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Yesterday I heard a friend explain why she wants to get out of the business she's in and work for a non-profit:

"I would actually earn more at a non-profit.  These for-profit companies, they put money first.  It's profit before people."

Of course, I would like a non-profit to put people first, but which people?  Surely the point is to help the beneficiaries rather than offer employees nice salaries and benefits?  If a charity is treating its employees better than they would be treated at a for-profit, doesn't that mean they could treat them a little less well and have more money for actual services?

Of course, there are cases where maximizing profits is bad for both clients and employees.  I'm thinking of a  local for-profit mental health provider that treats its employees so badly they all quit after a year, which means clients have a constant turnover of providers.  This is bad.

But in general, I think the existence of nonprofits that are cushier than their for-profit counterparts points to the brokenness of a system where donors don't ever see good measurements of a charity's outcomes. If donors don't ask for demonstrated impact, charities don't have as much incentive to do the best work they can.

New blog!

Charitable giving is one of the most important things in my life. If you read this blog, you know that.

I have enough to say on the topic that I'm giving it a space of its own. Introducing:

Giving Gladly

A blog on why well-planned giving is the most important thing you can do -- and more fun than you thought!

What would change your mind?

There's not much good philanthropy evangelism out there. Individual charities have marketing departments, of course, but not many people who advocate philanthropy in general. By philanthropy, I mean personally significant giving to causes you think are important (not $20 here and there to random charities that send you mailings).

Giving What We Can is one attempt at this, which I think is quite well done. Bolder Giving is another, though it has rather a lot of millionaires and not a lot of ordinary people. Peter Singer's writings seem to have reached a lot of people, or at least gotten some media attention.

Here are my guesses at why people don't like to think about giving:

• It's scary to think about what you might give up. In fact, I've found the thinking to be more painful than the actual lifestyle changes. Jeff and I have a very high quality of life on not much money. Philanthropy does not have to be a drag.
  
  
• It can be difficult to make financial decisions once you realize your pocket money could be saving someone's life. I used to agonize over every purchase, which was not good for my mental health (and thus my ability to keep giving). Laying out a budget with money that definitely will and will not be given away has made my life much easier.
  
  
• It can be lonely. I waited about 10 years before I heard of anyone with a giving philosophy similar to mine. The internet is helping create communities, though.
    
• Talking about money is hard.  I'm afraid of being a guilt tripper, and I think other people are afraid of being guilted into something.
  
  
• We all know people who are richer than us, and it's easy to feel deprived in comparison. This mindset does not encourage generosity. A feeling of abundance does.
  
  
• Serious givers are often intense/kooky people. People who disagree with Peter Singer about animal rights or euthanasia may discount his writings on giving. I used to think the existential risk people were cranks, but I'm starting to take them more seriously.

So here is my question to you, dear readers: what are your qualms? Are there things that would make you think differently about giving?

Bits and pieces

Small giving annoys me. I don't mean the widow's mite - I mean the person who has 83 charities and gives $4 to all of them. So I was suspicious of Betsy Londergan's What Gives 365 project. She's giving away her inheritance, $100 a day, to a different cause each day. Not the model of efficiency.

But reading about the causes she chose made me really . . . happy. It was delightful to see someone try to do it all. I don't actually think NPR needs my money in the same way Zanmi Lasante does. But her project is a great educator. (As is NPR, to be fair).

Invisible

People like to claim that foreign aid doesn't work. Obviously it doesn't always work as well as we hoped. But sometimes it succeeds in invisible ways.

This week, cholera hit Haiti. Know what's amazing? That it didn't hit sooner. Since the earthquake in January, the country has been crowded with tent cities. Sanitation is a real problem, and waterborne disease was always a huge risk. When I worked at Oxfam, donors were sometimes puzzled that we focused more on water than on food. Cholera is why. Yes, it's important that there were agencies dealing with food. But the fact that Oxfam and others were digging latrines and trucking in water are the reason there's been so little disease in Haiti since the earthquake.

Clean water isn't that exciting, especially to those of us who have constant access to it. We can understand hunger, but we've never watched a child die from diarrhea. And an absence of disease doesn't make for news stories. There are no headlines proclaiming "No Typhoid Again Today In Port-Au-Prince."

