Doing good – by writing checks
by Gail B. Kuenstler

How to make sense of the contents of your mailbox? This has been my question over the last months as I sort through appeals from Freedom from Hunger versus Food for the Hungry, Oxfam America versus Big Brothers Big Sisters, cancer research versus landmines. I want to help, but who is really doing good? Where are your dollars really needed? Which groups are doing what they say they are doing?

I started to send for annual reports to get information about several groups and immediately discovered one Catholic medical missionary group who was spending a little on overseas projects and a lot to finance the nuns’ residence. This showed me that I needed to look closely at annual reports.

I learned that Freedom from Hunger, mentioned above, is a group which gives small ($75) business loans and weekly education and support to third-world women, transforming their lives and the lives of their children. Food for the Hungry is an evangelical group that builds churches, feeds people and preaches the Gospel. Although I am a church goer, I don’t choose to support organizations that use food as part of a campaign to attract converts.

Charity-rating groups

Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance and the American Institute of Philanthropy (AIP), two groups who rate charities, list the evangelical group, Food for the Hungry, on their websites but only one of them, the Better Business Bureau (www.give.org), says that the goals of the evangelical group are "spiritual." The BBB describes each group in some detail and they include this information in the description. Their site is the first one to check to see if your group is included. If it is included, they will tell you on the site if the group meets their standards. AIP (www.charitywatch.org) will only give you their top groups in a category. You have to get the newsletter from AIP to get the ratings but they rate more groups than the BBB has listed.

The American Institute for Philanthropy (AIP) gives Food for the Hungry a letter grade (C+) in their newsletter because they spend only 62 to 67 percent on the charitable purpose, and spend betwen $24 and $31 to raise each $100. But AIP doesn’t mention the spiritual goals. On their website AIP states that Food for the Hungry provided the requested documents but it is not one of their top-rated international relief and development groups. It’s important to check out a group on both sites, but you still may have to request the annual report and the IRS Form 990 for charities if the group is not listed because no one has requested information.

Both AIP and the BBB’s Wise Giving Alliance have newsletters, which report salaries (CARE’s president is making more than $540,000 a year). They also report the percentage actually spent on the purpose of the charity, what the charity spends to raise $100, the amount of assets (some groups’ ratings are drastically lowered because their assets are too large), and the range of the top three salaries. AIP gives each charity a grade, as in the example above. Freedom from Hunger, a secular group, gets an A- because 77 percent of the money is spent on the charitable purpose and only $14 is spent to raise $100 (the difference goes to administration). The top salary at Freedom from Hunger is $99,000. The BBB simply says whether or not the group meets their standard, which is that a "reasonable amount" be spent on fundraising and administrative costs.

The charity sound-alikes (Freedom from Hunger, Food for the Hungry) are a problem for givers; you really have to check them out, and then make a note, so you remember who is who.

Religious and social-welfare groups

If you want to give to a religious group, for example Episcopal Relief and Development, it may not be listed because it is not a charity, for tax purposes, but a religious group. However, the Mennonite Central Committee and Catholic Relief Services, two organizations with very high ratings, are listed with AIP because they are willing to provide the information requested and they are ecumenical in their approach to helping. Many religious groups use their resources to build churches. Some limit their economic aid to members of the church. I prefer to separate my development-giving from my religious-giving. Third-world indigenous peoples have their own religions.

Social-welfare groups may or may not be listed because they are non-tax-deductible, not-for-profit lobbying groups (RESULTS is one example). They don’t have charity status, therefore they don’t provide salary information to the government. They may choose not to provide it to the charity rating services, either, even if they are listed by the rating service. Salary and other information might be available by writing to the group.

The hard part for me was to figure out my priorities. Focusing on a few groups and giving larger amounts can make you a major donor. This will entitle you to annual reports, newsletters, videos, and even appointments with the staff to discuss the program. Through prayer, you can let your heart be guided on the subject of whom to support.

Books like Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ronald Sider or Robin Hood Was Right by Chuck Collins and Pam Rogers will help you develop your own giving program by educating you about some of the consequences of your choices. Living High and Letting Die by Hugh Unger is a moral philosopher’s take on the necessity of saving the third-world hungry with all of the resources we have after the expenses of a "modest" lifestyle.

I started by looking up on the Internet a few groups in the international development category, after I received mailings from them. Although Americans gave more than $143 billion in 2000 to nonprofits, about half of that money went to religious organizations, and almost all the rest went to U.S. causes. Only l.2 percent went to international affairs, including third-world development. These development organizations, which emphasize self-help and self-direction, have flowered with the coming of age of the boomers, although they are still quite small compared with more established charities. They have developed a post-Peace Corps kind of giving which is effective and cost-effective.

Every day 35,000 children die of hunger-related causes, as Oxfam tells us in their "Poverty Report." Because of my own history – I was a volunteer in Mexico with the American Friends Service Committee as a college student and did a volunteer stint just last year in a Mexican orphanage – my interest is in helping children in the third world and especially in Latin and Central America.

The four outstanding organizations I describe below do primarily development, not relief, work. Relief work means helping people after hurricanes or wars. Some of the relief groups are classified by AIP under "development" and some are placed in the "hunger" category. Development, of course, helps children and their families. I no longer give to child sponsorship organizations because they spend too much on communicating with the sponsors and there is no way to know how effective their work is. In other words the charity-rating groups can only tell you if the program is well-run; they can’t tell you if the money you send is used effectively. This is true with development groups, too. There is no way for me to know if Oxfam’s village projects are successful; the charity-rating only speaks to issues like accountability, percentage spent on fundraising, salaries and administrative costs. But the communications I was getting from the child-sponsorship groups (at one point I was supporting four children), made me question the quality of the village-level projects. With child-sponsorship organizations, some of the money may be used for school fees, but none of it goes to the family directly. The remainder goes to a project like "education about nutrition," for example. Most child-sponsorship groups encourage you to visit your children abroad, and this would be a good way to see these projects in action. This, of course, would also be possible with the projects of the groups I recommend. The annual reports of these groups describe the projects in some detail, and their focus is the family and community rather than the child.

