There is competition for our concerns between private helping and private giving on the one hand and public helping and public regulation of opportunity on the other. As individuals we have to decide how to distribute whatever time and money we have.
Clinton, Welfare, and Charitable Choice
Private giving and public policy have become a political hot potato. It began when President Clinton promoted "welfare reform", on the grounds that too many individuals were embedded in the welfare system and could go to work.
Recognizing that people would need assistance to go from welfare to work, including education, the welfare reform law, "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996," included a provision for increasing aid to individuals on welfare.
The Clinton initiative was known as Charitable Choice. Charitable Choice was designed to expand the ability of religious organizations to access government funding for their social services' programs.
The long tradition in our country to separate religion from government caused many religious organizations to deliberately create separate nonprofit organizations to receive tax dollars to deliver social services to those in need.
Can a religious organization refrain from preaching its beliefs when it offers job training? Should it hide its purpose for being, that is its religious mission? Should non-religious professional social service organizations have to compete for tax dollars with religious organizations that already get donations from their membership?
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President Bush and Executive Power
There was relatively little notice taken of this new function until George W. Bush became president. Because he openly based several of his policies on his personal religious conversion, he picked up the Clinton concept of Charitable Choice and created the White House Office on Faith Based and Community Initiatives. The Office and its' initiatives became embroiled in political maneuvering that is still being sorted out to this day.
President Bush, without asking Congress, ordered five of his cabinet officers to fund faith-based organizations, among them housing, education, and health and human services. Not yet resolved is the relationship of those new services to ones already funded and dependent on government support.
Is there new money for these faith-based organizations or is the funding to be taken from long-established initiatives and transferred to the new religious ones. What was so new about this White House office? After all, many religious social service organizations already received tax dollars, e.g. Catholic Charities.
People already opposed to Bush's open promotion of his personal beliefs in his statements about court appointments and his denial of funding for sexuality education and international women's health initiatives added this program to their list of concerns. In addition, the Congressional committees that have oversight over the spending of tax dollars resent the addition of a White House based oversight over those same agencies and functions.
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What works
The latest studies released in 2002 on the ability of religious organizations' ability to deliver services to those in need showed mixed results, They do not appear to be more competent or less competent than secular agencies providing services to those in need.
With the Faith Based initiatives coming out of Washington, our taxes may support the causes that are important to us. However, the concept of Charitable Choice and Faith Based Initiatives adds to an already crowded field of options on giving and how to give.
We have competing secular and religious organizations offering the same services to those in need. There is the potential for confusion as to whether my contribution or my tax dollars are supporting the work of any particular charity. There is also the reality that some nonprofit organizations do receive both charitable gifts and government money generated through taxes.
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Competing for dollars to do good
The competition for dollars is even more incredible when you add in all the commercial messages we are exposed to each day. In the early 1990,s the average American received 3,000 messages per day and by 2000, the average American began to receive upwards of 5,000 commercial messages per day.
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Psychology of Giving
We have been taught to care about people and the environment, but this concept of caring for most of us has never been defined. Our sense of caring is so broad we do not know where to begin and we often do not know how to carry out our ability to care.
We begin by being attracted to organizations that do good work and tell us about the work. We find organizations that meld with our beliefs and that promote the issues that are important to us. The causes need to be good and we need to feel connected and engaged by the work they do.
Once we determine that an organization will deliver the results they promise, we donate to them. When we give to organizations, we pool our resources with like-minded people. An interesting phenomenon is that the poorest in our country, as a group, give the largest percentage of their income to charities.
We not only give our money but we also give our time and expertise. The time given by volunteers is very important to every non-profit organization.
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Political giving as philanthropy
A startling statistic: Women volunteer more time than men and as we volunteer more we become less politically active.
Political parties and candidates are among the organizations we support. Taxes and regulations affect every one of the causes we give to outside of government; therefore, it makes sense to add political knowledge and action to our community and religious knowledge and action.
We find Advocacy Groups and we support them. We find political candidates who share our views and we support them both financially and with our time and expertise. Political parties and candidates, and what they stand for, are becoming more important to us.
