Helping the Poor Takes More Than Charity

Some influential commentators and political activists have begun to again argue that government should no longer provide essential social services to the needy, labeling such a practice an unnecessary and undesirable vestige of the New Deal. They say that private initiative should take the place of public responsibility and that charity can be an adequate and acceptable substitute for government in meeting needs and resolving social problems.

While similar assertions have gained little ground in the past, nonprofit organizations and foundations need to be more vigilant today in arguing that this point of view is both morally and financially suspect.

The staggering growth in the federal deficit is one reason the debate about the role of nonprofit groups versus government has intensified.

Add to that the legitimate and widely shared dissatisfaction with some poorly operated and wasteful government programs, especially since Hurricane Katrina, and it is easy to see why many people think nonprofit groups might do a better job than public agencies.

But it is not just dissatisfaction with government and the federal revenue-spending gap that has fueled a renewed focus on charity. There is a deeper motivation for some politicians.

Looking at the growth in the sheer number of nonprofit groups — more than a million are now in operation — plus the ostensible creativity and effectiveness of programs started by a new wave of “social entrepreneurs,” it is tempting for charities and taxpayers to buy into the idea that philanthropy can take care of the needy.

Projections that trillions of dollars will flow to nonprofit groups over the coming decades as the World War II generation dies have also buttressed the notion that charities can afford to do more than in the past. Yet in truth this bias toward charity is a befogging illusion created more in service to ideology than to society.

While Americans are a very generous and caring people, the combined yearly contributions of individuals, philanthropic foundations, and corporations to all causes except religion are considerably less than the annual allocations the federal government makes to deal with social services, the arts, education, the environment, and other causes where nonprofit groups work — and that is not counting medical payments, tuition assistance, welfare, and other money that goes to any American who is poor enough to qualify for aid.

Charitable contributions would have to grow more than 30 times faster than usual to make up the difference if government spending on social causes were eliminated. And that assumes that all increased spending by nonprofit groups and foundations to offset government cuts would go to help the neediest — not spread thinly among the wide range of causes where charitable organizations focus their attention.

Strikingly, even if foundations gave away every last dollar in all of their endowments, it would do little more than cover this year’s federal deficit with a fraction left toward the next one. And that is just the operating deficit, not the national budget or the debt. Furthermore, the projections for a transfer of wealth have been so slow to materialize it is increasingly doubtful that trillions of dollars will be bequeathed to nonprofit groups.

The last time political leaders tried to severely cut the federal government’s role in caring for the needy (remember Ronald Reagan), cash-strapped governments abandoned mentally ill people to the streets — and the homeless began sleeping on America’s sidewalks.

The calculus does not work today either, and nonprofit organizations need to understand that fully and to find better ways to educate their constituencies and the public about fiscal realities.

But in shaping their arguments, nonprofit groups also must recognize that the public-policy question at issue goes well beyond whether government or philanthropy has the necessary resources to help the needy.

The real debate is over whether people need social-service aid because of their own failure to take personal responsibility for their lives, or whether they require help because of broader societal or economic dynamics.

How people answer that question usually helps explain whether they believe government or philanthropy should pay to solve the problems of the needy.

Leaders of the Bush administration and many other conservatives see poverty as a consequence of bad people making bad decisions and doing bad things; they see personal redemption, education, and hard work as the only solution.

That is why the White House has encouraged religious groups to get more involved in providing government-financed social services. That policy reflects this notion that the problem is poor people and not poverty, and that the remedy must be approached person-by-person, with little or no attention to correcting inadequacies in governmental institutions, programs, and policies.

It is not just people on the right who believe in individual responsibility. That has always been part of the progressive approach to fighting poverty. The left has long understood that “empowered” individuals are more responsible, better able to take care of themselves in their personal lives, and better able to represent their shared interests in the political arena. However, it has also understood that government action is necessary to create the conditions under which individual responsibility can be successfully developed and exercised.

People of divergent political views agree that the best way to fight poverty is to make sure everyone has a decent-paying job. Today, the nation is far from achieving that goal. Nearly a quarter of the American work force is paid at a rate less than the amount a family of four needs to stay above the poverty line even when working full-time.

The federal minimum wage, which has not been raised in nine years, continues on the decline, today worth 28 percent less than at its peak in 1968. Poverty has grown in percentage, absolute number, and depth in each of the last four years. Inequity in the distribution of wealth is at an all-time high and steadily grows more extreme.

Bringing together the common interests of left and right is desirable if nonprofit groups are to better serve the poor. Would those on the right advocating work as the answer to poverty join the left in fighting for government intervention to assure a living wage?

Such a collaboration would be a first step in acknowledging that philanthropy alone cannot solve the problems of the poor. Charities and foundations cannot set fiscal or economic policies, nor can they mediate shifting labor or trade patterns. Still, such action is necessary: Our domestic economy less and less rewards hard work, yet many Americans still want people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Conservatives like to hark back to an earlier time when Americans took care of one another without government’s help, but there really was no such era.

While federal involvement in meeting human needs dates only to about the Civil War, local government has always played a role. Even in colonial times, the care of the poor and vulnerable was often a task for which people were paid a subsidy by local officials, just like foster-care parents of today receive government payments.

Yet some political thinkers who say they prefer charity over government reflect an ideology of greed.

Many of the same people advocating private initiative over government programs also are trying to repeal the estate tax, an action that would cost charities up to $25-billion a year in lost contributions while also increasing the federal deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars through additional giveaways to the very wealthiest Americans.

That reflects no true concern for the poor — in fact none for the more than 98 percent of Americans hurt by such avarice.

The nonprofit world is essential to our society, especially to people who are losing out as government cuts back on domestic spending. But in the face of a deluding exaggeration of the scope and power of charity and a continuing assault on the scope and power of government, nonprofit organizations need to find new ways to improve and defend government programs while popularizing a sense of public responsibility among Americans as taxpayers, donors, volunteers, and voters. And philanthropic foundations need to fuel those efforts.

Mark Rosenman works in Washington as a professor of public service at Union Institute & University, which has its headquarters in Cincinnati.