Dan Pallotta’s recent column for Harvard Business Review calling on charities to start treating their donors as intelligent adults made me want to stand up and cheer. And in rising up to meet his challenge, I am here to tell you a hard truth. That truth is: most of you are doing a terrible job picking charities to receive your hard-earned money and carry the torch of your ideals.
As a person who makes social change their full-time profession, I am often frustrated that big-hearted individuals hear about the mission of a charity and say “isn’t that a wonderful charity?”
Let me be clear: it is impossible to know whether a charity is good or bad, wasteful or efficient, simply by reading its mission statement. Why do I say this?
First, because I know that a mission statement is a statement of intentions, not a statement of accomplishments. A “good cause” is not the same thing as a “good program.” And we all have good intentions but the inconvenient truth in social change work is that Good Intentions Are Not Enough.
Think of the well-meaning missionaries whose desire to “save” children from post-earthquake Haiti almost resulted in loving parents and their children being permanently separated.
Or the recent effort by World Vision to send 100,000 misprinted Super Bowl champion t-shirts to people in the third world, improving their own overhead ratios by claiming the value of these gifts-in-kind as program expenses, while in reality sending goods that are readily available even to poor people in the target geographies, widely accepted by the aid community as having the effect of undermining local businesses and creating a culture of dependency, and otherwise causing harm to the very communities they purport to help.
Or consider the Battered Mother’s Resource Fund that never actually implemented any programs it was fundraising for and potentially scared women away from seeking help by falsely claiming that many shelters separate mothers from their children. It was also proposing a children’s ranch that experts said would do great psychological harm to kids if it were ever built. Despite the fact that it was ordered to shut down by the Attorney General, this organizations still has a profile on Change.org, with 30 well-intentioned supporters. I bet those supporters read the mission statement and said “that’s a worthy cause.”
You know, they’re right: it IS a worthy cause. But it’s not a worthwhile program. This idea that different women’s shelters are doing radically different things, some of which might be actually harmful to women, is something we don’t often consider. But the same thing is true for all kinds of charities.
Some jobs programs help people spiff up their resumes and place them in dead end jobs. Others provide holistic training to prepare them for a lifetime of success in a new career. Sadly, some don’t even know what results they’re getting because they are too busy playing with allocation of costs to make their “overhead ratio” as low as possible.
As a person with good intentions, what can you do? You can pick an issue, and learn about it. In fact, I insist on it. Don’t give to any organization that asks just because it’s a “good cause.” Don’ t give thinking “What’s the harm? What’s the worst that could happen?” If you know nothing about that cause, that issue, that organization, you can be actually doing harm, as the examples above illustrate. Withholding your donation when you don’t know what you’re doing is as important a moral act as giving when asked.
The father of a childhood friend of mine used to say “Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
Tags: charity, Dan Pallotta, good intentions, overhead, philanthropy, World Vision
February 22, 2011 at 7:56 pm |
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February 22, 2011 at 10:46 pm |
Excellent!
Well said.
I have recently selected the three places that I plan on spending the lion-share of my time and my dollars. I spent an enormous amount of time in this selection, as I found that what was written above was, through the vetting process, often the case, if not worsre.
I know everyone wants to make thier contributions count. May I suggest a visit to the places you want to contribute to? See exactly how they opperate, what the atmoshere is like, where they spend their money, what it costs to keep going (detailed), what are their immediate 3 and 5 year plans and then ask additional difficult questions.
Once you find your answers, it makes things clear as to where your time and money should be spent.
February 23, 2011 at 6:55 am |
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Keren Raz and blendedvalue, Mickie Kennedy. Mickie Kennedy said: A Good Cause is Not the Same as a Good Program: Dan Pallotta’s recent column for Harvard Business Rev… http://bit.ly/gg1VA2 #nonprofit [...]
February 23, 2011 at 8:40 am |
Thanks for consolidating some examples Sharon. In talking with a variety of consultants who touch philanthropy from the family wealth/dynamics side, the fear from their standpoint is not to squash that impulse to be generous. Several of them bring up Toms Shoes, actually. And I’ve been talking about a wide spectrum starting with charity to philanthropy to high impact philanthropy to impact investing. Many people start at with charity (usually giving things like clothes, shoes to the poor) and that’s great, but through a bit of donor education, they can begin to pinpoint the kind of impact that really resonates with them along that spectrum. I’ll be sharing this post with others today.