Another worry I had in researching organizations was whether it makes any sense to help communities in countries with inept and corrupt governments. Successful democracy is based on some degree of economic security and education. The projects I describe work on both economics and education/ empowerment to promote democracy at the grassroots level. Certainly villagers cannot escape the impact of having a lousy government, but judging from the materials provided by these organizations, these programs work both in the short and long term. Families start to eat better and pay their school fees, so their children can be educated. The water supply gets cleaned up, the birth rate falls and children get medical attention. Parents get loans and job training.

Here is the list of the groups to whom I currently give. All of them get top or near top ratings from the American Institute of Philanthropy:

#1: Freedom From Hunger

They provide small loans (about $75) and training in running a business to women. They have a video on the Internet at their site (www.freefromhunger.org) that describes their work in Madagascar. The Grameen Bank, which has provided small loans to the poor around the world for the last 20 years, was the pioneer in microcredit. Freedom From Hunger has good ratings and works in 14 countries. Unlike Oxfam, they accept U.S. government A.I.D. money to finance their programs (25 percent of revenues).

Freedom from Hunger
1644 DaVinci Court
Davis California 95617
www.freefromhunger.org
800 708 2555

#2 : American Friends Service Committee

The snapshots of the AFSC’s work are fascinating: providing school supplies to children in Haiti, creating health clinics, refurbishing fishing fleets and establishing community stores where people can buy supplies at uninflated prices, peace education, direct food aid to North Korea, health training programs in Sao Paulo, training for women factory workers on the Mexican-U.S. border, nonviolent conflict resolution in the U.S,, setting up a National School of Prosthetics and Orthotics in Cambodia, a peace center in the Andes, and on and on. It would seem that the AFSC does anything that they think might work – peace projects, development, relief and health – all with a pacifist accent.

American Friends Service Committee
1501 Cherry Street
Philadelphia, PA 19182
www.afsc.org
888 588 2372

#3: Oxfam America

Many organizations that do international development use the simple mechanism of the small loan to encourage small business. For example, working with the village health committee, Oxfam America gives $20,000 to establish a bank in one Cambodian village. Ninety-seven percent of the loans are repaid and the interest is used to pay for medicine for AIDS and TB. In the Amazon, Oxfam helps Indian communities to organize to resist encroachment by loggers and farmers and sponsor credit and training programs.

In El Salvador, they support many grass-roots women’s groups whose members have recently gotten women elected to the legislature. In Mali, West Africa, one group supported by Oxfam teaches reading and is an advocate for women’s rights including protection against domestic violence. Oxfam’s annual report is staggering; the amount of work as well as the number of projects which impact whole regions is inspiring. Africare is another top-rated group that works in Africa and does similar kinds of programs.

Oxfam America
26 West Street
Boston, MA 02111
www.oxfamamerica.org
800 77 OXFAM

#4: The Heifer Project International

The Heifer Project gives livestock – ducks, water buffalo, llamas, rabbits – to poor villagers all over the world. One animal can change their lives; suddenly there is milk to drink and milk to sell to pay school fees and to buy clothes. This is especially important in areas where all the cattle have been eaten because of famine. You can give a heifer for $500 or honeybees for $30. Because ducks and honeybees stimulate a child’s imagination, these animals make especially good gifts to be given by relatives in the name of U.S. children. Heifer materials for school children can be helpful in organizing a church or school fundraising event. The charming and well-designed gift cards that your contribution buys are perfect for the child who has everything. The Heifer Project is the most "user-friendly" project for groups new to third-world giving.

Heifer Project International
P.O. Box 8106
Little Rock, AR 72203-8106
www.heifer.org
800 422 0755

Top-rated groups according to AIP

The top rated groups in the AIP International Relief and Development category are Africare, American Friends Service Committee, Catholic Relief Services, Direct Relief International, Doctors Without Borders USA, Mennonite Central Committee, Mercy Corps International, Oxfam America, Technoserve and World Neighbors. Heifer is not listed because they spend a larger amount on fund-raising, but still a "reasonable amount," according to the Better Business Bureau. For example, Oxfam has $l0 million in program expenses, l0l employees and only spends 16 percent of contributions on fundraising. This may be possible because they are better known and considerably larger. Freedom from Hunger is not listed above because it appears in the hunger category.

Supporting third-world peace

There are other ways for Americans to improve the lives of third-world peoples besides writing checks. In many places, war is destroying the lives of families and driving many of them from their homes and into refugee camps. Monitoring U.S. foreign policy and influencing congressional decision-making can help to make sure our tax dollars are not increasing the level of violence.

Peace-making organizations such as the Fellowship for Reconciliation , Witness for Peace and Peace Brigades International send delegations to the third world, provide training in countries where violence is a problem and accompany human-rights workers in these countries. These groups need support and can help you contribute to pacifist communities in third-world countries and to refugee communities like those in Colombia or Chiapas.

When the newspaper brings you articles about violence and starvation, you can use your pen to create a better world. It is a gift to be able to afford to give $75 to a woman in Africa so she can set up a stall in the market and feed her kids! What privilege to be able to support someone who is brave enough to protect human rights workers! Your money can be used effectively to help third-world peoples.

Gail Kuenstler is a member of St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock, N.Y. She has a doctorate in Cultural Anthropology.