Charity begins at home

Early last month I was invited to speak at the prestigious Bangkok WINGS forum, Making a Difference in Philanthropy, and took the opportunity during the delivery of my paper to press home the point that charity does in fact begin at home.

The WINGS, Worldwide Initiative for Grantmaker Support, forum brings together all major global philanthropic organisations to discuss new initiatives in charity giving and to network. Organisations were invited from regions including Africa (Sub-Saharan), Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, North Africa-Middle East, and North America.

Prominent non-Australian organisations in attendance included The United Nations, World Bank, World Health Organisation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Kellogg and Kraft to name a few. The Myer Foundation was prominent among the strong Australian delegation of charitable groups.

I was fortunate to be sponsored by a large United States based philanthropic organisation; and the organisation I will be in the employ of - spending several months a year at their California base and the remainder of the year working with Indigenous specific projects in Australia, as this article goes to print.

The Macquarie Dictionary defines philanthropy as: “love of mankind, esp. as manifested in deeds of practical beneficence; benevolent.”

I can still vividly remember incidents of charitable acts from others when I was a child, and said so in my 2005 book The N Word - One man’s stand (p. 37):

On the occasional Sunday after church the white folk of Cunnamulla would drive to the end of the bitumen road to unload large boxes of clothing and toys. It didn’t matter to us kids that they were rejects or outgrown items from their children. After the white folk had climbed back into their cars and headed to the safety of town, there would be a mad rush to see what booty we could claim.

So yes the sprint was definitely on when white folks hastily presented their charitable boxes at the edge of the cemetery for us camp kids to share and enjoy.

Back then I never really thought of it as an act of charity and I certainly hadn’t heard of the word philanthropy. Even today when I tell my friends that I’m going to work in the field of philanthropy - some of them innocently shake their heads and ask why I would want to leave a good academic job to go stamp collecting. I told them that they got my job description mixed up with philately.

Even though I had grown to become more acquainted with the meaning of philanthropy from direct involvement as a volunteer worker in recent times, I still felt I needed to do a crash course on the specifics of this charitable and noble profession in order to fashion a paper of substance.

Accessing data from a recent Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs report on philanthropy I discovered the following snippets of information. In 2005:

• $7.7 billion was donated by Australian individuals;
• $5.7 billion was donated by 13.4 million people (87 per cent of adult Australians);
• over $2 billion was donated by the corporate sector in cash and $1.1 billion in services;
• the average donation was $424 per year; and
• $2 billion was provided by 10.5 million individuals through “charity gambling” or support for events.

As I read these statistics I wanted to find out more about who these people were that gave generously of their time and money and discovered that:

• women are more likely to give than men (90 per cent and 84 per cent respectively);
• middle aged people are the age group more likely to give - 88 per cent of those aged 45 to 55 years give on average $500 a year; and
• those aged 65 years and over give the largest average donation ($517).

Gina Anderson of Philanthropy Australia, which represents the benefactors, makes a pertinent point in difficult economic times: “Ten years ago you could write a cheque and give that to the charity and feel good about it - but today we expect more, a good feeling is not enough.” She was obviously referring to accountability for moneys donated.

Although Australians were quick to donate to the Asian Tsunami, the earthquake in the Middle East and the drought in Africa, it would appear that they are more discerning today about how their money is being spent.

If donations to charity are measured as a proportion of gross domestic product, America gives more than twice as much as Australians - 1.6 per cent compared to 0.68 per cent.

On the first night of the conference I spoke to a representative of the United Nations, based in New York, and she explained that a high profile US billionaire businessman gave her organisation a $1 billion grant for biodiversity specific projects. I asked her how we could access some of that money in Australia and she commented that if we could make a connection with a United Nations sponsored program in Australia she would be happy to assist.

It now looks possible that my colleague and I will be working closely with her organisation on global warming issues in the Pacific Islands and the Torres Strait Islands. The latter group is now building homes on stilts as the ocean continues to rise and lap their low-set homes in the outer northern islands, as a direct result of global warming.

The central issue that captured my attention the most at this conference, attended by over 200 donor delegates, was the successful collaboration of large corporate sectors with Indigenous and poorer socio economic groups in their respective countries. In the Philippines, for instance, a large coffee production company assists in the planting and harvesting of coffee crops in remote Indigenous communities.

They successfully sell the coffee cultivated from the Indigenous groups at a premium price, and market the produce as being organically grown from this discrete group. The market pitch, aided by the exotic flavours, ensures the expensive crop is snapped up by coffee connoisseurs who don’t mind spending a couple of extra dollars on the product.

In Czechoslovakia a philanthropic group has entered into a good business relationship with a mobile phone company whereby they advertise that they will charge an extra Euro (dollar) on each SMS call as part of charitable fundraising. The money raised goes directly to assist poor farmers to get them through hard times and to teach them better farming practices. Detailed portfolios of all moneys expended are placed on their webpage and made available to the public.

Just as everyone at the conference started to feel good about their charitable acts performed around the world the WINGS organizers shrewdly introduced a dynamic keynote speaker, Anuradha Mittal, on the penultimate day to stimulate further debate among the attendees.

Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of The Oakland Institute, speaking on Partnership with the Grantmakers, said:

If progressives leave the policy arena to the conservatives, the safety net for the poor will be further weakened or be abolished outright as homelessness and hunger continue to increase.

The prison industry will grow, constituting the only form of public service that is fully and willingly funded. The gap between the rich and poor both within and among nations will widen. We will see more xenophobic immigration laws.

Unregulated industries will require employees to work in increasingly unsafe work places at lower wages, pollute the water and air, and set aside less and less money for worker’s health benefits and retirement. Nations will retain and build large military establishments even in peacetime. What can we do to stop this juggernaut?

Ms Mittal concluded her hour-long paper with a quote from Sufi poet Hafiz who wrote, “‘Fear is the cheapest room in the house. My dear you deserve better living conditions.’ So please accept my greetings and gratitude for having me here. Yes we all deserve better living conditions!”

I was amazed at the number of people in attendance, significantly from the large American delegation, who took affront at Ms Mittal, internationally renowned US based poverty advocate formerly from India, for daring to challenge the capitalist ways of doing business. Many commented to me that if it wasn’t for globalisation many big corporations wouldn’t be in the position of making significant donations to charity.

Perhaps they missed the point of the challenge and took things a little too literally.

I also came under attack from several conservative philanthropic organisation representatives from Australia for unduly emphasising the high level of social disadvantage of Indigenous Australians: high death rates, infant mortality, high incarceration rates, least access to employment, education, housing, legal and health services and so on. One elderly lady told me that this was neither the time nor place to be dumping on Australia at such a prestigious gathering.

I guess some Australians left our shores for Bangkok in the knowledge that they could luxuriate in air-conditioned comfort at the impressive Millennium Hilton and not expect to have the appalling social conditions of their Indigenous population raised publicly by a staunch advocate like me.

Although I made great contacts with most Australian philanthropic representatives, and will undertake collaborative work with them on behalf of my US based philanthropic body with Indigenous people, I still think it is important to remind them from time to time that “charity begins at home”.