Charities Need Support From Government

To the Editor:

In his opinion piece in the March 12 issue (“Government Activism vs. Private Charity: What’s Best?”), columnist Leslie Lenkowsky falls back on the old conservative canard of an inherent conflict between government and philanthropy as sources of nonprofit support, and takes signers of the recent “Forward Together” declaration to task for choosing the former over the latter.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The fundamental message of the “Forward Together” declaration is a rejection of this false dichotomy in favor of a recognition that both government and charity have important roles to play in sustaining a vibrant nonprofit sector.

In point of fact, blind adherence to the charity-only school of thought was in danger of consigning the charitable sector to irrelevance in the face of escalating poverty and distress in the 1950s and early 1960s, until Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society rescued it. But this does not mean that charitable support is unimportant, and the signers of the “Forward Together” statement take pains to emphasize this, as Mr. Lenkowsky ultimately acknowledges.

The simple fact is, however, that private charitable support has not been able to come close to keeping pace with societal needs. Indeed, it has lost ground as a source of nonprofit support, falling to 12 or 13 percent of nonprofit revenues in recent years. What is more, despite the most massive transfer of wealth from the less-well-off to the super rich in our country’s recent history, the share of this newfound wealth that found its way into charitable support barely budged, even after taking account of the extraordinary generosity of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. To the contrary, the share actually declined.

If Leslie Lenkowsky and others who share his views really want to improve the health of the country’s nonprofit sector, they would thus do well to join the signers of the “Forward Together” declaration in trying to rouse private philanthropy to do more, rather than spending so much of their energies trying to get government to do less.

Lester M. Salamon
Director of the Center
for Civil Society Studies
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore