Giver's Greed: Charity's Worst Enemy

A friend of mine has received a lot of calls in the wake of the Southern California wildfires from people who wanted to help. She's a coordinator for a family services clinic in San Diego. One call in particular stood out: A woman wanted to help the wildfire victims by having her girls' cheerleading squad hold a food drive, but she added a confusing caveat to the offer.

The mom said she wanted to make sure that, "None of the donations were abused."

"... How exactly could we abuse food donations?" my friend asked.

"I want to make sure all of the food we donate only goes to the wildfire victims."

In other words, if my friend got sneaky and tried to slip a tin of Spam to a homeless person or domestic violence victim, there would be hell to pay.

Never mind that there isn't a food shortage for the fire victims in San Diego County. They need money to help rebuild, yes, but food distributions and stamps are being made widely available.

Charity is rarely about logic, though. Food is love and people are willing to part with it so much easier than cash. Therefore canned goods continue to come the fire victim's way in abundance, even though they're sleeping in hotels and shelters without private kitchens. And according to some, they can't share.

The "giver's greed" phenomenon of sabotaging an otherwise gracious gesture by putting illogical and constrictive earmarks on donations is all too common. Both small charities and large -- like Doctors Without Borders and UNICEF -- often run into fundraising frustrations when they receive more money than they can spend for one particular program or emergency but can't beg two nickels for another.

A lack of unrestricted funding can cripple attempts to help a cause that has received little media attention. This has prompted many international NGOs to set aside "forgotten emergency funds" to mobilize funds where they are most needed.

Misguided giving has also caused its share of unfortunate scenes in recent years. One of the most depressing images ever conjured for me came from an Indonesian official after the tsunami of 2004. He was pleading on television for the world to stop sending teddy bears, because the climate of the region is so humid they become diseased and must be burned.

What the tsunami victims needed, again, was money. But writing a check for medical supplies is so cold and businesslike, while teddy bears are both literally and figuratively warm and fuzzy. They make the giver feel good, which is precisely the problem: It's not supposed to be about the giver.

As Stephen Tomlin of the International Medical Corps said to Newsday during the relief phase of the tsunami, "When Maria donates her favorite teddy bear, she feels good about it and her parents feel good about it. But the logistics systems get really clogged up with nonessential things. When it comes time to find the penicillin, we have to search through too many teddy bears, shoes and clothes."

The way we give may be largely dictated by our brain's capacity to understand and relate to disaster or suffering. When University of Oregon researcher Paul Slovic released the findings of his study on human compassion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science this February, he offered evidence that there is a trend of diminishing returns with charity as the population in need grows.

People are most willing to help a single individual with whom they can identify, Slovic's study found. The problem begins when that one individual turns into two. Faced with a larger pool of need, the degree to which the study group was willing to help decreased. By the time larger numbers of needy people were presented, the diminishing returns on voluntary contributions were so evident that there wasn't much difference in what people were willing to give to help one starving village or 10.

There very well could be some hardwired, tribal instinct that drives humans to help what they recognize at the exclusion of others, and thus naturally they would want their charity to go to their family, their friends, neighbors, community, race, or countrymen.

This could explain why the woman who called my friend would step over a homeless Vietnam veteran to help feed a newly homeless suburbanite. She herself is probably a suburbanite, and in the suffering of the fire victims she recognizes the same could happen to her. It could explain why some African American church groups saw no irony in their fighting to ban gay marriage in 2004.

But disasters rarely strike along neat demographics, and trying to address them as such only creates greater division and inequality. In the end it isn't strong feelings that motivate meaningful change but cold facts.

Some have suggested this is why nerds such as Bill Gates are of the best minds to deal with problems on the scale of African malaria. Theirs is a brain more comfortable with numbers than feelings anyway.

But playing on heartstrings is what loosens purse strings, not numbers, not logic. Let's just hope the next time our favorite charity trots out an adorable child to melt our hearts, she shares with the rest.

