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United Way's lesson: Give closer to home
By Lee Kucera
The Santa Clara County chapter of United Way announced last week that former San Jose city manager Les White--who has a reputation for managerial skill, fiscal prudence and integrity--has taken over as interim CEO of the beleaguered charity. White will replace Eleanor Jacobs, who was fired for overspending the organization into an $11 million deficit. Well, I sure am glad the outfit that bilked Santa Clara County citizens out of $11 million is now in good hands.
As if United Way needed some more bad press. Many of us still associate the organization with its former national chief William Aramony, who was convicted in 1995 on 25 felony counts (including fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and filing false tax returns) and received a seven-year jail sentence.
The local United Way debacle apparently was the result of mismanagement rather than calculated corruption. But $11 million is a pretty hefty dose of bad judgment. When the top administrator of a charitable nonprofit authorizes deficit spending in hundreds of thousands of dollars for excessive salaries, image consultants, event specialists, lavish black-tie fundraising parties, focus groups and spiffy logo designs, she is very close to crossing the line between bad judgment and misuse of public funds.
Let's assume that White and the blue-chip committee that has been formed to oversee the local United Way bring managerial responsibility and accountability to the organization. It will still continue to operate using the same model of garnering funds through corporations that exert strong pressure on all their employees to authorize payroll deductions for support of the ubiquitous charity, which then distributes it to local recipient groups. Do we really need charitable donations to be funneled through a top-heavy, complex administrative structure? When a monolithic organization strong-arms donations from the public through their place of employment to the tune of $3 billion annually (nationwide) and uses the money for purposes which the donors may or may not choose, it's not conscious charitable giving; it's taxation.
When the story about the local United Way crisis broke some weeks ago, corporations and foundations almost immediately stepped in with $14 million to rescue the organization from bankruptcy. Am I naïve to think that the deep pockets who bailed out United Way might have taken their $14 million, divvied it up among the organization's recipient groups--skipping the inflated 25 percent overhead cost of United Way administration altogether--and done a lot more good?
A few months ago, when the first heart-wrenching pictures of Kosovar refugees appeared on TV, I learned that the Quaker church in Philadelphia was collecting "care packets" containing bars of soap, hand towels, first-aid ointment and a list of similar items to send to the refugees, plus cash for shipping. That's little enough to do in the face of such overwhelming suffering; but it still took some time to shop for the supplies, divide them into individual sealed packets, box them for mailing, stand in line at the post office, and send them to Philadelphia.
Donations to United Way, on the other hand, are quick, convenient and impersonal. They cost only a few dollars each paycheck, involve none of our time and require no thought or effort. It makes us feel as if we're doing something to help other people, and it's painless. The problem (in addition to an administration that has proven itself to be corrupt at the national level and incompetent at the local level) is that the more removed charitable giving becomes, the more meaningless it is, and the more likely to be carelessly thrown away on frivolous overhead.
Obviously the impact of half a dozen packages of first-aid supplies is irrelevant compared to the billions of dollars generated by United Way nationwide. But somehow, when it comes to charitable giving, I like what Theodore Roosevelt said: "Do what you can, with what you have, where you are." We are so incredibly rich in this country. The consumable goods and luxuries we take for granted would seem shocking to people in much of the rest of the world. A study conducted last year by Community Foundation Silicon Valley found that 45 percent of the wealthy in Silicon Valley give less than $2,000 in charitable donations annually. If every one of us did what T.R. suggested, there wouldn't be any need for a wasteful, lumbering dinosaur like United Way in the first place.
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Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
