Politics and the Role of Charities

To the Editor:

Thank you so much for including the opinion article “Nonprofit Groups Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Lobby” and Rick Cohen’s excellent piece “House Leader Misuses Charity for Partisan Goals” in the November 27 issue. Talk about a juxtaposition of values and ideals.

I work for a nonprofit office for the aging in Madison County, smack-dab in the middle of New York State. Raising funds in order to meet the needs of the elderly and retirees is not an easy matter in the rural communities of our land these days.

Tom DeLay should be publicly pilloried for his totally amoral stance regarding what philanthropy is and how easily its walls can be cleaved whenever governmental leaders abuse the dollars given to charities and nonprofit organizations. We live in a time of great deficits. Eighty-seven billion dollars here, $55-billion there, and not only are we talking about real money, we are seeing the federal pie turn into an empty crust.

The states try to take on the potholes left by the federal government and they in turn have overspent and poorly budgeted in many instances, leaving the counties in our nation to bear burdens at the same time jobs disappear and families make choices every month regarding which bills they can pay. The last rung in the ladder are the parishes and townships inside every county. We are about to deal with 78 million baby boomers nationally. As those born between 1946 and 1964 begin to join the retired and the senior-citizen lines, social-service agencies are going to drown if philanthropic pathways dry up.

Lindsay J. Stone
Volunteer Grant Writer
Madison County Office for the Aging
Canastota, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Thank you so much for printing the recent pieces on advocacy by charities.

All across America, health, education, housing, family, and employment professionals dedicate countless hours of services to our society’s most vulnerable populations. And while these services undoubtedly provide critical support to children, families, and others, these same clients remain terribly underrepresented in the public-policy arena. They are, many times, voiceless in our democratic system.

I strongly urge charity workers from across the nation to build an even larger role for themselves: Speak for the voiceless. Advocacy by charities has a long and rich tradition in America. In the struggle to best serve our clients, we must bring our expertise to bear on the policies that so forthrightly impact our clients. We must heed the call to action. Only then will we begin to strategically and effectively address many of the problems that plague our communities.

Kevin Hickey
Work Resource Program Coordinator
Jewish Vocational Services
San Francisco