What’s There to Celebrate on National Philanthropy Day, November 15?
According to a recent Foundation Center report, foundation giving will likely decline by more than ten percent in 2009. Because of the sluggishness of the economy and the high unemployment numbers, individual giving will likely continue its downward trend as well. Individual giving, always the largest component of total charitable contributions, was estimated by the GivingUSA Foundation at $229 billion in 2008, a decrease of 6 percent from the previous year.
Ten percent, six percent-the changes look small, but these are averages, so clearly some charities in our region will suffer more than others. Many organizations that are feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, and healing the sick are already living on the financial margins. A small swing in giving can easily put them out of business and affect the quality of life for us all.
As we approach November 15th, celebrated by many as National Philanthropy Day, it’s important for us to call to mind the myriad ways our charitable sector-our region’s nonprofit organizations-keep us bound together as a community. We need to acknowledge and celebrate the key role these organizations have had in our recovery and in helping us create something even better than what existed before the breaking of the levees. Given the dire numbers, now’s not the time for us to retreat from our commitment to them.
These organizations are easy to take for granted. They’re not all as visible as Tulane University, the Audubon Institute, or the Red Cross. Small, community-based nonprofit organizations have a kind of mettle their larger, better-established cousins don’t always share. There are hundreds of these organizations serving our region. What these smaller organizations lack in scale, they often make up for in their knowledge of the communities they serve. The staff members of these nonprofits will often work long hours for short pay, and because they have no other choice, their executive directors will stretch their organizations’ dollars ’til they holler. They will multiply the value of the gifts they receive by enlisting the help of volunteers who will donate countless hours of their time for charitable work.
Many years ago when I was living in Boston, a gentleman I knew became interested in the problem of drug addiction. A foundation colleague of mine helped introduce him to a well respected drug counseling and treatment center. The would-be donor was impressed with the organization’s work, so he decided to make a large donation. My colleague was surprised when he stipulated that his gift not be used for salaries and other “overhead” expenses. Not knowing how else to respond, he informed the donor that drug counseling and treatment were salaries and overhead.
Even those of us who should know better sometimes fall prey to the notion that charitable work can happen by itself, with no visible means of support. This same idea animates the view that professionals who work at nonprofit organizations ought to be paid at a discount. Where does this idea come from? It has, perhaps, a genealogy rooted in the notion that acts of giving ought to be kept “pure.” The archetype of the charitable act includes a generous donor and a grateful supplicant. It leaves little room for the real people, with real families to feed, who actually execute a donor’s wishes.
The season we’re now entering gives us an opportunity to pay homage to the nonprofit heroes and heroines who’ve given up luxuries and even sacrificed their personal comfort to make life better for all of us. These givers of time and treasure come in all colors, all nationalities, all ages. They provide the social glue that keeps us from spinning apart.
It’s the season also to honor those who’ve supported their work, the many individuals and families who’ve given generously in acts of goodness that define, in my view, what it means to be fully human.
We’re a generous people. Adversity brings out the best in us. I fervently hope these traits will help us buck the national trends that now endanger nonprofit work critical to the health of our communities.
