Chicken Dinners and Good Causes

For our family, it’s that time of year again. Three of the four of us in our little nuclear family are what you might call “agency people”. That is, we work for non-profit agencies. I’m a Regional Manager at Goodwill Industries, my wife is a Program Director for Catholic Charities-directing a large child care center, and our oldest daughter is a service Director at Lutheran Community Services- directing a large program that provides services to sexual assault victims and their families. Only our youngest daughter is not an agency person. She’s a sales Director for a large national food distribution corporation. (Perhaps she’s the smart one.) In truth, we’re all very happy with our career choices. But amongst we agency people, this is the season when we’re attending a series of fund-raising dinners. Because we work at non-profit agencies, the process of fund-raising is very important for our employers and the programs we work in- and we support the effort and each other as we sign up for chicken dinners in hotel ballrooms where people from the community are urged to open their hearts and their wallets in support of important services for people in our community.

As I was looking over my chicken dinner schedule I noticed that it just so happened we’re attending three of these events in a row, one-a-month in March, April, and May. The first of these events was mine. My wife and I attended my first Goodwill Industries Awards Dinner. It was a great event attended by about 500 folks, all there to celebrate work done by Goodwill. Our President was the MC and through the course of the night he spoke of the thousands of local people Goodwill had served since the dinner last year. It was a real showcase for the great work Goodwill does and a chance to honor some very special employees, local businesses, and Goodwill clients who distinguished themselves in the last year.

In April we’ll head to the Lutheran Community Services Chocolate and Champagne Gala. Not an actual chicken dinner- but you get my point. Those in attendance will be plied with delicious drinks and treats while they contribute their money in the form of silent auction bids and outright donations to support programs that  serve and protect the most vulnerable and needy victims in our midst. What their clients experience is the among most horrifying and devastating events one can imagine, and Lutheran Community Services is the only organization dedicated to serving them. A good (no- GREAT) cause.

Our third event in roughly 60 days will be the Catholic Charities Gala. This one is time-tested and traditional in every sense. It takes place at the venerable Davenport Hotel in an ornate grand ballroom. The price of admission is high but, for this dinner, that’s the point. The meal is usually quite good and the speakers are generally well-established community and church leaders who tell compelling stories about the good done by Catholic Charities. And the stories are true. Catholic Charities is the largest non-profit social service agency in the region. They have a myriad of programs that serve the poor and the disadvantaged from so many different backgrounds. They provide housing, counseling, refugee and elderly services, early childhood education, services to young parents and variety of small services that effect thousands of people in positive ways. Fund-raisers are important because Catholic Charities' money doesn’t come from the church- they are a separate legal entity as a non-profit corporation. At the end of the dinner, distinguished guests will be asked to contribute even more, and they do.

I think it’s important to show our support for these fine agencies by attending these dinners, but I always leave these events with mixed feelings. As glad as I am to see an outpouring of support and generosity, I’m concerned that agencies with such important missions and programs, serving so many, (and not serving so many more in need) must go to these measures just to survive. Being agency people, we know that fund-raisers supply only a small fraction of the money needed to support the work of the organizations. Don’t get me wrong- these are fine events and they serve another purpose besides fund-raising- they help create community awareness of the incredible needs in the community and promote appreciation of the work staff perform to aid those who need their help. But that too raises a question in my mind.

The question I sometimes ponder is why it is necessary to make the case, and raise money this way for needs that are so clearly evident and universally recognized as important. If the mission is so important (and it is!), why isn’t it everyone’s mission? So I turn my thoughts to the question of public policy when I see these agencies needing to woo donors with fancy dinners and galas to support the work these good people do. For instance, I might ask why it is not good public policy for the government to fully support the work of Lutheran Community Services when they provide advocates and social and psychological services to rape victims and child victims of sexual abuse. Is there a reason why we would not do so? Is there any group of right thinking people who would say that rendering help to those victims so devastated by this horrible crime shouldn’t happen? In the case of Catholic Charities is there a compelling reason to say the most destitute people in our midst should not receive a meal- that a homeless person should not have a bed to sleep in on a freezing night? Spending even a short time at Catholic Charities facilities is an eye-opening experience, because to see the real faces of the poor would change the mind of even the most cynical conservatives who rail against government programs. At Goodwill we specialize in helping people with disabilities and disadvantages find work- and that includes programs for veterans. What could the argument be against that? Why is doing that work not worthy of our collective support and our tax dollars?  There is real pain in our midst and we have the resources as a people to help resolve that pain and make a better society if we choose to do so. But we don’t. Instead we relegate that mission, and that work to the sometimes fickle chances of charitable giving.

I’m often struck by the some of the people I meet at these events because they are more than willing to contribute heavily to these good causes, but so deadly set against government policies that would do the same things. They contribute more at these chicken dinners than they would if public policy called for a small tax from all of us to support good causes.  There is something in our American culture that makes us value the personal choice to give, even when the cause is so widely recognized. Whatever that something is- I don’t think it’s a good thing. That characteristic keeps us from fully funding good causes, perhaps even gives us an excuse not to deal with compelling good causes through public policy. Unfortunately that part of us leaves these incredibly valuable programs always at the margin of financial vulnerability. So they keep having chicken dinners and pleading for operating funds from good people who are willing to give. It just isn’t enough most of the time, so many who are in need go without, and we pay on the other end with more prisons and more costly institutions the taxpayers are forced to fund. 

Public policy is a funny thing. Rarely is it logical. Rarely does it address commonly held values. Instead public policy ends up being a contradictory hodge-podge of programs that are many times in conflict with each other. I think this comes from the influence “special interests” have carved out with our law-makers. How else can we explain why many politicians in government claim we can’t serve the most needy in our country because we don’t have the money- yet will not stop the $30 billion a year we spend to give oil companies tax breaks and subsidies (remember oil corporations are the most profitable in the history of mankind)? How else can some politicians in government claim that we can’t fund early childhood education (empirically proven to be the best public investment we can make in real dollars saved for the tax payers in the long -run) yet protect off-shore tax havens, and tax breaks for billionaires’ private jets? ( Just to name a couple of examples- there are many more)

I’ll keep going to the dinners and galas- and I’ll keep contributing. I’ll also remain thankful for the others who do the same and contribute to these good causes. But I will most likely leave those events with the same mixed feelings I’ve had before, because I know that it won’t be enough to care for all who need the programs that spring from these chicken dinners and the contributions they produce. At the same time I hope a number of us will push for better public policy that recognizes the real needs of the people in our country and develop funding priorities that meet those needs.

Thanks for looking in.