Giving to Charity is Awful: 7 Reasons Why

Yes, I said it. And I’m sure that by the end of this article, I’ll have offended a few well-known charities. So it’ll be even worse when I’m bold enough to ask for money myself. But as I considered LinkedIn’s prompt to write about the current state of #MyIndustry, it occurs to me that the ways we tend to raise money for nonprofit organizations have shifted quite far from our missions. In fact, it is my belief that many of the processes we use to give money to charity today are awful.

In addition to my full-time job as an executive for a software company, I serve as the President of the Board for a non-profit organization in Chicago. The 530 Fullerton Foundation serves over 18,000 homeless guests on Chicago’s North Side each year, and is often the only support that men 18-64 can turn to for basic human needs. Indeed, we are the only place on the north side to find a free meal on Thursday afternoons; and we offer it out of a civil-war-era building that stands right across the street from where the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 ended its disruption of other wood-frame buildings in the city.

When I started raising money to modernize this sagging, 150-year-old building that gets so much public use, I heard a lot from family and friends about their experiences and observations with charitable giving. And I’ve compiled a list of the top seven things about the ways that we give money to charity that – if not entirely awful – are at least notable quirks with the process worth re-evaluating.

Viral Trends That Have Little to Do With the Charity

Last summer, it seemed that everyone was taking the #IceBucketChallenge. The Challenge encouraged individuals to film themselves pouring a bucket of ice water over their head, post it online, and then challenge their friends and family to do the same – making a donation to fight a neurological disease at the same time. From a fundraising perspective, the organization’s website reports having received $115 Million in donations tied to the challenge. And I suspect that they’ve grown their contact database substantially, and will continue to solicit this new donor pool for a good long time. Yet, the fact that very view Challenge participants can intelligently describe what the disease is or what the nonprofit does to fight it suggests to me that their donation was made more for the thrill of being a YouTube sensation than for advancing a charitable cause – and I suspect that the likelihood of receiving more than a small, one-time gift from these Ice Bucket Challengers is low.

In a similar way, getting everyone to buy a colored rubber bracelet, or tie a specific colored ribbon to their car antenna seems to be more about fashion than about advancing a cause – and I suspect have similarly short-term results.

Relying on Unrelated Events

As a triathlete and marathon runner, I’ve lost track of how many runners I know who build up to the race asking friends and family to “sponsor a mile” for one cause or another. “I am going to be running, biking and swimming for 140.6 miles on Saturday. I’ve struggled hard to train for this event, but not nearly as hard as the person with XYZ disease who is struggling for life. Would you please sponsor my race by donating a quarter for each mile I complete?”

Aside from wondering if sponsors will actually pay less if the athlete drops out of the race halfway through (something that happens at an awful lot of Ironman races), I also wonder about the connection between the two events. It’s there, at least rhetorically, but is the donor giving to the charity because they want to advance the cause, or are they simply donating as a way to express their support for their good friend who is running a race that’s important to them?

Being a sponsor of a race may help an organization with an influx of cash – but are they really helped when that cash comes from people who don’t understand the issue, aren’t motivated to continue support with a second donation, and will just as easily give money to the next group that sponsors the next event their cousin is running?

Convenient Donations of Unusable Things

When people hear that I am connected to homelessness work, they’re often quick to ask if they can donate a tangible good. Would I like this almost-expired can of peas from their pantry? How about this winter overcoat with the lining torn out – it’s no good for work anymore, but must be better than what one of the guests is wearing today? Would I like them to pick up an extra bag of onions the next time they’re at the grocery store?

I love the desire to help, but honestly, find that many of the offers are unusable or unnecessary; while a monetary gift would go so much further to advance our cause.

Not far from my home, there’s a drop-off center for a non-profit that runs a thrift store. People back up SUVs with donations loaded with all sorts of clothes and old household goods – the donation forms actually allow you to value your donation “by the bag,” instead of by the piece. But when I look at the kinds of things people are contributing – bags of old t-shirts and baseball hats, irons and tables and microwaves that have reached the end of usefulness in the donor's home – I’ve got to believe that they’re being given more for the purposes of a tax write-off or a feeling of doing good than a thoughtful consideration of the need and the best way to fill it.

