Charity

(Obviously, this is inspired by the current fund-raising efforts for Haiti. If there ever was a "perfect" disaster, this is it, and I have been stirred and moved by the extraordinary world response to it.)

I work for a charitable organization. I have worked for charity pretty much since I ever started doing work, both on a volunteer basis and paid (although I am paid, I have to say that it is the volunteers that are the life-blood, the raison d'etre of my industry). It is my life. It is something that still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. I think that charity is the single best thing about human beings.

And we don't do it particularly well.

I often think, my dream job would to be paid a lot of money to advise rich charitable donors, whether organizational or individual, to tell them where to put their money. I really seriously know a lot about this area. And most donors actually do it badly.

I am not going to list any bad charities here, though there are a lot of them. Just going to say, any charity that advertises a lot, and uses poverty porn in their ads, and sad to say is enlisting school kids to raise funds, is probably a good one to stay away from. (Which is not to say that good charities don't stoop to poverty porn sometimes; here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DdzqG9yK8c. And here is a corrective: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-jSQD5FVxE.)

But anyway here are some good ones:

International
The Mennonite Central Committee, the Catholic Caritas, and Medecins sans Frontiers are probably doing more good work for the desperately poor and horribly stricken than anybody else. If you want to seriously help the destitute and hopeless, the real downtrodden and afflicted of the world, they are really good places to put your money. They are doing the real, serious, right in your face work of feeding the hungry, comforting the afflicted, and healing the sick.

That said, in terms of really shrewd investing, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is being really innovative and strategic in what they are doing, and is applying massive leverage and totally clever investment strategies to do Good. I am not by and large a Microsoft fan, but that foundation is simply doing some of the best systemic scale work out there. It is hard to attract people to donate to systemic players, but goddamn, if Warren Buffet buys into it, you have to seriously think about it. Just saying.

The Red Cross
Now, I volunteer for them, and they do really good stuff, and I utterly reject the paranoid conspiratorial stuff about them, but they are dealing up close and personal with a complication that affects most non-religious charities: the relationship with government (yes I said that; faith-based organizations are not inherently better, but they have a different set of inherent strengths and weaknesses than secular ones). There is a big grey area between government and charitable social services, and the Red Cross moves back and forth across it. If you want to give some money for the immediate relief of some catastrophe, the Red Cross is the place to do it. But do be aware, inherent in the Red Cross is that it necessarily maintains an official and direct relationship with governments, and strongly endorses and practises neutrality, which can be compromising.

Amnesty International
As a charity, they are crazy, and all over the map on an international basis. The good thing is that they really don't need gobs of money, they mostly need your attention and time. You want to make the world a better place than it is, give them some attention and time.

National
This is one area that my knowledge is deficient. I actually do not know of a national Canadian charity that I would list as a give to. If I don't know that about Canada, I certainly do not know that about any other country. The one exception would be medical research charities; there, you picks your disease and writes your cheque I guess.

The one exception, and it saddens me to say this, is that I would not recommend supporting MADD. They are a wonderful cause and have done amazing work, but frankly, they won and the battle is pretty much over. It is no longer socially acceptable to drive drunk, and law enforcement and the justice system have seriously seriously cracked down; I don't know what else there is to ask. This year, the local cops doubled their check-stop program over the holidays. Thousands of hours of cop-time booked, huge expenses, and what was the result? In a city of over 1 million, I think about 17 arrests, more for cannabis infractions than alcohol related ones as it turns out. One of the things we frequently say in the charitable sector is that we would like to work ourselves out of a job; I think MADD pretty much has, which is why their appeals have begun to take on a ring of desperation. Sorry my MADD colleagues.

Local
Well, supporting the Salvation Army is always a pretty good idea. They work with people that no one else will. I have my theological disagreements with them, but damn but they serve the halt and the lame and the seriously screwed up. I admire them intensely, even though I am pretty sure I would never work for them. I think that may be the single biggest bang for your local community buck you can find, they are insanely efficient. And like I said, they serve those nobody else will, that desperately need to be served. And, unlike so many others, and government especially, as a founding principle, they understand Maslow.

The United Way varies enormously from community to community, so there you have to do your research (or pay me to do it for you). The United Way in Winnipeg is an extremely good place indeed to put your money for example. Here in Cowtown, it is pretty good. Other places, not so much. Similarly with both the YM and YW; the variance from community to community is pretty extreme.

Of course, the best single thing you can do is pay attention to what is going on and vote; the "special interests'" and corporate sector's chokehold on the political dynamics in almost every democracy needs to be continuously cut back, sort of like kudzu or dandelions in your yard. After that, volunteer. Our society could seriously not function without the legions of volunteers out there. Coach a kids' soccer team, put some time in at Sally Anne (and not just at Christmas), see what you can do at your local seniors' centre.

It is God's work, after all.