Robert D. Lupton - Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It)

Toxic Charity

How Churches and Charities Hurt Those
They Help (And How to Reverse It)

Robert D. Lupton

Contents

Chapter One
The Scandal

I N THE U NITED S TATES, THERE S a growing scandal that we both refuse to see and actively perpetuate. What Americans avoid facing is that while we are very generous in charitable giving, much of that money is either wasted or actually harms the people it is targeted to help.

I dont say this casually or cavalierly. I have spent over four decades working in inner-city Atlanta and beyond, trying to develop models of urban renewal that are effective and truly serve the poor. There is nothing that brings me more joy than seeing people transitioned out of poverty, or neighborhoods change from being described as dangerous and blighted to being called thriving and even successful. I have worked with churches, government agencies, entrepreneurs, and armies of volunteers and know from firsthand experience the many ways good intentions can translate into ineffective care or even harm.

Almost 90 percent of American adults are involved personally or financially in the charity industry. Our entire societyfrom school children to corporate CEOs, from small churches to massive government agenciesupholds the wonderful value that helping others is a big part of the American character. Today theres a compassion boom of people helping others, says Patrick Corvington, CEO of the federal Corporation for National and Community Service. Unlike during difficult economic times in the past when volunteerism declined, charitable service today continues to increase. A recent poll by the Orlando Parade (March 7, 2010) confirms that more than 90 percent of Americans believe that it is important to be personally involved in supporting a cause we believe in in their communities and in the world at large. And Americans are working hard to hand down this value to the next generation.

Public service has moved beyond mere catchphrase or school requirement in our country. It is now a way of life for Americans of all ages. Nearly every church, business, and organization gets involved in some sort of service project. College spring-break service projects and church mission trips have become the norm. Corporations realize they can enhance their images through cause-related marketing while also building up employee loyalty and pride in the company. The compassion industry is almost universally accepted as a virtuous and constructive enterprise.

But what is so surprising is that its outcomes are almost entirely unexamined. The food we ship to Haiti, the well we dig in Sudan, the clothes we distribute in inner-city Detroitall seem like such worthy efforts. Yet those closest to the groundon the receiving end of this outpouring of generosityquietly admit that it may be hurting more than helping. How? Dependency. Destroying personal initiative. When we do for those in need what they have the capacity to do for themselves, we disempower them.

Africa can serve as a large-scale example of the problem. In the last fifty years, the continent has received $1 trillion in benevolent aid. How effective has this aid been? Country by country, Africans are far worse off today than they were a half century ago. Overall per-capita income is lower today than in the 1970s. Over half of Africas 700 million population lives on less than $1 a day. Life expectancy has stagnated, and adult literacy has plummeted below pre-1980 levels. Its a kind of curse, says Dambisa Moyo, an African economist and the author of Dead Aid . Aid, though intended to promote health, becomes the disease of which it pretends to be the cure.

A similar devastation has been inflicted upon the subsidized poor of our own country (though admittedly not as extreme). For all our efforts to eliminate povertyour entitlements, our programs, our charitieswe have succeeded only in creating a permanent underclass, dismantling their family structures, and eroding their ethic of work. And our poor continue to become poorer.

In over forty years working with the urban poor in inner-city Atlanta and around the globe, I have learned that it takes more than high ideals to bring about substantive change in populations of need. The organization I founded, Focused Community Strategies, has worked diligently to sort out, by trial and error, which efforts result in actual transformation and which efforts have results that are ultimately noxious and harmful.

Still, I continually witness profoundly broken systems in nonprofit work. Many people legitimately fault the government for decades of failed social programs, and yet frequently we embrace similar forms of disempowering charity through our kindhearted giving. And religiously motivated charity is often the most irresponsible. Our free food and clothing distribution encourages ever-growing handout lines, diminishing the dignity of the poor while increasing their dependency. We converge on inner-city neighborhoods to plant flowers and pick up trash, bruising the pride of residents who have the capacity (and responsibility) to beautify their own environments. We fly off on mission trips to poverty-stricken villages, hearts full of pity and suitcases bulging with giveaway goods, trips that one Nicaraguan leader describes as effective only in turning my people into beggars.

Giving to those in need what they could be gaining from their own initiative may well be the kindest way to destroy people.

We mean well, our motives are good, but we have neglected to conduct care-full due diligence to determine emotional, economic, and cultural outcomes on the receiving end of our charity. Why do we miss this crucial aspect in evaluating our charitable work? Because, as compassionate people, we have been evaluating our charity by the rewards we receive through service, rather than the benefits received by the served. We have failed to adequately calculate the effects of our service on the lives of those reduced to objects of our pity and patronage.

What have we missed? As reported by Dambisa Moyo in Dead Aid, a World Bank study found that 85 percent of the aid money flowing into African countries never reaches the targeted areas of need and often goes to unproductive (if not blatantly corrupt) uses.

Expenditures for a week of service by church and college groups are grossly out of proportion with what is actually accomplished. U.S. mission teams who rushed to Honduras to help rebuild homes destroyed by hurricane Mitch spent on average $30,000 per homehomes locals could have built for $3,000 each. The money spent by one campus ministry to cover the costs of their Central American mission trip to repaint an orphanage would have been sufficient to hire two local painters and two new full-time teachers and purchase new uniforms for every student in the school.

Each year religious mission trips consume billions of dollars (estimates run from $2.5 to $5 billion annually), junkets that put some tourist dollars into local economies but seldom yield appreciable improvement in the lives of those being served. What appears to be extravagant, selfless, even sacrificial investments from caring benefactors may well be exposed as large-scale misappropriations of charitable resources.

To be sure, not all charitable response is toxic. The immediate outpouring of aid in times of catastrophe is inspiring and lifesaving. When an earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, people responded compassionately from every sector of society. In these types of disasters, our government sends federal troops and civilian experts to assist with search and recovery efforts. Red Cross and other emergency-assistance organizations jump into action. The media brings the devastation into every living room and provides information on donating to responsible nonprofit groups mobilizing to address the crisis. America is in the forefront of generosity when it comes to extending lifesaving assistance in times of calamity. It is a cultural characteristic that should make us proud.