On a typical day, volunteers at the Foundation are serving a hot meal that serves 100. A single can of peas (or five!) isn’t going to go very far in such a meal. And we’ve actually got amazing partnerships with local grocery stores, restaurants, and farming communities that provide a consistent stream of high-quality food in bulk volume that keep us well supplied to serve food to our guests. So, it’s not really food that we need.

The true operational challenges are in building maintenance, heating, and electricity - plus security and janitorial staff to clean up after 100 meals have been served. A few dollars in cash, rather than the equivalent amount of groceries, can make a much bigger impact on the work we’re doing.

Named and Targeted Gifts

When building a new building, there are all sorts of opportunities for naming rights. Baseball stadiums are branded with names of Fortune 500 companies, libraries are named after prominent citizens, and school courtyards are full of names of parents who “bought a brick” in the construction process.

It’s clearly an effective strategy. The buildings are built, and the names are all over the place. Yet I wonder how much of the gift was made because of a deep commitment to the mission of the place and how much is tied up in the donor’s ego.

I spoke with a fundraising consultant who shared a telling story with me. She indicated that when she tells donors that they have an opportunity for naming rights on any particular project, the donor will often make a show of saying that it’s unimportant to them to have their name on the school library. Yet, nine times out of ten, when she then suggests that they select a particular teacher or mentor who made a big impact on them for naming rights, the donor ultimately decides that – actually, the building should be built in honor of me after all.

The other challenge with nameable things is that the items that most often need underwriting aren’t terribly flashy or attractive, or easy to put a name on. Many of my donors have white collar jobs where they assume that health, dental, and vision benefits are standard. Yet, in making targeted donations, these same donors are reluctant to have their money targeted to providing those same basic benefits to our low-wage staff, preferring instead to have all of their money spent on food, clothing, or other tangible service delivery.

It’s fair for a donor to want to have say in how their money spent – but we’ll be able to do so much better work if we can afford quality staff, who work in quality buildings that don’t leak or risk collapse than we will in buying another case of pasta.

Allow Donors to “Adopt” Through Money

Even when there aren’t buildings or hallways or benches to be named, many charities suggest that they are allowing their donors to “adopt” a particular beneficiary for their financial gifts. At the moment, there’s a television ad that seems to be on constantly, which promises that the organization will “send you a photo of an animal that we are serving” when they receive your gift.

“A tree has been planted in your name” in some impoverished community, although I’m not sure you could actually go there and see “your” tree. “For the price of a cup of coffee a day, you can provide this villager with clean drinking water,” “we’ll send you a picture of a child that benefits from our work.” The statements are factually true, and stay short of promising that your particular gift is supporting this particular child – but in the minds of donors, the lines easily get blurred into believing that “I have adopted this child and am paying for his specific school books this year.”

The honest math is harder to describe; it’d be hard to explain in a 30 second commercial that if you take the all of the costs involved in providing that school kid an education – the staff salaries, the building costs, the accountants, the transportation costs – and divide it by the number of kids served you wind up with an average cost of $X per child per day. It’s not nearly as flashy as an attractive photo of one of the beneficiaries of the program either – but it seems unfortunately that charities and donors need to play this dance around discussing finances.

It is astonishing, the amount of work that these organizations can do with very little money, but seems disingenuous to draw those lines. Dividing all of my own organization’s costs by the number of meals we serve yields an average cost of about $2.25 for a nutritionally balanced meal representing all of the major food groups. IT price that couldn’t be matched in any local restaurant or grocery store, – but the truth is that those costs are much less about the food that shows up on the plate, and much more about the maintenance of stoves and dishwashers, gas and electric bills that enable that food to be delivered.

