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DRIVING CROSSTOWN, my brother and I stopped at an onramp, where a man held a cardboard sign.
“Does anyone give these people money?” my brother asked, then immediately answered his own question by mentioning a friend who hands out bottles of water instead. “Anything helps,” read the man’s sign.
“Sure,” I said. “I’ve seen people pass $5 bills out the window.” A single dollar used to be enough for a panhandler to end his shift and shuffle off to the nearest mini-market. But inflation has changed that.
“I once tried to give a person $5,” my brother started. “Long ago.”
Here we go again, I thought. Another tale from his hippie youth. If it was a story I recognized, I could probably stop him mid-sentence. Thankfully, most stories are short, though the moral of his fables are harder to determine than Aesop’s.
“Oh?” I tried to sound noncommittal. Maybe he’d veer into another topic. World politics perhaps.
“Yes, I was in Jennifer’s car with her and a couple other people. Some guy had a sign, ‘Need $$$.’ I pulled a fiver from my pocket. One moment, I had it in my hand. Next thing I knew, Jennifer was stuffing it into her purse. She drove on without a word.”
“Charity begins at home,” I said, not really sure if this was the moral he had in mind.
“Jennifer was in a hard spell,” he agreed amiably. More than half a century had passed since the day he tried to give a stranger $5, blocked by his friend’s more urgent need. I was hearing about this for the first time, and I’ll remember it, too.
That’s because I’m decumulating, though slowly. My calculations and advisors indicate that I’ve likely saved enough to last for the rest of my natural life and a bit more, even with recent high inflation.
After decades of saving, deciding on a spending target beyond my essential needs isn’t easy. I want to reserve a reasonable amount to cover inevitable errors in my expectations and calculations. I’m not interested in simply leaving behind a legacy for the kids, with a lump sum set aside for the alma mater.
Instead, I’m developing an ongoing, informed altruism toward them and others, while I’m still around to enjoy it. I’m aiming for a style of giving that acknowledges the challenges and delayed gratification involved in any of us saving for an uncertain future. I want an altruism that expresses gratitude for my life and respects its hardships, too. I’m hoping to create value in giving that reflects the effort it took to amass the money involved.
I’ve worked with nonprofits, charities and university advancement offices before. Each fall, I receive gift solicitations, triggered by decades of employment in public agencies and private education, along with a personal history of memberships and annual gifts. I’m not famous, important or rich enough for a building or even a department chair to carry my name, much less an entire hospital or stadium.
Then again, I’ve seen names removed from buildings lately, so a naming gift isn’t something that interests me anymore. Besides, I have the reflected glow of a public works building named after my brother-in-law, a longtime local elected official who saw that potholes were promptly filled and streets repaired.
I could send money to political campaigns. Last fall, requests flooded my inbox and mailbox. That would require me to believe that a campaign’s glossy hit piece, which will likely go straight into the recycling bin, is good compensation for a lifetime of eating homemade sandwiches sitting at my desk.
Instead, I’m amping up past practices, and modifying a strategy learned from my late spouse, who was a professional at giving away money. Literally, it was his job. He worked for a Class I railroad and annually parceled out a portion of his company’s charitable funds across two assigned states. He liked to say that his universe was 25 feet wide and 30,000 miles long, though his territory involved just a portion of that, about 4,500 of those miles.
As a result, he spent much time on the road visiting every burg and fat spot where peoples’ lives and those tracks converged. Over the years, he spoke to thousands of nonprofit executive directors and employees, who explained their agency’s efforts to support local communities, and what they’d do if they had a few dollars more.
Without the funds of a major endowment, and being naturally frugal, my spouse wanted his donations to go a long way. While he’d give to the largest nameplate charities, he capped annual donations at an amount too small to interest most professional grant writers but large enough to make a difference to a lesser charity.
He created a one-page application form, to match the more modest amounts he was doling out and the likelihood that an executive director would be filling out the form. He spread his company’s gifts as widely as possible. He’d end the season with a road trip delivering checks in person, and hosting an annual luncheon for those receiving grants to come together in our city, where they could talk together about their communities, what their agencies were doing and their vision for what might be accomplished next.
I’ve lived a life of donated time and money, and now that I’m retired, I’m ready to do more. Massive, gleaming headquarters for nonprofits trouble me. Soaring spires invoke the same reluctance. I’d rather see a tiny cement clinic at the end of a dirt path. Below is my initial plan for charitable giving. What’s yours? And what am I missing?
Catherine Horiuchi is retired from the University of San Francisco’s School of Management, where she was an associate professor teaching graduate courses in public policy, public finance and government technology. Check out Catherine’s earlier articles.
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This reminds me that when I began my baking career in early ’70s there was flurry of new headquarter buildings being built. It was as if all CEOs had building envy” trying to have the biggest and fanciest building. As buildings were completed and the decade progressed, it became evident that all those banks that spent money on glitz underperformed the others. It was evident that their attention was diverted away from better objectives of operational efficiencies and customer relations.
You say “I’d rather see a tiny cement clinic at the end of a dirt path.” So would I. You may like some of these global charities that work to alleviate extreme poverty around the world while working to lift people up & improve their lives. The beauty is, we can have a profound impact on other people’s lives, people who may not have been as fortunate as we have been, to have had access to a free education, clean drinking water & other basic necessities many of us in the western world have always taken for granted. For people who may not have a lot to give, you can buy some of their gifts for people in dire need, such as a goat, a cow or some chickens, a seeding kit, a baby kit, help a child stay in school & so on….
Concern Worldwide, Goal Global, Oxfam, Unicef, World Vision, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children, Feed the Children, Smile Train, Samaritan’s Purse.
I also love your concern & support for children leaving foster care. This is so important because support stops for many of them at age 18 & many become homeless.