This is why aid matters, even when you can't see it.

A stitch in time

Working at an international aid organization, the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake has been interesting to watch.

People are riveted by suffering. Months after the quake, people are still calling to donate for that specific purpose. I gently try to steer them to a general donation. "We've raised all the money we can responsibly spend in the next 5 years. At this point, donations are really more needed in other parts of the world." This is not what they want to hear.

Haiti got $1.55 billion in aid just now, largely because it was on the news. Darfur (remember Darfur?) is not on TV. Nor is Congo. Nor is Pakistan. Nor are millions of poor people around the world whose daily lives are a disaster.

I thought this was the most brilliant thing I've ever seen on aid: Prevent Disasters

I hear people say on the phone, "I saw how bad it was, and I wanted to do something." I'm glad that they're moved to help. But Haiti needed help long before the earthquake. It wouldn't have been so awful there if people had decent housing to begin with. People need help all over the globe, and they will need it tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Not just when they're on the news.

Love in a war zone

One thing I love about Oxfam (where I work) is the attitude about the people we work with. Too many nonprofits paint poor people as miserable victims, waiting for aid from rich countries. There's that inevitable photo of the crying baby.

Oxfam sent the photographer Rankin to a refugee camp in Congo to get a different kind of picture. He writes:

I expected to be depressed. I had done my homework; the statistics were horrific. I could only imagine what the human face of those statistics would look like. The people I met confounded my expectations. I met fathers, mothers, children... all getting on with life, making it through, even having a laugh and a joke. These people didn't see themselves as victims, despite the bad hand that fate had dealt them. They were human beings, exactly the same as you and me.

View a slideshow of Congolese refugees telling about the people and things they love. Don't get me wrong, these people need help. They need clean water, homes, a way to make a living. Most of all they need an end to the war. But they are people, not numbers.



"I love my guitar. It is my most precious possession. I have had to run from my village three times because of the war. I leave everything behind except my guitar. Even if it's dangerous I always go home and take my guitar before I run. I can forget all of my worries when I'm playing."

My favorite Christmas idea

You pick a gift. Your friend gets a card. Someone in need gets what they need.

How to balance this one?

For a long time my job strategy was to do something helpful. At a time when my best friend was depressed, I wanted to be a psychotherapist. After I started learning my third foreign language, I wanted to work with immigrants to the US. After my first class in the feminist and gender studies department, I wanted to work in a domestic violence shelter. Finally I wanted to travel to other countries and work in microfinance or some other kind of development.

And by now I've come to believe: my labor is not that useful to saving the world. I think the world's worst problems are not in the US, and I as an American am not particularly useful to solving them. Anyway, I seem to have gone through seventeen years of school without studying anything very practical.

So now I'm convinced that my money can actually do more good than my labor. For example, I could join the Peace Corps and spend a year learning a new language and the names of the people in my village, eventually maybe accomplishing some useful work during the second year. Or I could work a job I'm good at in the US and send my earnings to an organization in the village where people who actually know what they're doing can make their own decision about what they need most. (One thing I like about Oxfam is that they do most of their work by funding local partner organizations, rather than sending Americans zipping around the globe trying to fix things.)

There are some problems here:

1) not many people want to do good works, but lots of people want money. The competition for high-paying jobs is a lot higher than for directly useful jobs.

2) The thought of going into business, law, medicine, etc. makes me feel ill.

3) If money rather than work is going to be my primary contribution to the world, I don't know how much is enough. At our current cost of living, Jeff and I can easily get by on my $18,000 salary. (If that sounds low, please note that it's 25 times the median household income in Haiti). But since we keep more or less only what we need, we get no more benefit from a job that earns $80,000 than from one that earns $20,000. And I think most higher-paying jobs would result in me being less happy.

Usually I don't think money is a good goal. I think people are happier if they choose jobs they're good at and that leave them with free time and energy to spend doing other things. I'm distressed at the thought of measuring my life by it. And if I do something I'm actually interested in, like social work, I'm saving my sanity but abandoning people who don't have the basics they need.

Envy

Yesterday I read a newspaper article that made me intensely envious. It was about a freelance cellist who earns $36,000 a year and leads what the paper describes as a shockingly limited life: He has no cell phone. He and his wife live in a small Cambridge apartment and own only one car. They share a bedroom with their baby and seven-year-old, whom the wife homeschools. To me, it sounds like paradise.

