The Challenge of Charity Activists : Coalition Criticizes Methods of Establishment Giving

Four years ago, when President Reagan began wielding his domestic budget ax, he called for a “new spirit of volunteerism” to cut reliance on government.

Now some of the poor, the old, the feminists and the minorities--the people who felt Reagan’s cuts most--are organizing so that, in their own way, they can make the President’s ideas work.

About 100 charity activists gathered at the San Franciscan Hotel last week for four days of intense training at a fund-raising workshop.

Critic of United Way The sponsors were the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, which was formed in the ‘70s to be a critic of United Way and other Establishment charities, and the National Black United Fund Inc., which represents 13 local fund-raising drives that operate in a manner similar to United Way but fund black nonprofit organizations.

The charity activists, many of whom spent the ‘60s questioning authority, say they want the people who give most of the money to charity--the working and middle classes--to control that money. Currently, the activists contend, the economic and political elites typically serve on the boards of major charities and decide what to do with charitable dollars.

“We don’t want a handout, we want a helping hand,” said Danny Bakewell, president of the Brotherhood Crusade/Black United Fund in Los Angeles, which got $1.1 million in pledges last year.

Bakewell and other leaders at the conference said they believe that too much charity in America is based on the notion that those who need help are incapable of solving their own problems and that the economically more successful must let some of their surplus income trickle down to help the poor and disenfranchised.

The charity activists said that they want to revive an old notion: the Settlement House concept of charity as a vehicle that empowers people to solve their own problems.

And they want to end United Way’s near monoply on fund-raising via payroll deductions, forcing more than 2,200 local United Ways to compete with other charities for payroll deduction donations. United Ways oppose this, saying it would create divisiveness. So far only a few payroll fund-raising drives, most of them among government employees, are open to non-United Way groups on an equal access basis.

The charity activists say they will not settle for donor option, a system that the Los Angeles United Way was among the first to offer. Donor option allows individuals to specify which approved charity gets their donations. The activists, however, want to be free to make their own pitches and to designate their own causes.

In addition, the charity activists say that they want both the foundations that give money and the nonprofit service organizations that spend it to be more relevant to current social needs.

Like most organizers representing groups seeking power, the charity activists speak negatively about their competition. Much of the conference focused on United Way, which the charity activists tended to describe in harsh terms, downplaying the United Way movement’s accomplishments.

Only a small fraction of charitable giving is done through United Way. Of the $59.5 billion that individual Americans gave to charity last year, United Way collected about $2 billion, half of that through payroll deduction. About 37,000 nonprofit health and human service agencies, fewer than 10% of all charities, get part of their funding through United Way campaigns.

Dick Cook, former head of the Neighborhoods Institute in Baltimore, wrote a critical study of United Way fund-raising procedures in 1981. At the San Francisco conference, Cook outlined a Populist view of United Ways as tools of the corporate elite which have facilitated many good works, while stifling change.

Cook said that the top corporate executives who control most United Ways funnel the money donated by their workers to noncontroversial charities. He said that means lots of money goes to old established charities, but little is directed towards charities coping with new and emerging problems, which, by their nature, generate controversy.

“In the 1920s, the Community Chests (the predecessors of the United Way movement) were an effort by the wealthy, who were the givers, to spread the responsibility for supporting charity,” Cook said. “The wealthy got their employees to give through payroll deductions, while the wealthy maintained control of where the money went.

“United Way serves as a legitimizer of charities,” Cook added. “It gives a sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to some charities, but denies it to others.

“And which charities are denied? Black groups, women’s groups, social-change-oriented groups, advocacy groups--all groups that challenge United Way’s notion of what charity is,” Cook said.

Officials of the United Way movement--whose slogan is “thanks to you it works for all of us”--believe that having volunteers on a variety of committees studying health and human services needs ensures an effective, relevant and broadly balanced approach to community needs.

‘An Inaccurate View’ “Dick Cook has a very incorrect and inaccurate view of what United Way historically has been and currently is,” Steve Delfin, a spokesman for United Way of America, said from his Alexandria, Va., office in a telephone interview after the conference.

