Jingle All the Way

It’s the giving season again. As soon as the donation bins for the “Poppy Appeal” were stored away, charities around the country began preparing for their annual Christmas fundraising campaigns. There are singing Santas, elves with collecting tins and a barrage of ads about a wide range of worthy causes. In the 2009/2010 season alone, the 180.000 registered British charities received a total of £52 billion in donations. The 100 largest donations alone accounted for £1 billion; the average person gave slightly less than one percent of their income to charity.

These donations are crucial to sustaining programs that cover many basic needs: From the provision of food and clothes for the needy to long-term counseling and rehabilitation programs for British soldiers returning from overseas. Private donations allow schools to subsidize tuition fees, they allow for after-school programs, art shows, overseas disaster relief, important scientific research and the publication of this newspaper. Without private giving, this society would look decidedly different.

Yet somehow, I cannot help but have an uneasy feeling about the donation bins and charity appeals. Sure, it might be annoying to be stopped in the street with pleas for money. But that is not what bothers me about it, nor is it the act of giving itself. I, too, give money to charitable causes and feel better about myself for doing so. But that’s precisely where the uneasiness begins: Why are we giving to charity? How much are our donations driven by a concern for the plight of others, and how much by our own bad conscience? Or does it even matter why we give, as long as we keep on giving?

No doubt: Charities help those they serve. But it is good business of others, too. For donors, charitable donations are often tax-deductible. For stores and companies, offers that promise to donate a pound per purchase to charity can spur sales. A 2009 study by the BBC found that some high street charity campaigns give as little as 6 percent to charitable causes (which, in turn, means that some campaigns kept over 90 percent of the sales proceeds). Maybe this is a good thing: Instead of relying on pure altruistic tendencies, the tax laws that govern charitable donations make “doing good” economically viable. But that does not dissolve my worry about the practice of giving: the sacrifice of generosity on the altar of charity. If anything, that worry is deepened.

Why should we be worried about it? I believe that motivations matter. It is easier for most of us to sympathize with visible suffering rather than with invisible hardship. We act on the glaring manifestations of poverty, discrimination or marginalization and use our resources to alleviate them. But ultimately, those motivations have consequences. In giving money to charities, we often tend to assume that our debt to society has been paid. We have done good, and we feel good about it. Yet what has remained unchanged? The institutional system and distribution of resources and opportunities that produced these disparities in the first place.

It many ways, the system of charitable giving is not altogether different from resource allocation under a planned economy: In Soviet Russia, critical parts of machinery were perpetually in short supply. Power plants had to shut down because generators broke, factories had to halt their assembly lines when necessary parts did not arrive. Yet the party managers in charge of production plans did not react by revising the system of production. Instead, the instituted a policy that encouraged the hoarding of resources and proceeded to strip old power plants of vital parts to repair the facilities elsewhere. Within a decade, the Soviet Union was running on a patchwork grid that was prone to failure, incredibly inflexible, and a nightmare to organize. Like a sailor who pumps water out of his boat instead of plugging the leak, the system was geared towards mediating negative consequences instead of addressing the root causes of the problem.

The comparison to the charity-based welfare system should be evident by now: Economic arrangements generate increasing inequality, that is in turn alleviated through the voluntary transfer of money. The actual problem of inequality remains unaddressed.

And in contrast to the welfare state, the voluntarism of charitable giving means that the transfer does not necessarily benefit those who require the most assistance. A 2007 study by the National Centre for Social Research sheds some light on UK charitable giving. We know that 63% of donors put money into collecting tins, 22% attended fundraising events, 19% gave to people who begged on the street 9% gave money after church. Of 17 possible ways of giving money, 15 were used to varying degrees. The two exceptions: Giving away company shares, and giving away land or real estate. Evidently, people are hesitant to give up non-replaceable assets. Money can always be accumulated again. But when a patch of land is given away, it’s gone. Evidently, ownership trumps charity.

And there’s a second point. Looking at the causes that people were most likely to donate to, the top four are medical research, overseas aid, hospitals, and animal welfare. These are all important causes, no doubt. But what about the social welfare programs that are usually subsumed under the umbrella of the welfare state? Where is that money coming from? When donors determine the beneficiaries of their donations, marginalized groups lose one of their last entitlements under the social contract. When we act on visible suffering, we forget those who suffer quietly and outside the spotlight.

The French author and philosopher Albert Camus once wrote the following: “Too many people have given up on generosity to practice charity.” There is, I believe, a lot of truth in that statement. Our desire to practice capitalism with a human face sometimes prevents us from thinking critically about the need for charitable giving. It substitutes the selling of indulgences for the act of caring, the willingness to change our lives and reform our institutions. In the long term, it is redistribution done wrong.

Should we strive to alleviate suffering when we see it? Yes. A principled stance against the charity system harms the beneficiaries rather than the donors. So the task is not to stop giving – but to make giving less necessary. Instead of charity, practice empathy. Instead of giving money, give sympathy. And instead of comforting your soul at the donation tin, think about the consequences of your own actions and about the social consequences of inequality. And since it’s Christmas, take a look at the bible. Even an atheist like myself can manage. Open it, and turn to the Epistle to the Romans. There, you will find the following passage:

“Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honour preferring one another; […] given to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not. Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.” Amen to that.

By Martin Eiermann