Problems of Philanthropy

This week we attended a meeting to discuss the results of the Street Appeal for the Puppy Training for the Blind Foundation. It was a friendly group, and we had a good chat about what we had achieved.

 

Around 100 people worked for an hour or two each sitting with a bucket collecting money from shoppers outside supermarkets, or helping organise the equipment or the volunteer rosters. In two days at ten sites in the city we collected over $6000 for the training of the puppies.

 

Is this massive volunteer effort worthwhile? This is something I ask myself from time to time.

 

If you divide the number of helpers, and the hours they worked into the total collected, you come up with a figure that makes you wonder: is there a more effective way to raise funds for this purpose?

 

But if you add the publicity surrounding the appeal, including several weeks of TV ads, it all makes for a valuable awareness boost for the work of the Foundation for the Blind as a whole.

 

If we could take advantage of this extra awareness by recruiting a bunch of new sponsors for the puppy programme at the same time, this would boost the long-term fund-raising effectiveness of all our work. We have put this on our list for the next year.

 

It all raises some hard questions about charities and the way our society pays for essential services.

 

You would think that if a visually-handicapped person needed the help of a guide dog, that would be provided as part of the government's disability programme, just like handrails, walking-sticks, wheel-chairs, modifications to cars, and so on. To have to rely on charitable organisations and donations to cover what look like essential services is surely at odds with our basic community support culture?

 

This is only one of the grey areas around our welfare system that make the negotiation with public services difficult for families with basic care needs.

 

Another problem is in  the definition of what is a charitable organisation. The system has been tidied up in recent years by the establishment of the Charities Commission, but there are still grey areas. By definition, a charity is an organisation that helps other people, it doesn't just exist to help its own members. This is important if donors are to receive a tax refund for their donations.

 

But one of the things I learned when I was a community worker was that research makes it clear that the best job of helping people is done by groups run by the needy people themselves. The best and most lasting improvements in communities happen when those communities get empowered to make their own changes and improvements, with help from key specialists and funds lent from government or other objective sources.

 

Which tends to conflict with the definition of a charity!

 

Whatever may turn out to be the best tactics, we still need to keep taking the next step!