“United Way is the single largest provider of funds and services to minority and women’s groups,” Delfin said. “More than $100 million in local United Way funds went to provide services pinpointed for minorities . . . “

Delfin said corporations, not United Way, control access to payroll deduction and he noted that only about half of the Fortune 500 companies have United Way campaigns.

Delfin agreed with estimates by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy that about half of the $2.1 billion in pledges United Ways collected last year fund a dozen old-line health charities, the Boy and Girl Scouts, Boys Clubs, YMCAs and YWCAs, Family Service Associations and the Salvation Army. Delfin said the Boys Clubs, Family Service and Salvation Army “primarily serve poor and minority constituencies.”

Basic Issues Ignored Pablo Eisenberg, president of the Center for Community Change, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization that works with urban and rural poverty groups, told the San Francisco meeting that the nonprofit Establishment ignores basic issues of equality, equity and access.

Eisenberg challenged the charity activists to fight complacency by nonprofit organizations that, he said, exist only because they once built up large lists of supporters who continue giving without critically examining whether their donations serve an important purpose.

Eisenberg urged the charity activists to question the existence of some traditional charities, although he did not specify which ones he thought were so out-of-date that they should close down.

Turning to foundations, Eisenberg said, “the priorities of philanthropy have changed very little to meet new public needs. To justify its existence, philanthropy must meet not the public needs of 40 years ago, but the needs of today.”

He challenged the charity activists “to break the mystique of philanthropy . . . All of us know organizers who have brought insurance companies to their knees, challenged the big banks and forced major changes in the policies of major corporations and yet these same people turn to Jell-O when it comes to foundations.

‘Break That Tradition’ “I challenge you to break that tradition, to stop being beggars and to become partners in philanthropy, to hold the philanthropists accountable, to call into question their procedures and their processes of decision making.”

Too many foundations, he said, do not publish annual reports or even their telephone numbers.

Eisenberg also said that the pool of talent entering the nonprofit sector is declining because too many bright, hard-working young people are chasing after the financial rewards of corporate yuppiedom while too few seek careers serving their fellow man.

Dana Alston, president of the National Black United Fund, Inc., said local United Ways have repeatedly approached the local black funds and urged them to join United Way.

But she said the funds, which raised about $3.5 million in 1984, have no interest in becoming United Way agencies, which she characterized as controlled by an elite of wealthy white males, most of them top corporate executives. (Only two black funds, in the Bay Area and the District of Columbia, cooperate with the local United Way.)

“Our goal is not to be sanctioned by white America, but to control our own destinies,” Alston said.

The Black United Funds want direct access at the workplace, to solicit employees for payroll deductions, just as United Way does, she said.

Issues Ignored When white-controlled United Ways disperse funds to black agencies they focus on mental health, physical health and other traditional programs, she said, while ignoring other issues.

Alston contended this occurs because many white leaders, in their public statements, indicate that they believe blacks are not interested in the environment, world peace and other issues that cut across racial lines and because they do not want to fund charities that would enhance the economic power of blacks.

Others at the conference scored United Way for opposing payroll deductions for environmental groups, arguing that seeking a cleaner environment fits the concept of health and human services.

“United Way won’t give to environmental groups because they are beating up lots of major corporations whose polluting harms people’s health,” Cook said.

Joseph Valentine, executive director of the Bay Area United Way, told the conferees “it is difficult” to rationalize the exclusion of environmental groups working on pollution issues from the United Way campaign. He noted that United Ways change their policies when companies demand it and companies demand change when their workers demand it.

When Eisenberg asked Valentine why United Ways oppose the competition of direct access, Valentine replied:

“One honest answer is we’s got the mechanism. We want to control it. We want to run it.”

Cook contended there are two basic notions of charity in America.

One is embodied by the Settlement House movement, which operated on the theory that charitable acts should empower people to solve their own problems and should be aimed at preventing the spread of social problems.

Second Basic Notion The other notion Cook described is that charity is necessary because those who need help cannot help themselves. “It is the idea,” Cook said, “that you feed people, but you don’t help them feed themselves.”

Some scholars in the little-studied field of charity contend there is a third major concept of charity in America. This notion involves giving that benefits the general public and simultaneously benefits the giver. For example, many individuals who make tax deductible gifts to arts organizations build their social lives around these organizations.