I've heard people, especially Quakers, say that we should value our time above money and our lives above our jobs. Don't work yourselves to death, they urge. Lead a simple life, and you'll be happier than if you ran yourself ragged chasing status or money. This advice would seem very sensible to me if I were responsible for only myself and my family.

How do we decide what our responsibility is to other people? Peter Singer's classic example: you see a child drowning in a shallow pond. Do you wade in to save the child, ruining your $30 shoes? Of course. To value your shoes above the child's life would be monstrous. Now: do you spend $30 on a new pair of shoes, when the money could provide a vaccination (or small loan, or mosquito net, or whatever) that would save someone's life or allow them to get decent housing, education, or healthcare?

I believe that in a better world, we would all shoulder more responsibility for each other. Those who had enough wouldn't spend their extra money on a bigger place to live, or the vacation, or the shoes. They would send it to people who need it. It's pretty clear that a small percentage of rich countries' GDPs - or a fraction of our military spending - could end the worst of world poverty. Governments and charities aren't perfect - some money and effort will always be wasted, but most of it will go to its intended use.

In a better world, Jeff and I might give away only a quarter or so of our income. In ten or fifteen years we could have that one-bedroom apartment with a kid or two. I could even spend some years not working a paid job, but taking care of my kids and growing a rockin' vegetable garden. When we were old, we would have young people in our family. These goals aren't wrong in themselves - I think they're quite a good way to spend a lifetime. But leading the life I would find most fulfilling would be neglecting my duty to other people. Having those kids would mean taking away time and money that would be more effectively spent improving the lives of children already alive and in need. A quarter of our income is more than most people do, but it's less than we can do.

I had the very good fortune to find someone who wants to spend his life with a lunatic philanthropist like me. Jeff does insist on some things I consider luxury - a savings account and a small weekly allowance for clothes, travel, and fun. But when I consider our future, I find myself looking at the soul-deadening life Quakers keep warning me about. The two of us, living in a rented room someplace, earning money to send to people who need it more. Spending our lives chasing a paycheck, and sitting in our rented room when we're too old to work. It's a lot better than living in a refugee camp, but it kind of makes me want to quit now before I have to do 60 more years of it.

Am I missing something? I know about only a handful of people who actually live like this. I know more (Peter Singer included) who say "This is what's morally right, but it sounds miserable. I'll make baby steps, but I'm not actually going to live like that." Does the rest of the world have good reasons for living for themselves and their immediate circle, or do we all just find it too scary to do otherwise?

Unwrapped

A quick plug: the best Christmas (or Hannukah, or birthday, or whatever) present I can think of.

Oxfam Unwrapped

Helping us do right

I'm more and more impressed by Christians. I've been deeply suspicious of religion in general since leaving the church at age 11, but lately I've been noticing more and more of its good side. And living at a Quaker center, I've been noticing Christianity especially. I think it gives people some good tools for living well.

I was recently introduced to the idea of an "environmental sabbath day". Of course the most complete observers of the sabbath are Jews, but most of the sabbath observers I know are Christians. Spending a day at home or in the neighborhood, not driving, using less electricity (or none) - it would make a difference. In my current schedule of working six and a half days a week I'm realizing that a sabbath would be good for me as well as for the earth.

My (Episcopalian) friend Mary not only finished her taxes weeks before I did, but afterwards she tithed a percentage of her income from the past year. Glowing, she told me that she had become a member of Bread for the World and a few other charities.

Not many of us give the traditional Biblical tithe of 10%. Our national average is 3.1%. It's not that we can't afford to - poor Americans give the highest percentage of their income and assets. The most famous philanthropist in my hometown for a long time was an impoverished postal worker who would regularly give $1000 checks to people he thought were doing good work. "People say, 'How can you afford it?' Well, how can people afford new cars and boats? Instead of those, we deliberately kept our standard of living down below our means."

Some comparison: according to this calculator, my income of about $5,000 puts me in the world's richest 15%.

