December 18, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
With social and environmental problems emerging worldwide and with more Americans facing foreclosure and lacking adequate food, a difficult issue is being raised: Is it better to give at home or abroad this year?
While it is a question philanthropy has grappled with for decades, the bad economy has put it in sharp relief. And giving experts are debating it.
In her Slate column on giving, Sandy Stonesifer, a charity worker in Washington and the daughter of Patty Stonesifer, the former head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, says there are good reasons to support charities at home this year.
But “if you subscribe to the belief that all lives are created equally—and your giving is aimed at saving human lives or reducing suffering—your donations will almost always yield greater returns when given (to reputable organizations) internationally.”
Others may disagree.
In a recent column in the Nonprofit Quarterly, Cindy Gibson, a foundation consultant, took issue with a recent list of effective philanthropists in part because it seemed to favor donors who focus on big global problems.
“While we need big-scale/scaled up philanthropy, we also need the other kind—the kind wherein resources are provided to people and organizations in communities struggling to make ends meet,” she writes. “Among those are the people who run nonprofits in thousands of communities nationwide and are providing health care, child care, food, and housing for millions of Americans reeling from an economic recession that’s one of the worst we’ve ever seen.”
To be sure, Ms. Stonesifer’s advice was aimed at a modest donor, while Ms. Gibson referred to wealthy philanthropists.
But their writing speaks to a debate generous people of all varieties are likely struggling with this holiday season.
So what do you think? How should donors decide where to put their money? How do they choose between the needs abroad and the needs at home? Or should they simply split their giving between the two?
Click on the comment button below to share your views.
