HERE'S WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:

Dear Jeffrey,

The question as you ask it is very pointed and constrained, and that is
good. You are focused on giving to relief efforts. I have spent much of
my life raising money for Universities and have been involved in
fund-raising with a number of social service and other agencies. I have
also been a donor. Therefore, your questions raises other issues for
me.
When I give to a relief effort I see my gift, since I am not a very
wealthy person giving a large gift, as primarily a gesture of solidarity
with those suffering, recognizing that many others are doing the same
thing and that in total, maybe together we will make a difference. But
for me personally, it is a gesture of solidarity, which in no way is
some feeling of guilt. I select agencies I trust and that have low
overhead and whose basic mission, vision and core values I do identify
with. From that point forward, I trust the agency to make best use of
my gesture or contribution. I also recognize that this minimizes their
book-keeping overhead and my contribution will be better used.
I feel the same way about most of the gifts I give to other religious,
charitable, art and educational agencies. I do not give if I do not
trust, and I feel that the Board and Administrators have a better handle
on priorities than I do.
On the other hand, my advice to major donors is often that they specify
how the gift is to be used and that annual accountability be demanded if
it is appropriate(an endowment). If for whatever reason one has
stewardship over major resources, either out of a sense of
responsibility to society, God, whatever, that stewardship should be
exercised. I would not, when I was on the receiving end, accept gifts
not in harmony with institutional mission, vision and core values, for
that would be unethical in my opinion. I also on occasion told donors
that the particular activity they wanted to fund would not accomplish
the end they had in mind. Unfortunately, I am aware of organizations
that accept funds for one purpose and then redirect them to others.
This is not to argue that, in stewardship, one should not over a longer
period of time redirect funds as things change from some thing that
becomes useless to something productive and that this calls for judgment
and disagreement on occasion. But a good test of my sincerity and
intelligence was always to discuss the change with the original donor or
surviving relatives. Most of the time their sense of loyalty to the
institution dominated their thinking and the response was "move ahead in
the way you think best." I remember one case in a social service agency
where we decided that a program funded primarily by one very generous
donor was no long consistent with our mission and vision. The donor
understood, worked to move the program, a good one, to another agency
where it fit, continued to fund it and continued to fund the work of the
agency that dropped the program. I gues we call that "win, win and
win".

Dr. Thomas A. Bausch

I'm not a fan of designated giving. If you give money to a charity, a
grandchild, a panhandler or anyone else and proceed to tell them what they
must do with it you haven't given them a gift, you've simply made them an
agent for the purpose of spending your money as you want it spent. Which may
not be the best use the recipient can make of it.

David R. Lamb
Murray, Utah
The Salt Lake Tribune

As a faculty member at a few small private colleges in the 1990s, I sat in many meetings where charitable donations were simultaneously lauded and bemoaned -- lauded because the college received a gift, bemoaned because of some of the restrictions due to the specificity of the gift.

Without asking too many questions, which is very dangerous for a non-tenured professor -- it became clear that what these college administrators wanted were unrestricted gifts that did not have to be accounted for as much as restricted gifts. That way, the funds can go to the General Fund (or its equivalent), which allows the college administrators and trustees to spend the money on whatever the administrators want: expensive furnishings for their offices, administrative housing, sports programs, general overhead, etc. Thus, any time I make a gift to a college, it is specified that the monies go to a specific scholarship (I've created a few of my own) or to the library where I KNOW the money will be spent on educational purposes.  

Many donors to charities think the same way. Sure, any donation goes TO the charity, but in what specific way? Did the donors to United Way in the 1990s really think their monies were going to pay for limousine service for the CEO?! In a more recent example, did the donors to the Red Cross think their monies were going to be used to pay off an administrator and her secretary to leave the organization?!

Pretty much across-the-board, I think donors would respond, "No." When a donation is made, most people have a specific vision of an activity where the money will be used. It's pretty disheartening indeed to find out that a donation, which may have been a financial sacrifice for the donor, was used to acquire an expensive painting to hang above some administrator's desk.

Yes, it does create issues for the charities when restricted gifts are given. I suppose administrators of charitable organizations can ponder the alternative: No donations at all.

-- Dr. L. McNary



(Newspaper: The Beaumont Enterprise)

It is not a good idea to restrict your donation to tsunami relief.

This could place the charity in the unenviable position of being forced to disregard the wishes of contributors if there's money left over after tsunami relief efforts have come to a close.

Bob McGarry
Yorba Linda, Calif
Orange County Register

My husband & I have been consistent donors to
several charities (both religious & secular) for over
30 years. We have been told by many trustworthy
organizations that "designated" donations are
technically not considered donations by the IRS. To
be considered tax deductible, the organization must
retain control over the money's use. Therefore, while
reputable organizations make every effort to use the
donation for the intended project or person, it is
ultimately up to the organization how to use the
money. If inflexible conditions are placed on its
use, then it wasn't really a donation and the IRS
could disallow the deduction or call into question the
status of the organization. So it's very important
that you trust the organization to which you donate
and will be comfortable with however they choose to
use the money.
Kathy Thelin
Garden Grove, CA

Dear Mr. Seglin,

Your "Sound Off" column dated today, 1/31/05, asked for our opinions as to whether or not we think it is right to restrict donations to relief agencies for a specific need, rather than allowing the particular organization to make their own decision as to where the funds can be used to best advantage. Not only do I think it is fine to designate one's gift, particularly if the relief agency gives contributors that option, as ours did, I also think it is especially good to do so in cases of emergency like the tsunami. Designated gifts help an agency remain accountable to its donors. No matter how trustworthy we perceive an organization or person to be, complete accountability is essential where large amounts of money (or power!) are concerned. Unfortunately, the world is rife with examples of why this is so!

Further, designating a gift puts a human "face" on our help. If we cannot go to the area to help personally, I believe that designation meets a need in us to know that we have somehow had a direct hand in helping to immediately relieve suffering, rather than just sending money into the void for something, somewhere.

I think that designation helps to keep us more watchful of the progress being made in a catastrophic event. This personal investment may inspire us to remain committed donors to the organization we have chosen to represent us, thereby eventually bringing funds into the agency's larger work.

Sincerely,
Susan Hammond
Irvine, California
Orange County Register Newspaper

(P.S. Besides being generally characteristic of the American nature to help victims of tragedies, another possible reason for overwhelming specific tsunami relief donations may be due to the fact, as I understand it,  that Congress passed an emergency measure that allowed such donations made through today, 1/31/05, to be tax deductible for the 2004 tax return. Thus, there was extra incentive to give specifically to tsunami relief.)

I've been following your column since it first appeared in The Orange County Register.

I believe that money given to legitimate relief groups should have minimal strings attached. It's enough to recommend that a donation be used for a particular disaster; beyond that, the organization should know better where the money is needed than I do. If it doesn't, I wouldn't trust it with my money anyway. A high-profile disaster can actually decrease donations available for less-publicized, but equally worthy, problems.

In addition, some people seem to have no idea of what disaster recovery encompasses. An example of this was shown in the fuss about the use of Red Cross donations after the World Trade Center disaster. Much of the shallow news coverage made it sound as if all donated money should go to the families of those who died in the attack.  I believe a little deeper thought would reveal that many kinds of assistance are needed after such an event, and any responsible relief organization would have a much better idea of what help is needed than an ordinary layperson.

Beverly Totman
Huntington Beach, CA

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed in the e-mails to The Right Thing: Sound Off section of this Web site are solely the views of the those who sent them. They do not reflect the views of Jeff Seglin, The New York Times Syndicate or The New York Times Company.