Donations through Other Purchases

“Socially Responsible” consumerism is another big trend in nonprofit fundraising these days. “For every pair of shoes you buy from us, we’ll donate a pair to a child in need.” Grocery stores regularly ask if you’d like to add a dollar to your purchase to your purchase as a donation to some charity or another. It’s another tactic that works really well – the charities behind the scenes must be making tons of money, and the businesses get a health tax write-off (even if the shopper who is funding the donation doesn’t), but again, it seems that the donor is so far removed from the actual cause, that something has gone awry.

This isn’t to say that I don’t want you to make sure that a portion of Amazon.com’s proceeds on your next purchase are donated to my own organization, but I do recognize it’s a convoluted way to advance the needs of homeless people in Chicago, and one that will be hard to sustain in the long run.

Fundraising Often Seems Like Begging

Walking down the street on a summer day in Chicago, you’re bound to find armies of people carrying clipboards and asking if you can spare a minute to save the air, or the whales, or democracy. In other seasons, people stand in traffic intersections asking you to fill a fireman’s boot with dollar bills, or a bucket with spare change. At its core, these fundraising tactics are not that different than those of a panhandler, carrying a paper coffee cup and asking for spare change to help buy a bus ticket.

While some commuters will stop, and talk, and donate, most avoid the fundraisers, seeing them as an annoyance and interruption in their hectic lives. I suspect that many who do drop a dollar into the bucket do so out of a sense of guilt, a way to make the uncomfortable interaction end, or other personal motivation that has little to do with the actual cause being fundraised for.

The work that these individuals are trying to fund are noble causes – and deserve a more respectful and serious conversation than a pithy, ten-word request for spare change are likely to provide.

Looking to the Future: What’s the Alternative?

In my full-time job, I lead a team that sells software which improves the businesses that use it. They make more money, have happier employees, and enjoy a host of other benefits from the solution. It’s a marketplace in which our clients have an infinite array of other projects to spend their money on, and our sales team spends an extended amount of time educating our prospects on how it will work, explaining the financial arrangements, and answering a wide variety of questions that our prospects have.

Our engaged sales process results in a long-term partnership, where our customers continue to use the products, are delighted with the results, and are advocates for others to change their business in similar ways. Our clients are educated consumers, and they aren’t tricked into buying software through a flashy ad campaign, a sense of guilt, a pitiful story, or a sense of convenience.

As I think about the charitable organizations I’ve discussed here, I’m convinced that they’re worthy causes who are doing good work. I know that my own charitable organization produces amazing results for our guests and clients – providing the forgotten people of our city access to health care, food, clothing, and other basic life requirements as they work to create a better future for themselves and their families.

Yet, if non-profits are going to have meaningful, long-lasting relationships with their donors to produce long-lasting results, we must rely less on gimmicks, and find ways to have real conversations with one another about the real need, and very concrete ways to help.

Our website – much like the dilapidated building we need to replace – is not pretty. And I hope one day to have the staff and resources to build it and our marketing budget out like many of our larger charitable counterparts. But even as it stands, I hope that our website tells a clear story about the work we do, the challenges we face, as well as clear instructions about how we can receive money and how it will be used. I’m hopeful that it leads to real conversations with potential donors. Not simply a quick want to get a short-term donation from a casual passerby (though I’d love for everyone to click the link that allows you to send us a contribution of any size), but a conversation that lets our donors know exactly how great the need is, exactly how their donation can help, and encourages them to have an ongoing relationship with us that provides meaning in both directions.

As donors, and as charities, I think these deeper, transparent relationships are what we all deserve. And I believe that we can intentionally make the process of giving to charity a better one.

What do you think? Do you like these methods of charitable giving? Do you want a different relationship between donors and charities? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below. If you enjoyed this post, please click the thumbs up icon at the top of this page and let me know!

About: JD Miller is a senior technology executive with a career spanning small startups and large public companies. He uses this expertise to help organizations increase and sustain sales performance. He is also active in Chicago’s philanthropic community, with a special interest in issues related to hunger and homelessness.

You can follow Dr. Miller on Twitter @JDM_Chicago

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