Comments

[rch]

Makes a lot of sense--television has indoctrinated many people to be susceptible to the "cause celebre" evidence provided by the unfortunate public addiction to "out of the blue" stories showcased by all the networks, complete with "scripts" and "bios" on the story participants to sate the viewer's thirst for "drama". This, I think, is a corollary to the "cause of the day" charity donators, who(like the (inferred) wealthy consumer at Costco in Mission Valley in San Diego who paid for the $4,000 in "refurbishments" for the person in line in front of him after hearing a conversation about that person "losing all their possessions" in the fire)won't act on perpetual problems but only those that "sweep" them into action! rch

[Silverstar]

I always thought it was idiotic that people demanded that the Red Cross give all the 9-11 money to the victims. Their plan to put some away for other catastrophes seemed like a smart thing to do.
I live on a fixed income in public housing. I don't do much giving, I don't have it to give. I have however, bought a homeless man a sandwich with my food stamps at times, because I remember being homeless. And hungry. I guess that makes me just like everybody else, giving to those I identify with.

[Xysea]

Yes, the very rich will also apply to FEMA - even though they hooted and hollered about the poor Katrina victims and the 'FEMA scams'. And even though they holler even louder about 'government entitlement programs'.

Very 'do as I say, not as I do.'

I sure hope the powers that be will be treating the claims of Californians with the same amount of rigorous investigation and oversight.

And I sure hope that they remember how government helped them the next time they think we could do with less government.

(But that's reachin' for the stars, ain't it?! lol)

[TorpedoTommy]

Carl von Ossietzky (a german journalist in the 20's) once said: Wohltätigkeit ist das Stürzen des Rechts in das Mistloch der Gnade
Which means something like: Charity is to throw the right into the dirthole of mercy (more or less accurate translation)

End of argument

P.s. Some of you are quiet cynical, heartless knowitalls, which is pretty disgusting

[Beatitudes]

Thank you so much for this article. I started The Beatitudes Network sometime back so that I could give all of the royalties from the sale of my book, The Beatitudes, to the New Orleans Public Library Foundation. So there would be no problem, I made sure that the publisher channeled the royalties to the foundation with the information the foundation provided. If you look at the Amazon.com page for the book, for example, The Foundation is listed as "co-author." I don't know how many people wanted to send boxes of old books to the devastated libraries instead of money, even if there were no shelves or few employees to process the boxes. NOLA gets the cash and the librarians know what to do with their own libraries. The situation I think is better, but the site www.nutias.org tells what is needed.
Lyn LeJeune
The Beatitudes Network - Rebuilding the public libraries of New Orleans and The blue Book Campaign at www.beatitudesinneworleans.blogspot.com
PS anyone know Stephen King? I've been trying to tell him about this!

[Mormondude]

I think it's fair to expect your donation to be used for its intended purpose. There is too much abuse in the system. Too many humanitarian organizations are taking too large of a cut of the proceeds. The way I see it, if a company can't deliver 100% of your donation to a needy person, they shouldn't exist. If they have administrative costs to deal with, they should get those covered by a wealthy philanthropist or a generous corporation or proceeds from an endowment, or SOMETHING.

It feels horrible to try to do the right thing and be generous, and then later find out that you got duped or taken advantage of or scammed.

If you want a good model, look at organ and tissue donation. To be an organ donor, you can dictate any terms you wish, and they must be followed to the letter. If you want to donate your heart but not your eyes, or you liver but not your skin, or just to donate your big toe, that's what happens. If you want your organs to ONLY be used for transplant, you can do that too. Or you can elect to give them more discretion about what types of organs or tissues are used for what purposes.

If this lady says she wants her food to go to needy suburbanites, you should either thank her and make sure that's what happens to it, or explain that you're unable to meet those expectations and refuse to accept the donation. And either way you should have a smile on your face and be grateful that this person thought to give rather than staying disengaged and apathetic like most of the rest of society.

[JudyGee]

I hope you are opening your wallet very wide for those unfortunates in arrowhead lake and their multimillion dollar homes. people so rich, they don't even need insurance to rebuild. orange county is another area where the plight of those affected is almost unbearable, given the loss of their Sun-In hair products and discarded prom dresses. the thought of the multiple mercedes having sustained damage makes me want to sob. And, malibu, brings unbidden tears. And, when I saw our chief mental case hugging and boohooing with a couple from Rancho Bernardo, standing in the ruins of their once magnificent manse, it truly made my stomach ache.
I have not seen one story. Not one. About the real plight of real people who are middle class (remember them) - you know, ordinary schmucks, with ordinary houses, 2 working parents earning 40K each, with shit insurance from scumbags that will screw them around and never pay for anything. Or, laborers, workers, like supermarket employees who were devastated by these fires.
Yes, we do want to know to whom this money is going. We very much want to know. I sure hope it ain't that rich guy from rancho bernardo, or if it is, we should all just shoot ourselves now and get it over with.