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THE TASK FOR PRIVATE CHARITY

Private charity has three characteristics that provide
distinetive opportunities because esch is a source of peculiar strength.

While your attention is perhaps et its maximum and your emotions
neither chilled nor blunted by less important things, let me make clear
the three peculiar strengths of private philanthropy. If you can use
nothing else from this talk, if you remember nothing else from this
half hour, let it be the three things that give private institutions
thelr sapeciel importence. To help you remember these three things that
private organizations do better then those that ere mainteined by govern-
ment, the initials are §. EB. ¢.

8. stands for Starting. & private charity oan ateart pretty
much whet it wants to atert, and when it wants to start it. The timing
is often as important ae anything elee. Government ususlly weits until
the need hes accumilated to auch overwhelming dimensions that there are
not anywhere near enough treined and competent persons to deal with the
situation. Government is likely to forget that planning is important.
It is in a hurry for action. But a private organisation oan make deli-
berate plane in edvance and trein the doctors or the nurses or the social
workers or any other needed workers adequately to meet the demand before
the task has become too great. This freedom to start anything ie something
precious and peculiar to private charity, and it is the first of your
three peculisr strengths.

¥. atends for Experimenting. Or, if pioneer blood still runa

in your arteries, you might call it exploring. In any human underteking
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mere magnitude of operations discourages and even prevents experimenting.
Whet if you cannot equal the voluge of a government welfare service?
You can experiment and both observe end demonstrate the facts shown
by the experiment. As we all know, experimenting may seem alaont a
confession of failure to a large operating agency. This easy opportunity
to experiment is the envy of all big orgnisetions. They envy private
charity in this, the second of your characteristic strengths.

C. stande for Changing. Or call it adeptetion or adjustuent.
The private agency can change its direction more easily than the govern~
mental gyroscope. For this very reagon the private charity can wisely
insist on playing ite long suit by being deliberately sensitive to a
changing environment. And what environments have not changed in the
past decede or twof I trust that it will excite no suspicion end ruffle
no tempers if I aay that it is ons of the advantages of privete enterprises
thet they can even die more gresefully and promptly than governmental
agencies. Any first-rate professional man tries to diminish the need
for his services. Is this not a reasonable hope for private cherity?
In feirness to governmentsel agencies I should add that the last time
I was in Weshington I heard rumors of a new piece of Legislation to be
introduced in Congress that provides that government officials may not
hold office after they are dead. The people in Washingt -n weren't born
there. They heave a sense of humor tao. It is not the individual
officials in government that give me pause, it is the difficulty that
government agencies es such experience in stopping when the need for

thelr work hag ceased. (Nor do private agencies slwavs adait the sweet
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reasonableness of ceasing to exist.) Bigness is not grestness. snd
bigness usually lives on beyond its time because it cannot easily
shange. Witness the dinosaur.
a * +

These then sre your long suite: the abilities to start new
work, to experiment, and to change. And it is the part of velor no
less than of intelligence to use thease atrengths to the limit. It
takes courage to experiment when it would be so easy to expand, and it
takes courege to change from routine to elert uncertainty.

Sor ere you alone in recognising that these are the peculiar
resources of private organisations. When I talk with men and women
in goverment service they express their envy of you for theae charac-
teristic advantages for they cannot so easily initiete, explore end
adjust.

These freedoms to bezin, to experiment and to change, are
fer more importent in the world today than they were a hundred years sco
or backward over any of the preceding centuries. They are more inportant
because, as Elton Mayo has observed, we no longer live in a traditionel
eivilisetion but im an adeptive civilization. Witness the adaptations
we are still in the course of making to the automobile, the sirplane,
the radio. And even these new mechanisms feel, as it were, the impact
of each on the other, and of new discoveries in still other technologies.
A fall review of the evidence thet we are in an adaptive civilisation
coulda overwhelm us if we did not possess the very strengths I tell you
you heve - the freedom to devise new services, to experiment, and to

change. Why should you look at each other in consternation and self-doubt?
he
You have the very quality the times call for - adaptability. Whet if
you cannot be immensely big? You can be imaginative, sensitive, and
agile - all qualities with a greater survivel velue than bigness slone
possesses.

Now if I were to try to define the tesk for private charities
IT would begin by asking three questions: what is given, how effectively
is it given, and whet are the motives of the donor and the emotions
of the recipient?

First whet ere you giving? Is it like a cup of water - valuable
and valued but conditional upon your personal generosity? In that case
the histeric course of events will be repeated; first a oup of water,
then a berrel, then free secess to your well, then a well mainteined
by the community, then e proprietary water compeny, and finally a muni-
cipal water system. Clean, fresh water is ao valuable. And ao it
goes with giving enything essential: a gift thet leter hecomes ae
demand whose cost is shared.

