Post 2: Religion, Philanthropy, & Charitable Giving

This week’s readings I found slightly difficult to write about because I don’t closely affiliate myself with religion. Technically speaking I am Catholic. I went to a Catholic elementary school from Kindergarten to 5th Grade. I have been baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church. With all that said, I haven’t been to church since I was in high school. I just didn’t find my calling in any religion institution, I guess, but I feel that I need to at least have a general understanding of different religion or spiritual organizations because they play such prevalent roles in American society, American politics and American philanthropy.

I’m normally very hesitant of religious organizations because, for one, I have a limited understanding of them. I’m not the kind of person that enjoys engaging in a debate on a topic about which I can’t provide any truly knowledge value. Second, I’ve always felt that religious institutions have the potential to cause as much discord as they do harmony, yet I realize and admit this thought it likely caused by my lack of knowledge. This week’s text readings opened my eyes to the idea of using religion for the greater good.

“Faith communities in which people worship together are arguably the single most important repository of social capital in America…Churches provide an important incubator for civic skills, civic norms, community interests, and social capital in America…” (O’Neill 63).

My initial reactions to the above quotation were in the form of images of my elementary school - Our Lady of Angels in
Burlingame, CA. Even at a young age I never fully bought into concept of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The stories of the Bible were always very interesting to me, but I never made the connection between living under the guidance of thos stories and their morals. I did, however, always appreciate the concept of community service.

Our Lady of Angels required students to complete a certain amount of community service hours each year, or maybe we were given incentives to complete community services hours – I can’t really remember. I thought this idea of students helping out their community was genius! From my perspective as a student, I was doing fun activities – e.g., helping paint the school fences on the weekend, helping teachers set up school activities, or babysitting for other school families – and spending time with other friends outside of the classroom. From my school’s perspective, they were introducing children to community members or community organizations, providing a societal benefit, potentially exposing students to a new skill set. Most importantly, however, we, as children and students, were being taught the value of community service, volunteerism, and sacrificing our personal time and energy for the good of our greater community at a young age. It’s possible that I can attribute my current studies as a PPPM major to those community service hours…who knows.

These readings also made me think about the idea of creating policies for a national service requirement. No, I’m not referring to “military service,” which I assume is the first thing that pops into most people’s minds. Rather, it would be a national community service requirement in the form of completing a predetermined amount of hours per week, or per month, or per year.

Community service shouldn’t be used as a form of punishment for juvenile delinquents. Community service should be considered acts of virtue. It could be argued that requiring community service at a young age would keep adults and young adults out of jail in the first, but we can save that debate for a later day.

Furthermore, these community service requirements would also necessitate a system of placing volunteers, or allowing volunteers to choose what activities or in what areas of society they would like to like to donate their time. In this sense, I liked Dan Palotta’s post on the Harvard Business Review website.

According to Palotta we need to create one consolidated, massive national apparatus for assessment. It should consists of teams of objective observers – a kind of Peace Corps for evaluation – that will collect substantive and objective data, annually, on every operating charity in America and put it online in a beautiful iTunes-like user interface.” Again, genius! People want to know where there money is going and volunteers want to know that they aren’t going to be wasting their time. It’s so simple.

Finally, I want to make one comment about the “Charity Deduction Under Scrutiny” article. If the federal government is suggesting making considerable limiting or ending tax cuts on charitable donations, then they better make sure that “deduction” factor is not the main reason that people donate to nonprofits. If people are donating their money to charities and nonprofits because they know it’s cheaper than paying taxes on that money, then the charitable sector will be absolutely crushed by this tax reduction. If people actually donate their money on the basis of altruism, then the tax reduction is completely fine. Once again discovering the true motives behind charitable donation comes into play.