I’m doubling my contribution to United Way this year.
Not because of an attack of altruism. Or to curry favor with my boss, who collects the checkoff cards. I’m not a big giver, anyway; just $200 last year, barely above the company average.
But I’ll raise it to $400 in ’93, and here’s why: United Way is under attack. It will probably lose. And when that happens, a lot of innocent people will be hurt.
The attackers aren’t bad guys, mind you. Quite the contrary. They’re professional do-gooders who believe passionately in the special causes to which they have dedicated their lives. They run not-for-profit groups, many organized around single issues such as women’s rights, minority rights, gay and lesbian rights, environmentalism and the arts.
Hardly any of these groups get money from United Way. Most never applied. A few did but were turned down. The Chicago-area United Way/Crusade of Mercy generally steers away from advocacy groups; it gives mainly to established agencies that provide human services to the poor or almost poor-outfits such as the Chicago Commons Association, Visiting Nurses, Lighthouse for the Blind, Des Plaines Senior Center, Harvey Health Center and so on. Last year 450 agencies got money. For many it’s lifeblood, what with all the federal and state cutbacks.
United Way has been very successful at raising money and getting it to these groups with minimal overhead. Its secret is clout. Its board reads like a Who’s Who of Chicago-area CEOs. Inside their companies the Crusade gets top priority. Employees are encouraged to make generous payroll deductions. There are contests and picnics and lapel pins and, sometimes, sour looks from the boss.
So what’s United Way’s problem?
The world has changed. The Chicago area’s sense of community-America’s sense of community-is dissolving to the point that United Way has become a magnificent anachronism. We are moving into an era of personal independence, rights, freedoms. No longer is it fashionable to subordinate one’s preferences-for charities or anything else-to something so stuffy as a council of community elders. Especially not when many of those elders are successful white businessmen. United Way’s leadership includes African-Americans, Hispanics and women (and most of its grants end up servicing those groups), but there is a growing perception that United Way is an old-boy network.
That perception-an unfair one, I think-is fostered by the growing rank of advocacy groups itching to bust United Way’s near-monopoly over workplace fundraising.
Last week a national organization of these groups met in Chicago to discuss strategies for doing just that.
“United Ways closed their doors to newer charities-women, minorities and the environment, among others,” said Bob Bothwell, executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. The long list on its letterhead begins with the Native American Rights Fund and ends with the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.
“United Way has said, `We’re the only group in town to do workplace fundraising,’ ” he said, but “many employees have grown more interested in (other) issues. When these employees don’t find the newer charities as an option on their pledge card, they don’t give to United Way.”
On that he is surely right. Last year United Way collections were off 3 percent nationally and 10 percent in the Chicago area. It was the biggest falloff in the 30-year history of the local Crusade.
No doubt other factors played a role. The recession took a toll. United Way says 40,000 area workers have been laid off just from its sponsoring corporations. Others didn’t give because of publicity about the lavish salary and perks given William Aramony, former head of United Way’s national umbrella. Some were miffed that Chicago’s United Way office censured the Boy Scouts for not allowing gays or atheists, others because the suburban United Way did not.
This latter flap gets to the heart of United Way’s problem-an increasing unwillingness on the part of individuals to delegate those kinds of decisions to people who once were respected as community leaders.
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How can such leaders exist when our old concept of community has been shelved in the New Age, replaced by jostling groups of self-described victims, all absorbed in the problems of their own race, gender, sexual persuasion or disability?
United Way is swimming against too strong a tide. Soon many companies will open in-house fundraising to special-pleaders . . . though I predict more will respond to the pressure by getting out of the charity business altogether.
We then will have won philanthropic freedom. Best not to think about what we’ll have lost.