Or do you wish to begin with giving education? Yhe development
has been aimilsr, First the parent giving oceasional lessons, then the
fanily governess or tutor, then the local sehool, privete or public,
and fineliy the public scheol system - socialized education.

Or are you thinking of medicel care? First the medicine
men of primitive cultures, then the private physician of Hippoeratia
days, then, thanks to Christ's injunction to minister to the sick, the
hospitel, and then public health end preventive medicine end e growing
pressure to have something as good aa medical cere free to all and

peid for by nearly all. The late Lawrence Henderson remarked that
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probably between 1910 and 1912 it became possible to say with approxi-
mate sccuracy thit a random patient with a random disease consulting
a physician at random stood better than a fifty per cent chance of
benefiting from the encounter. This form of statement introduces
both time and measurement into the simpler view that medical care has
recently become worth betting on and worth having. Thet is, I think,
the most powerful faetor in the increasing demand for medical care. And
mind you, the demend is far lesa than the need. The need is as yet
unmeasured, but it surely ig @ vast accumulation.

The wajor inference I maxe from seeing the experience of
privete philanthropic enterprises growing by slow “egrees into public
services is a simple conclusion: don't expect to retain a monopoly of
giving anything that la essential. Our fellow human beings will not cere
to remain mendleants or postulants or dependents or beneficiaries of our
good will in enything thet they consider essential. Our greatest
service in private charity hes been and will be not in the quantity of
routine essentials we purvey but in discovering new needs and finding
the ways to meet thes, and showing thet they can be met. Thet is the
task we have, and we should be at it before such needs heve reached
unmanageable proportions. Unless neede are recognised early, and
aervices to meet them started, explored, and edjusted, the needs grow
to such dimensions as to call for political interference from a rest-
lesa public - the present situation in the distribution of medical care.

Obviously our task then is qualitative not quantitative. And
in point of quality American philanthropy has passed through something

of a revolution in the past fifty years. In the old days the question
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in a donor's mind used to be, "How much can I afford to give?™ It
has been, I think, the unexpected contribution of the large foundations
sod the war drives for large funds, that the question of "how much® hes
been eclipsed by the questions "how sensible is the objective snd how
efficiently ia it being reached?" In the old deye the donor took the
worthwhileness of the cherity for granted, and cheriteble enterprises
worried only as to how much support they would get. It see a new
experience for them to be told that their finances were of less importance
than the nature of their objectives and the quality of their performances.
The essence of the Gunn-Platt report slso wes that private charitable
enterprises need to go in for more reflection and more efficiency - not
dust more of whet they have heen doing in the past.

I would hasard the guess that a second revolution in philan-
thropy may be on the way - 8 revolution in which the essential activity
will be e mature review of the donor-recipient relationship. There
has been e good deal of serving God with a cross on one shoulder snd 4
chip on the other. We ought to back off and look at ourselves and wonder
why it is that hell hate no fury like a spurned philanthropist. Both
of those difficulties occur when the donor-recipient situation hes had
insufficient attention.

But before attempting to outline some considerations that
bear upon the relationships between givers and receivers, let me call
attention to one queer aspect of welfare work of all kinds. It ia the
startling contrest between the energy and skill that go into reising

funda and the absence of energy end skill with which those who have
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supported our efforts are ever reminded or even informed of what their
gifts have accomplished. There are actuelly organizetions that apectalize
in raising money: there are none to show cherities how to be grateful
to their supporters. Annual reports eren't enough. There is a conetant
effort to make appeals for money personal appeals: what the aituation
needa is personel and, if possible, spontaneous letters of thanks - personel
and long after the event.

Now I come to a part of the task before private enterprises
that might logically heave been put first in this talk. But [ have put it
last in the hope thet 1t msy the better sink in, and, I may as well con-
fess, because I am less sure of ite acceptability aa yet. But some day
we shell have to examine our motives in giving money and services to others,
and, at the same time, we would do well to pay attention to the other side
of the cherity equation - the sentiments on the receiving end.

Philanthropic work impiies giving on a somewhat impersonal basis.
At least we would hardly cell Christmas and birthday presents philanthropy.
S> we may exclude that kind of gift from the analysis of the motives for
giving. Whet mey the motive for giving be?

1. We may give to mske friends, to draw a crowd, to impress
people favorably. This is not unheard of in political and commercial
life. It is received with anything from guarded politenesa to oynical
suspicion. That is not « suetisfactory relationship between donor and
recipient.

