the right sidebar) and simply donate once a month via online VISA donation. (The links at right all go directly to that organization's online donation screen.) Then I throw away most charity mailings without looking at them.

Guide to Effective Almsgiving

This looks really helpful - Rich Leonardi links to a guide to effective almsgiving:

Pope Benedict has asked us to focus on almsgiving this year, so at the Leonardi home we've been looking at a handful of groups to whom we will send additional financial support. In the nineties, the Acton Institute released a "Guide to Effective Compassion," a list of charities that did excellent work without lobbying the government for funds or favors...I would love to learn about groups in the greater Cincinnati area (and beyond) doing the Lord's work without feeling compelled to collaborate with Caesar. The Little Sisters of the Poor come to mind.

Here is a link to Acton's guide. Released in 1998, it is more or less updated annually by adding recipients of its Samaritan Award. Award-winners are then grouped by region.

The Acton Guide begins:

"There is not a problem in America that isn't being solved somewhere by someone."

Many have uttered these words, but to date little information is available on where those solutions are and who the people are behind them. Here for the first time, is a resource for those who want to find America's hope for solving long-vexing social problems. Contained in these pages are those who transform the lives of the addicted; who give skills to those without jobs; who provide training for life; who prevent teenage pregnancy; and above all who show that the future can be better than the past. This is far from a definitive guide, but it is crucial - a vital - beginning step in changing the course of giving in America.

Planned Parenthood Watchdog Releases New List of Corporate Sponsors

List here.

Charitable Giving in U.S.

Credit: Professionals in Philanthropy

Amy Welborn's List

Catholic author Amy Welborn's list of charities worth our sacrifice. And more here at her old blog.

A Great Need in the Church

Perhaps part of the appeal of Fr. Benedict Groeschel is that he was trained as a psychologist, and he says we need many, many more Christian psychologists.

Perhaps then there's no greater need than for a school like a Catholic graduate school of psychology.

There are too few who can, in the words of Mary Beth Bonacci, "synthesize psychology with spirituality" as Fr. Groeschel can, who has taught at the Institute.

Why IPS?

The Institute for the Psychological Sciences (Institute) was founded in 1997 by a group of mental health professionals, academicians and clinicians, under the leadership of Dr. Gladys Sweeney, who perceived a need for a proper understanding of the interrelationship between psychology and its philosophical foundations.

IPS...is dedicated to the renewal of the Christian intellectual tradition and the development of a psychology consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church and in constructive dialogue with the modern world."

In this time of the "triumph of the therapeutic" (in Philip Rieff's words), it is crucial there be witnesses to the truth that science and religion are not in competition but mutually helpful.

The Middle East's EWTN?

SAT-7 is a Christian satellite network broadcasting to the Middle East.

Archbishop Foley writes, "The Pontifical Council for Social Communications highly commends the aims of SAT-7... and warmly encourages support both spiritual and material for this important project."

Some of the comments they've received from viewers in Saudi Arabia:

“It is my first time to watch SAT-7’s nice programs. It is an interesting channel that really captured my attention. Although I am a non-Christian but I find this channel is a good one to watch.”

...

"I am an admirer of this distinguished channel. I am honoured to have the opportunity to say thank you for these nice programs especially the ones focused on identifying Christianity. I cleave to these programs because I want to know more about Christianity. I wish all the best for your thrilling programs.”

...

"The Lord Jesus entered into my heart, saved me, enlightened my way, and changed my life. Unfortunately I cannot read the Holy Bible because I do not have access to one. I desired eagerly to study the Gospel and to know more about the life of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, but I could not. Today SAT-7 satisfies the desires of my spirit. Words are not enough to express how grateful I am to you.”

The Church in China

What about the Cardinal Kung Foundation?

The Holy Father appears to want to mend the rift between the heroic underground Catholic Church in China and the Communist party-approved Catholic church.

Could giving to the underground church make things worse? What can we do to help? Pray.

(This Atlantic article has details.)

Charity and Politics

CNEWA is a papal charity and would seems a worthy endeavor with a good record.

It helps Christians in the Middle East and it's magazine has something of an anti-Israeli slant. Whatever one thinks about Israel building the wall, the article (can't readily find it online) seemed rather unsided given the lack of explanation as to why Israel would go to the great length of building it. The Palestinians are hardly without sin. This has made me less enthusiastic about supporting CNEWA, although I'm not sure that's a good reason. Especially given the plight of Iraqi Christians.

Catholic Relief Services Has New Mission

Here:

[I]n April 1994, the genocide began – upwards of a million people murdered over a scant three months. All of our carefully cultivated development programs were destroyed. Peace had not been part of our mission.

We took a hard look at ourselves. In the end, all the good work we did – the silos and schools we built, the children we fed, the farms we planted – wasn’t enough. After much reflection, CRS resolved to address not just the symptoms of crisis – the burned out houses, food shortages and refugee movements. We also had to attack the systems and structures that underlie oppression and poverty in so much of the developing world.

We began incorporating a justice-centered focus in all of our programming. And we rediscovered a jewel in our Catholic tradition that has enabled us to do this effectively: Catholic Social Teaching.

Catholic Social Teaching places the dignity of the human person at the center of all we do. With Catholic Social Teaching as our guide, we adopted a new strategy. We started to re-examine all of our work – our programs, our policies, how we relate to the people we serve, how we relate to the Catholic community in the United States, how we relate to one another as fellow employees of CRS – and evaluate our relationships in terms of whether they help to build a culture of justice, peace and reconciliation.

For us, relationships count. Providing assistance can foster harmonious relations or reinforce imbalances in societies.We come for the long term. And we work with local people and organizations, soliciting their input and quickly putting them in charge of their own destinies. We also assess the possible negative impact that our aid might bring so we don’t inadvertently reinforce inequalities or distort the local economy. And we try to identify opportunities for building just and peaceful relationships among groups in the places we serve.

We now know it’s important to consider not only the type of relief that is delivered, but also how it is delivered. CRS wants to avoid making the people we serve become dependent on the aid they receive. Catholic Social Teaching stresses the importance of upholding dignity as well as promoting self-sufficiency. We can’t do the work alone, nor should we.We work and respect local agencies, which are either already our partners or have the potential to become our partners. This is the true meaning of solidarity – not just writing a check, but concrete action on behalf of the suffering.

C.S. Lewis and Charity

The Daily Eudemon sez:

"All this opulence in the heart of a Christian country like ours kinda reminds me of C.S. Lewis’ observation about how much a Christian should give to charity. He didn’t use a percentage formula, opting instead to say that, if a person’s giving didn’t cause him at least a small degree of discomfort or want, then it probably isn’t enough."

So Many Worthy Charities, So Little to Give

I've long been interested in trying to maximize my charitable donation, to give to the best charities and go where the Spirit sendeth. This is a blog to jot down stray thoughts on the subject. I'd prefer this blog remain anonymous, as charitable giving itself should be. I welcome your comments, ideas, suggestions and corrections.

I aim for an allocation of 50% to the Church and 50% to the poor. Last year's allocation went:

My parish church: 43%
Aid to the poor*: 21%
Evangelistic**: 16%
Catholic schools***: 9%
Other: 11%

* = Catholic Relief Services, local food bank, etc...
**= EWTN, Catholic Answers, St. Paul Center, and Catholic Radio Association
***=aid for families with multiple tuitions; Institute for the Psychological Sciences.

I'd like to cover the corporal and spiritual work of mercies although perhaps instead I should devote all the charitable money for a particular month to the charity I am most passionate about at the moment.