New Books

National Guides to Funding

Edited by Elizabeth H. Rich

These guides from the Foundation Center profile foundations, corporate-giving programs, and charitable organizations that have demonstrated support for specific causes.

The center recently published updated editions focusing on six areas: animal welfare and the environment, arts and culture, community development, foreign programs, higher education, and substance abuse.

Each entry includes contact information for the grant maker, financial data, fields of interest, geographic limitations, application information, and, when available, a sample of recent grant allocations.

The center totals those amounts to give a rough estimate of what charities received in recent years. For example: The 10,488 grants listed for programs in community development represent more than $1-billion for projects ranging from homeless shelters to enterprise zones, and higher-education programs received more than $2-billion from 862 of the foundations listed in order to support scholarships, faculty development, and other needs.

Indexes provide an alphabetical roster of donors, officers, and trustees, as well as lists of grant makers by name, subject, state, and types of support awarded.

Publisher: Foundation Center, Department NW19, 79 Fifth Avenue, New York 10003-3076; (212) 807-3690 or (800) 424-9836; fax (212) 807-3677; World-Wide Web http://fdncenter.org; National Guide to Funding in Arts and Culture, Fifth Edition, 1,280 pages, $145, I.S.B.N. 0-87954-768-5; National Guide to Funding for Community Development, Second Edition, 946 pages, $135, I.S.B.N. 0-87954-769-3; National Guide to Funding for the Environment and Animal Welfare, Fourth Edition, 527 pages, $95, I.S.B.N. 0-87954-770-7; National Guide to Funding in Higher Education, Fifth Edition, 1,439 pages, $145, I.S.B.N. 0-87954-771-5; Guide to Funding for International and Foreign Programs, Fourth Edition, 358 pages, $115, I.S.B.N. 0-87954-772-3; National Guide to Funding in Substance Abuse, Second Edition, 238 pages, $95, I.S.B.N. 0-87954-773-1; add $4.50 postage and handling for the first guide, $2.50 for each additional guide.

Philanthropy in the World’sTraditions

Edited by Warren F. Ilchman, Stanley N. Katz, and Edward L. Queen II

This book offers several studies of philanthropy in non-Western cultures and religions.

“Emphasizing the social and cultural roots of philanthropy enables us to see how philanthropic activities are related to people’s conceptions of a good society, or a good life,” write the editors.

The book’s 16 essays include discussions of aboriginal traditions, such as those of pre-colonial Africa and North America; traditions that are rooted in Asia, with an emphasis on those found in Buddhism; philanthropy in the contexts of Islamic law and Confucian ethics; origins of modern Jewish philanthropy; and philanthropic ventures occurring in contemporary China, Latin America, and Russia.

Contributors include Leslie S. Kawamura, professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary, who examines the ways in which the Buddhist tradition of giving — in which donors expect no reward or aggrandizement — differs from traditional Western charity, and Adele Lindenmeyr, professor of history at Villanova University, who analyzes 20th-century Russian history in order to explain why so many Russian citizens today hold a skeptical view of philanthropy, even as it helps relieve misery in the post-Soviet era.

Mr. Ilchman is former executive director of the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, Mr. Katz is a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and Mr. Queen is director of the “Religion and Philanthropy” project at the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy.

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 601 North Morton Street, Bloomington, Ind. 47404; (812) 855-8054 or (800) 842-6796; fax (812) 855-7931; e-mail iuporder@indiana.edu; World-Wide Web http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress; 382 pages; $35; I.S.B.N. 0-253-33392-x.

Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement

By Janet Poppendieck

An increase in charitable efforts to stem hunger is still no substitute for government assistance, writes the author.

What’s more, she says, private programs to feed people, while laudable, have actually diverted attention from the more-crucial task of eliminating poverty.

“The proliferation of charity . . . reduces the discomfort evoked by visible destitution in our midst by creating the illusion of effective action and offering us myriad ways of participating in it,” writes Ms. Poppendieck, professor of sociology at Hunter College of the City University of New York.

What’s needed, she writes, is a system in which food providers and recipients work together to involve all branches of society in solving inequalities and in sharing the riches of a prosperous nation.

Ms. Poppendieck’s analysis is shaped by many interviews she conducted with emergency-food providers and volunteers. She offers case studies of soup kitchens, food banks, and antihunger charities, such as Second Harvest, in Chicago.

The author provides statistics on the types of people forced to rely on donated food, offers a brief his- tory of government-run relief programs, and traces the recent rise in private programs to the early 1980s, when poverty was high and when budgets for domestic-assistance programs were slashed. She then argues that charity-food handouts are often nutritionally inadequate and humiliating to receive, and that the actions of well-meaning volunteers ultimately amount to a temporary solution to the more-serious problem of wealth disparity.

Ms. Poppendieck concludes that the way to enact more-fundamental reforms is for charities to increase public awareness of the need for higher-paying jobs and to better educate the public about the growing chasm between the rich and the poor.

For an essay adapted from this book, see “Emergency Food: Moving Beyond the Hunger Trap,” The Chronicle, September 10.

Publisher: Viking Penguin, 375 Hudson Street, New York 10014; (212) 366-2000 or (800) 331-4624; fax (212) 366-2666; 354 pages; $26.95; I.S.B.N. 0-670-88020-5.