As far as anyone can tell, Americans sort of think they ought to give to charity but aren't very organized about it. What a good thing it would be if we all finished our taxes every year and immediately gave away a tenth of our income (or more, as these folks are doing). Putting off giving makes it less effective, considering that problems like AIDS, climate change, and environmental destruction are growing constantly. Head on over to Charity Navigator and see what's out there.

Giving

I'm finding The Giving Tree's message very weird now that I'm reading it as an adult instead of hearing it read to me. The tree gives body and soul to this boy who gives her absolutely nothing in return - not even a thank you - and we read it to kids why? To teach them unconditional love? To teach them to be doormats? "Cut down my trunk and make a boat," said the tree. "Then you can sail away . . . and be happy."

I think adults like The Giving Tree a lot more than kids do, and it's a classic because we keep reading it to them. Adults get choked up reading it, which kids never do. I picture a mother reading this to her three-year-old when she's trying to get him down for a nap. She's tired, her shirt is all sticky from where he spilled applejuice on her at lunch, and she hasn't washed her hair in days because what's the point? She knows in a few years he'll want to build a house and sail away, and he'll come dropping in occassionally to ask for cash. Of course she cries when she reads it - it feels like the story of her life. But she still loves the boy.

I'm reminded of Margaret Atwood's rewrite of "The Little Red Hen", which ends not with the hen refusing to share her hard-earned loaf, but giving it up to the other animals: "I'm a hen, not a rooster. Here, I said. . . . Have some more. Have mine." The feminist in me wants to say we shouldn't be teaching children this, especially girls - they should be learning to take care of themselves first and others second. The humanist in me is saying the world would be a better place with more nurturers, more selflessness.

Question

I have an ethical question that I would like to hear people's answers to.

Last night I went to a very convincing lecture on why America's transportation needs to switch over to hydrogen power or at least natural gas. She ended the lecture with a plea to all of us to make our next car a hybrid. It really made me think about it - I'll probably get a car when I'm in grad school, which is about three years from now, and by then hybrids should be a bit cheaper than they are now. They will undoubtedly still be more expensive than a used heap of junk I could get, though.

So here's my question: what's the balance between making your own consumption habits sustainable and providing for others? Do I spend the extra few thousands on making my own lifestyle ethical, or do I give it to Oxfam to save people's lives with? I run into the same question with organic food - is it better that my spinach be organic and local and all that good stuff, or should the extra $2 go towards vaccinations for a child somewhere? Either way I allow something bad to happen - I'm supporting pollution and big agribusiness and probably exploitative labor one way, but the other way I'm allowing someone somewhere to die of TB.

Which way would you go? Which way do you go? And would you go the same way if it were your child needing the vaccination?

In which I wonder about priorities

I've been reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, about a doctor from the US working in Haiti to revamp healthcare for the poor there. The man is ridiculously inspiring - probably every highschooler who dreams of going into social justice work wants to found their own program and influence policymaking and win the adoration of whatever group they're serving. Later we realize that a lot of boring, unglamorous work is needed to keep any kind of program running and that this is what we'll probably do a lot of. But this man has actually done it - singlehandedly put so much in motion that has been really useful.

Of course, the natural response while reading about this kind of thing is to wonder what one is doing with one's life that's so great compared to fighting multidrug-resistant TB. I'm at least in the position of doing unglamorous work at an organization that does improve and sometimes save people's lives, so I don't feel as bad as I would if I were still at the posh suburban daycare. The book does make me question the rightness of doing useful work in the US that would undoubtedly be more useful somewhere else, though.

It irks me that Dr. Paul Farmer can have a wife and daughter stowed away in Paris while he trots from Haiti to Peru to Siberia, but that it's impossible to imagine some sort of Dr. Paula Farmer doing the same with a husband and child. The only reasons I want to live in the US when I grow up are so I can see my family regularly and so my kids won't grow up with dirty water and one-room schools and tapeworms. But if I do the whole leaving house and brothers and sisters and father and mother and fields thing, none of that will be a problem. (It doesn't say anything about spouses or kids, but presumably the the apostles weren't supposed to have those.) So maybe after I do Peace Corps I'll just stay in Venezuela or whereever and see where life takes me from there. I know you're supposed to be sure you don't burn out and become useless to everyone, but hopefully by then I'll be able to tell the difference between what I really need and what I only think I need. I'm pretty sure some sort of family is on the first list, but I could be wrong.