The face of hope is you . . .

Illinois residents recently voted down a “Fair Tax” amendment that proposed a graduated rather than flat-rate income tax, whereby high-income earners would have paid a higher percentage of their income in state taxes than low-income earners. Perhaps not surprisingly, many high-income earners were opposed to the proposed amendment. Yet, I have heard many high-income earners say that they want to do more. As someone who now leads one of the Midwest’s largest human services agencies, I say to all of you – don’t wait, just do it.

While debating whatever could be considered the right government-mandated tax rates, how about a personally mandated “self-tax” during this pandemic? Right now if each of us, who is comfortably employed, gave an extra 1% of our income to the non-profits who are caring for our neighbors in need, we could have a huge impact.

Government spending on direct-care human services has declined significantly over the last 20 years  

For example, in Illinois, since 1997 spending on human services has fallen from 26% to 16% of our state’s budget. That means, according to the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, that Illinois’ spending for human services has declined more than 22% in real terms over the last 20 years after accounting for inflation. And this was well before the pandemic took hold – a pandemic that has left more than 12% of people unemployed as of October 2020.

Non-profits have stepped in to fill the void 

Over the last 20 years, it’s non-profits such as Catholic Charities where I work, the Heartland Alliance, Salvation Army, and Metropolitan Family Services, along with many other smaller nonprofit providers in Illinois, who have stepped in to fill the void. We all provide assistance to anyone in need. Even before the pandemic, our budgets were tight; we all sought increased investment. And now, the demand for our services is doubling and tripling for our teams on the ground, who as essential workers are not Zoom-fatigued, they’re fatigue-fatigued.

We want to and need to do more this year

Our teams want to and can do more, as COVID drives more people into poverty. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, nearly 26 million adults – 12% of all adults in the country – reported that their household sometimes or often didn’t have enough to eat in the last seven days, far above the pre-pandemic rate of 3.7% of adults reporting that their household did “not enough to eat” at some point over the full 12 months of 2019. Looming behind this, 32% of all Illinois households – or 2.98 million adults – reported that they had difficulty covering their usual household expenses in a two-week period average during October 2020. 

While Illinois’ Fair Tax amendment may have been controversial, what is indisputable is the ever-growing wealth gap and economic fallout from the pandemic for the lowest paid, largely BIPOC people and families across the country. All human service providers are seeing unprecedented levels of need. And please know, our finances are fully transparent and what we collect goes directly to serving our clients. You can look up our tax returns online and see our accountability ratings on GuideStar.

Bottom line: This is a once-in-a-generation time of need. If you’re comfortably employed and you believe in the concept of fairness, consider giving away an additional 1% of your income this year. Give directly to a human service non-profit.

Change lives – now.

For a list of the largest safety-net organizations in Illinois who can put your dollars to work today, visit liveunitedchicago.org/agency-partners/all-agency-partners.