Well I don’t mean to be complainin’ Lord
You’ve always seen me through
And I know you got your reasons
For each and every thing you do
But tonight outside my window
There’s a lonesome mournful sound
And I just can’t keep from thinkin’
‘Bout the ones the wolves pull down
Stephanie Davis, Wolves, as heard on Gretchen Peters and Tom Russell, One to the Heart, One to the Head
This is a tough time for charities that serve those in need, with the demand for their services substantially increasing while their funding sources significantly dwindle. This double whammy leaves many charities breathless from worry about how to serve the increased population of clients with fewer resources. There is nothing worse for such a charity than having to turn away those in need of their services due to insufficient resources. No one wants to have to decide who gets help and who does not, especially when the needs of prospective clients are generally indistinguishable. I know this first hand from my service on our local bar foundation board.
I have long felt that charities have a tendency to go to the same well too often when they seek funding, demonstrating a general inability to think out of the box when it comes to developing new funding sources. While I understand that it is easier to call upon those who have already demonstrated with cash or gifts that they approve of your cause, charities need to continually find new sources or risk poisoning the very well that serves them. I will continue to urge this concept upon any charity to which I give my time or money, since I firmly believe it is a matter of fundamental long term survival that each charity actively pursue such a plan of action.
However, in these times it is also incumbent upon those of us with incomes and financial reserves to consider increased contributions to our favorite charities, even if we have given substantially in the past, even if we are weary from the effort, and even if we are worth less than we used to be on an absolute basis. I base this on the theory that all wealth is relative. Even if, on an absolute basis, I am currently poorer than I was a year ago due to a decline in my stock portfolio, my relative net worth is now greater vis-a-vis the many who have lost jobs and spent their savings trying to survive. As a result, I am ironically now wealthier on a comparative basis than I used to be – even though my net worth has declined.
We all worry about the value of our savings declining. It is axiomatic that the amount of your debt will stay fixed while the value of your assets will fluctuate. In good times, this seems like a good thing to us, while in bad times our sense of insecurity increases as the debt becomes an increasingly large percentage of our net worth. But for those of us with a positive net worth, it is also true that we are now relatively more wealthy than those who have lost jobs and savings. We have to learn to think past our insecurities to come to this realization in order to think about the additional societal obligations we thereby inherit.
Of course such a result isn’t universally true, especially for those of us who borrowed lavishly against assets in the booming economy and now find our debt too big to service. But, for many of us, it is true that we are better off now than before when compared to the bulk of the population even though, in an absolute sense, we are poorer.
Those of us in this unusual position need to adjust our thinking and our emotional response quickly if we care about others. The fact is we can – and should – give more to our favorite service charities even as we feel less rich, if for no other reason than it is in our own selfish interest to do what we can to keep others productive, hopeful, and economically viable. This economy will recover more quickly if others remain productive than if the number of those on unemployment continues to skyrocket. Those who can retain the security of their own homes will add far more to the economy as it slowly recovers than those rendered homeless by the recession. And, given the fact that we are starting from a positive, not a negative, position, those of us in this unusual posture will likely only increase the gap between our wealth and that of others as the economy gets stronger.
I offer these thoughts somewhat reluctantly since, in my book, the need to assist others should come from the heart and not from the head. However, if you need this sort of analysis to encourage your giving, please take it to heart and use it to do good.
My experience tells me that many are still giving, albeit more timidly than before. Our local legal foundation’s recent breakfast took in less than usual and I am highly suspicious that the average gift among those who gave was down when compared to past years. We do not yet have the necessary analysis to ascertain the truth of my suspicion, so I cannot yet assert it as a truth.
What I can assert, however, is that those of us on the positive side of the ledger need, especially now more than ever, to remember those on the negative side and to do whatever we can to assist them.
It is also a good time for any service charity to take a good, hard look at itself and to shed any unnecessary programs and heft. Because of their nature, many charities try to be all things to all people within the general scope of their area of service and forget to keep their service focus laser tight. Charities are also generally guilty of failing to work in unison so that they can husband scarce resources. I believe that there is a somewhat selfish nature to the doing of good works – the part that says that my program or scheme is better or more effective than yours and I will prove it by raising more funds than you. While not every charity is guilty of this kind of thinking, some are. Even more to the point, most charities are guilty of spending more time trying to figure out how to get a greater share of scarce resources for themselves than trying to figure out how to work cooperatively with those in the same service space to make those same scarce resources go further.
I have learned from experience that you can profit from adversity by learning something new about yourself or others, and that you might as well seek to profit in that manner since adversity is not a fun experience by definition. In other words, seek to learn from adversity or risk suffering a totally worthless experience. On behalf of my own service charity of choice, I pledge to you that I will do everything within my power to learn and implement the appropriate lessons so that we will be leaner, meaner and stronger going forward.
In the meantime, can we please have a little more of your cash as well as a good portion of your time? I promise that we will put it to very good use and that you will feel better for having enjoyed the privilege of giving.
