allocating charitable contributions

[cellio]

This Shabbat we had a guest, Ruth Messinger from American World Jewish Service. She spoke Friday night about global communities and led a study session Shabbat morning on the theme of "to whom am I responsible?". We talked about communities and how they overlap and how this can influence our degrees of connection, and we talked in passing about how we make decisions about tzedakah (charitable contributions, though that's not a precise translation).

The talmud lays out some basic ideas, but they're all dichotomies that don't work so well in the real world. In lending money (it does specify lending, not giving), prefer the poor to the less-poor and your local community to other communities and Jews to gentiles (and other spectra). Sounds fine in principle, but people are not so two-dimensional, so this does not give good guidance on ranking the local poor gentile versus the less-poor eastern-European Jew. Of course, in talmudic times you were less likely to even know about the distant need, but in a global community, things change. Even 30 years ago it would have been pretty freakishly unlikely for me to have contact with people in Singapore, Australia, France, and Myanmar. Today? I didn't make up any of those examples. (This discussion was designed to raise questions, not give answers.)

One of the many factors I take into account is the "dividend" that my donation will pay -- if I can make a donation that will teach someone better farming techniques or medicine, or buy a family's first dairy cow, for example, I see that donation as more effective than one that will just provide sustenance today, all other factors being equal. (Of course, all other factors are rarely equal.) I'm a big fan of "enabling to fish" versus "giving a fish", when that's possible. (I said something about this in the discussion and she said "ding ding ding -- microlending!". Hmm, maybe; I hadn't thought about that, but I can see a connection, maybe. Someone else said "ding ding ding -- Rambam", which I was aware of but hadn't been conscious of.)

Another factor that I find myself taking into account is proportional impact. There are the "big causes" that lots of people donate to (and that includes me to some level); I find myself looking for the smaller ones that are doing work that's just as important but who haven't attracted a lot of attention yet. Of course, by definition, this is hard to do, so I'm always open to suggestions here. I only heard of the heifer project in the last few years, for instance, even though those guys have been around for a while. This is the sort of work the United Way ought to be doing, but I've seen too many problems with that so they don't get my money. Specifically within the Jewish world, I guess UJF is kind of analogous -- but I do not restrict myself to Jewish causes. And anyway, I prefer to have more of a hand in directing my contributions than they will give me -- so they get a token from me, but the real dollars go elsewhere. (The only significant "ok, you decide" money I give is to my rabbi's discretionary fund, because I know he will be a good agent.)

I support local organizations instead of or in addition to national or world ones. I support an organization working in world hunger, but I also support my local food banks (the general one and the kosher one). I support a national animal-welfare organization, but I also make donations to local animal shelters. Stuff like that.

This is all stuff I should think more about, as sometimes, right now, it's kind of haphazard.

Ruth told us about an interesting family tradition she'd heard somewhere: when each kid in the extended family reaches a certain age (I think she said 9 in this case), a family member with the means sits that kid down for a talk that goes something like this: "Here is a check for $100. It's made out to your parents 'cause they have the checking account, but at any time during the coming year, you can direct them to write a check to any charity you like until this money is gone. If you come back in a year and tell me how you spent it, you'll get more to distribute next year." There is no request up front to justify the decisions but, she said, it comes out in the followup conversation. I think this is a neat idea; think of it as a teeny tiny foundation that gets people thinking about decisions and decision-making from an early age.

Comments

[magid.livejournal.com]

Another interesting family tradition I've heard of: everyone saves for tzedakah (jar, checking account, whatever), then there's meetings to decide where the money should go. Everyone can suggest recipients and amounts, and together the family works out where the money will go and why.

[cellio]

My rabbi's family does that. They set aside money all year and then have a family meeting in late fall to allocate it.

[fauxklore]

Of course, there is also the prioritized list from Maimonides. The poor of your family take precedence over poor strangers, for example. It's better to give anonymously than to seek credit. And, most importantly, the highest form of charity is to enable somebody to become self-sufficient. (I think Heifer International falls into that last category.)

I think local organizations have more impact (e.g. lower fees) so that plays into my decisions. I'm big on self-sufficiency as a goal, and I've focused that into earmarking my donations to my alumni association to be for scholarships, as well as donating to literacy organizations. My favorite charity is The Book Thing, which gives away thousands of books every weekend in Baltimore. There's a great story there of a man who saw a need (originally aimed at teachers seeking books for their students) and set out to make it happen.

[mabfan.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

[alaricmacconnal.livejournal.com]

We do something similar. We regularly contribute to a "charity fund" (for want of a better name) that we contribute to various causes. We usually try to empty it out each year but that doesn't always happen.

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

Giving kids a donatable-only expense account seems like a neat idea.

I've been playing around with donorschoose.org. Their administrative fees are high, but you do get to choose from various educational enhancement plans that teachers want to do but do not have funds for. It is kind of neat.

[goljerp]

For years, I just went with "I'm a [poor / unemployed] [grad student / tech worker]", so I can only afford to give a little bit, and it all goes to my shul so I don't have to think about it.

Recently, however, I've realized that, well, I am not that badly off. Joy gets most of the credit, because when she was a lawyer, she was pretty organized about her giving.

So now at the beginning of December, we look at the table of what we gave last year, and figure out if we can expand our giving or not, and then around December 31st (this year, I think we were good and started a couple of days early), we give all our donations. Well, except for the shul fundraisers, which happen throughout the year.

By doing them all at once, it's a bit easier to get an idea about what categories we're giving to, and to do tweaks, like decide that we want to give less money to $charity1 and more to $charity2.

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

Rabbi Herschel Schachter said once in a Q&A session I attended that the list is not meant to be emptied on each level. This means that the poor of your family should recieve up to 2/3 of your charitable donations (if they need that much...if not less) The poor Jews of your city (and Eretz Yisrael is also considered your city) should recieve 2/3 of the remainder, so 2/9 of the total. The poor Jews elsewhere should recieve 2/27, non-Jewish poor of your city 2/81, non-Jewish poor elsewhere 2/243. This has a certain mathematical appeal, particularly because it allows for infinite number of steps (you will in theory never run out, except that practically money comes in discrete units). There exists another opinion using 3/4 instead of 2/3. You can determine for yourself if this is a workable system for you.