February 23, 2011 at 9:04 am |
Suzanne, I applaud you for educating yourself to really find charities that are worthy of your dollars. You’re right: an internet search is not sufficient. You have to get a feel for the place with your own eyes and your own hands and a person you can talk to face to face.
Maryann–I share the concern of your other colleagues about squashing generosity and it’s certainly easier to write this post in the abstract than when sitting talking to a donor with good intentions. But as an advocate for informed generosity, I feel like it’s my job to point out that there is such a thing as expertise in foreign aid, expertise in aiding women affected by domestic violence and no, some random guy from your church shouldn’t get on a plane and fly to Haiti right after the earthquake because his presence will cause more harm, more distraction, more misdirection of resources than his energy will provide benefits.
I want to be clear that I’m not anti-charity, if you define charity as addressing symptoms of social problems instead of their root causes (feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, etc. rather than addressing the social situations that give rise to hunger and homelessness). Charity is a critical part of our social contract and we can’t let people starve while we are busy fighting the man. But even within charity, there are some good organizations, and some that are not so good. Not as measured by their overhead costs, but as measured by how effectively they help people.
February 23, 2011 at 12:21 pm |
Sharon, we’re in complete agreement here especially on our role as advisors. If I gave the impression that I am anti-charity, that’s not what I intended. It was more a matter of using conventional terminology. I too believe that charity has a role, in fact, I volunteered with Coalition for the Homeless for Generosity Day and came face to face with the critical work they do every night. Recap here: http://philanthropyindaba.wordpress.com
These conversations help us all make well-informed decisions.
February 25, 2011 at 7:04 am |
[...] A Good Cause is Not the Same as a Good Program – The Philanthropic Family – Take the time to research before giving. [...]
February 28, 2011 at 9:39 am |
Sharon, this is a balanced though tough post on a tough topic. I especially like that you make it clear that harm caused by philanthropy is often unintentional, though no less harmful for it. The Battered Mother’s Resource Fund example of (seemingly) outright corruption is more the exception than the rule. Most instances of philanthropic harm happen despite good intentions. (Put another way: good intentions are necessary but not sufficient–it is important that we remember the necessary part!)
Fyi, I did a blog post last week on this topic, trying to help us structure our conversation about the types of philanthropic harm:
http://johnsoncenter.posterous.com/giving-back-blog-types-of-philanthropic-harm
February 28, 2011 at 7:11 pm |
Michael, I so appreciate your comments. I almost didn’t include the “Battered Mother’s Resource Fund” because they were fraudulent.
Most charities that are unhelpful and even harmful are NOT fraudulent–they’re doing exactly what they said they would do with the money and are in good standing with the IRS and state authorities (that’s actually such a low bar it’s pitiful). Rather, the problem is that the things they are doing are the wrong things but they and their supporters don’t know it.
I find myself often trying to explain the idea that there is expertise in social change work just like there is expertise in medicine, law, engineering, etc. It reminds me of those Holiday Inn Express commercials. “Are you an expert in assisting battered women to safely and effectively rebuild their lives?” “No, but I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night.”
Your classification of types of harm actually reminds me of some thinking I had done back in my Pew Trusts days about “risks” of strategic philanthropy. I was thinking of the risks to the grantmaker in accomplishing their goals. I like how you’ve framed it in terms of risks of potential harm to the rest of the world.
March 1, 2011 at 5:13 pm |
[...] out there that have fine anti-hunger ideals but in practice exacerbate hunger and poverty. As one stellar blogger wrote, “A good cause is not the same as a good program.” That same blogger recounts [...]
April 26, 2011 at 8:31 pm |
[...] and practices like this in place. To all donors, I can only reiterate that before giving to a “good cause”, you should investigate whether the program or organization in question also represents good [...]
April 27, 2012 at 7:20 am |
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