Via The Christian Post:
Annual giving to churches rose by 11 percent, but after factoring in inflation, churches are getting about two percent more than contributed in 1999.
Another trend was the practice of donating 10 percent of the annual income to church. Tithing is practiced by very few Americans at only four percent, according to Barna, though good stewardship remains an important priority for Christians.
Read more on Survey: Nominal Giving Rises but Actual Giving Stagnates…
The days following April 15 (and our tax bill, again) I question the government behemoth and how it takes so much of MY money to feed it. My parents struggled financially; they couldn’t send me to college. But I received a great debate scholarship, worked year round and went to grad school too. That self-sufficiency, success model that my husband and I followed means that by 2004 we were increasingly penalized for our success. We can’t make all we can to give all we can to effective charities. We can do that with inefficient, valueless government agencies.
Read more on IRS Cash Assistance Problems – Mine and Theirs…
The incongruence of a culture that insists on knowledge of every detail about charity donations and yet puts no value on a disabled woman’s life is frankly mind-boggling. But let’s move beyond value of human life and focus on the importance of telling the truth and being honest. Stanley Carlson-Thies, formerly of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, makes a superb point that like too much of any good thing, too much transparency just might “turn” on the good intentions of Senator Grassley and his increased charity oversight project. Good intentions are simply not enough.
Bob Woodson of National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise fame taught me a lot about strategic partnerships. In the interest of getting something important done for needy people, it’s ok to invite others with good contributions to make to join you, despite disagreements with them on other issues. Good advice. And on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Jonas Salk’s vaccine and Dr. Albert Sabin’s oral polio vaccine, Rotary International demonstrates an impressive strategic partnership with the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, partnering with the World Health Organization, U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
Rotary is the world’s first volunteer service organization, tapping 1.2 million members in 166 countries when it launched a flagship PolioPlus program in 1985 to achieve a polio free world for all children. Polio cases were cut 99% by 2004, but there are six polio endemic countries including Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Niger, Afghanistan and Egypt, and five countries where transmisison has been re-established in the Sudan, Central Aftican Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad and Burkina Faso. Multiple volunteers have travelled safely into war-torn Sudan and Cote d’Ivoire to vaccinate children.
Contributions have been received from 528 or the 529 Rotary Districts and from 153 countries. Twenty thousand clubs have made contributions and eight districts have rasied more than $1 million each. Rotary contributions to the global project will exceed US$600 million. Rotary is to be commended for not looking at an overwhelming global issue and thinking “governments should fix this.”
Such is the admirable Soul of Civil Society.
Matthew 19:23-26 (New International Version)
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
During an appearance last week on “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” Congressman Charles Rangel from New York did us all the service of exegeting the above passage from the Scriptures.
Here’s the exchange:
MATTHEWS: I mean, Charlie, Jesus didn’t hang around with the swells, the rich people.
RANGEL: Well, he said the rich are going straight to hell.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Well, he did not.
(LAUGHTER)
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: He said it is harder to get through a needle’s…
(CROSSTALK)
RANGEL: No. But the deal with St. Matthews and all these people are trying to get into heaven. And he said, hey, when I was hungry, you didn’t feed me. I was thirsty. I was naked. I was sick. You didn’t do all these—he’s talking about food stamps, Social Security.
MATTHEWS: Right.
RANGEL: He’s talking about taking care of those who haven’t got. So, when it comes to moral value, my Republican friends can decide which side the pope was on.
Read more on ‘With God All Things Are Possible’…
There are some problems in parts of the charity sector. The problems are with charities that HAVE enough money to scam somebody or shift an inappropriate perk to a board member. There’s not much talk about the charities that never saw that kind of resource and never will. Government officials always think that more regulation is the answer, but it’s scary when the private sector supports that link. Six of America’s major foundations have financed Electronic Data for Nonprofits (EDIN) within the Independent Sector, advocating accurate and timely charity reports. And IRS forms are appropriate financial reporting tools, even for smaller charities. But financial reporting is not the “litmus test” of program information, as the EDIN project advocates. Good charity is more than money.
It’s not the appropriate role of government to even infer legitimate charity donations. The legitimate function of IRS forms is financial transparency of organizations that operate as Exempt Organizations. To think that the IRS is “needed” for anything beyond that role demeans donors. Private financial sources such as Charity Navigator and GuideStar already give donors significant financial information beyond IRS forms. Donors are asking good questions through groups like Grantmakers for Effective Organizations and Center for Effective Philanthropy. They might be fooled by bad charities–big or small–for a time. But charity donors using market principles that made their money will fare better than the charity donors that abdicate to more government regulation.
Tuesday’s Washington Post says that Internal Revenue Commissioner Mark Everson is the government official to help us make sure that our contributions are received by legitimate charities. In a letter to the Senate Finance Committee, which is currently discussing increased charity regulation, Everson noted, “We can see that tax abuse is increasingly present in the [Exempt Organization] sector,” and unless the government takes effective steps to curb it, such organizations risk “the loss of the faith and support that the public has always given to this sector.”
But the reality of increased government revenue to be had rather than good faith may be the more immediate issue. According to Chairman Grassley, those revenues can offset the costs of the CARE Act [current legislation that provides increased tax advantages for human service charity donors].
Read more on Government Revenue or Good Faith?…
