CityView Magazine

Charity: Giving or Getting?
Know the facts before you decide who to help.

Quite a few years ago, an acquaintance of mine confided in me that he was in the process of starting up a charity organization.  I regarded him skeptically -- you see, he was the type that I’ll bet you can recognize.  He was a natural huckster, a born salesman.  He was the kind of guy who would make you buy whatever he was selling just to get rid of him, as though that would work.  He was quite personable and likable but, annoyingly focused on “the deal.”  As I said, you know the type.  Now, the period of time when this was happening was early in the days of the public’s awareness of AIDS.

I communicated my surprise, probably in ways verbal and visual.  I simply had not known him to be overly concerned with the well being and welfare of others.  I may have asked him for the punchline (or I may have phrased it as the catch), but one way or another, I asked him what was in it for him.  He smiled and told me.

I don’t remember the exact year or the exact number, but what he told me was something to the effect that the law stated that a full ten percent of the money collected for a given cause had to go to that cause.  He paused to let that sink in, but I jumped in with the question about the other ninety percent.  His smile grew bigger as he told me that the remaining funds could be used for the “administrative costs of running the charity and for salaries and such.”

I don’t know which disgusted me more: the idea that we were dealing with a new and terrible disease (the scope of which was not yet known) and this guy is immediately thinking of ways to make money on it, or that politicians had abused the trust of their constituents by actually codifying into law such an obvious travesty of ethics and morals.  As far as I know, the law has not changed significantly, if at all.  On the other hand, I suppose I owed the guy a bit of gratitude for clueing me in to the fact that not all charities are created equal.  It certainly wasn’t something that I had considered up to that point.  Until then, my primary consideration was what issue or disease the charity purported to address.  I suppose it was indicative of my naiveté that I wasn’t aware of the need to consider the personal and institutional ethics of a charity prior to donating to it; but in my defense, at that time I had spent the vast majority of my adult life in the military and out of the country.  That sort of thing just didn’t come up.

I really believe that I could come up with a better law, or at least the framework of a law, for addressing the distribution of funds in reference to a specific charity.  I also think I shouldn’t have to.  Surely there are those in the “charity industry” who are ethical and truly concerned about their public image.  Surely there are those in the business who would love to short circuit the efforts of the less well intentioned.  Why would they not suggest and lobby for such a legislative change?  Would not they be the ones who would be most aware of the needs, and would be able to word the legislation so as to allow for whatever flexibility is required while restricting potential for abuse?

Charitable giving can have multiple positive effects.  It can allow the individual to feel good about himself, which is a component of physical and emotional health.  It can raise the profile of a given problem or issue as effectively as actually spending money on advertising.  Of course, it can enable research and fund solutions.  It can fill gaps and shortfalls in government funding.  But that isn’t going to happen at the ten percent level (or whatever the actual ridiculously small amount is).  At that level, it has the negative effect of teaching the ethically challenged that they can legally scam their way to monetary wealth.  I really want us to be better than that.

The young man who raised my awareness of this legal problem -- although that wasn’t necessarily his intent -- is no longer with us.  That doesn’t mean we can relax.  He was not the only one back then, and there does not seem to be any shortage today of those with a similar mindset.  I say we do just a little research, and make it so those folk have to get honest employment.  Even better, we should make it so that the money actually goes where it is needed: to the charity. Take the time to research when you decide to help.