2. We may give to obtain control over the conduct of others.
This form of giving, since it is never complimentary and occasionally

infuriating, tends to be rather nervous and self-conscious and seeks for
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some pretext that will deceive the recipient. To do thie kind of giving
it 19 usually found convenient to employ people with « natural tendency
to deceive themselves since the more blunt and honest agents are likely
to get into hot water for their lack of what ia called "tact." Receivers
of this kind of giving show sentiments thet range from resignation,
through reserve and reluctance, to outreged resentment. That does not
create a sound relationship.

3. People occasionally are foreed to give out of fear of being
robbed as the alternative. The potential robters exhibit nonchalence or
a sadistic vindictiveness that usuelly esllea for more from the donor.

And that is hardly a setiafectory situation.

4. We may give to avoid taxation. To the extent that this
takes place the recipient organizations might be considered as supported
by government. This motive is not always evident. Indeed, I am told
that the average American income tax return shows deductions for
cheritable purposes thst sre nearer 2 per cent than the 15 per cent ellowed
by the tax form. The rather pathetic churacteriatio of giving to avoid
taxation is thet it suggests that giving and being taxed sre the same
thing and thus hastens the growth of aubeission to, and the dependence
on, government for all forms of education end welfare work, or an equally
sterile attitude of refusing to cooperste with the government in any wey
whatacever. There is plenty of current evidence that this situation is
not sound.

5. Giving soney may be inapired by the desire to avoid knowing
the recipients. It msy be less of an annoyence to shere money with the

poor than to share an intimete knowledge o” whet being poor is like.
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This kind of giving is usually received in silence. I wish the "ch® in
charity were pronounced as the "ch" in Chicago. Then we would pronounce
it sharity, and then we could learn to share as well as care.

Giving may help the giver to attsin or retain distinction
or status in society. That kind of giving reminds me of Veblen's
phrase, "conspicuous waste." It is usually accompanied by the expecta-
tion of gratitude. So important is the glory and distinetion to be obtain-
ed that givers of this kind like to regard their pet charity es # personal
monopoly. Perhaps we should rejoice that ours is a clvilization that
accords distinction to a giver, but our tines are not unique in this
distinction. There have been patrons from the deys of Maecenas to the
day when Sefiore Peron decided to send clothing te 600 poor children in
the capital of another country.

7e Money con be given as penence out of a sense of guilt or in
expiation. This type of giving is often recognized for what it la - a
kind of correotive or catharsis of the donor's emotional life. It is
usually received, therefore, with cheerful enthusiasm end no sense of ot-
ligation or partnership whatsoever.

8. People may give out of elemental pity and compassion. This
may be giving from abundance, but almost ss comuonly the relatively poor
give to each other in whet I have called "“sharity." Doctors see a
greet deal of this among their poorer patients. This ind of giving is
more likely to humble en onlooker than to humiliate the recipient. In
my experience there are few more heartening aspects of humble people than
their compassionate generosity to each other,

9. Then there is giving in mere gratitude for being alive.

Whether as a thank offering for being spared from disaster or cured of
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en iliness or out of cheerful exuberance and abundance this too is rather
a heartening kind of motive. It 1s usually received with incredulous
enxlety as to how long the motive will endure. And rightly so since
momenta of expansive good will toward men make us but short visite at
best.

10. And now for the kind of giving thet is perhaps best balanced
as between giver and receiver. This 1s where both sgree that there is
something to be done, some need to be met, something to be stopped, or
changed, or sowetiing to be created. The giver of money or of effort
can in this wey contribute his share and the recelver his. Indeed giver
and receiver fuse their identities in a comson effort, and each respects
the other snd depends upon him. The generosity of the giver of money
4s matched by the generosity of the receiver in point of enthusiasm and
herd work.

These ten motives for giving I have reviewed because the task
for private charity today must begin with long reflection upon the relse-~
tionships between those who give and those who receive. If we do not
edmire ouraslves too tenderly for giving we shail not regent it too
bitterly if government takes over the best things we have done. It is
our glory to have found and started them. We are faced with the temptation
to pity ourselves when services we have shown to be valuable are demanded
by the taxpayers as essentiala. But private charity will not cease. It
offers too close a communion with what fine people will always insist on
enjoying, especially the warm hearted who have clear hesds and see what
the new needs are, Ageinst ignorance or embittered self-pity or deadening

routine our private agencies will match their peculiar strengths - & EF. C. ~
li.

starting, experimenting and changing. We must seek quality, not bigness.
We must be prepared to answer criticiem of the present value of our
esteblished objectives, as well as the efficiency of our performence.
And, most searching test of all, we aust reflect upon our motives «nd

the human relationships these motives produce.

Srmuteey 194)