Good-for-nothing Samaritans; charities are as dependent on federal handouts as the worst welfare abuser.

• Author: Shapiro, Walter
• Position: Critical review of Teresa Odendahl's 'Charity Begins at Home'

GOOD-FOR-NOTHING SAMARITANS

Infrequently, far too infrequently, I have what I like to call a "Matt Scudder" day. This ritual observance is named in honor of a down-at-the-heels retired New York City policeman, a recovering alcoholic, who is the hero of a series of engaging detective novels by Lawrence Block. One of Matt Scudder's idiosyncrasies is that whenever he receives a fee he immediately tithes in the form of $1 contributions to every panhandler who accosts him amid the beggarly bedlam of the streets of Manhattan. My charitable impulses are, alas, far more limited. But I do like Scudder's notion of giving folding cash to mendicants, regardless of their pitch or persona, regardless of whether they will use the money for dinner or drugs, regardless of whether they have the right stuff to joint the "deserving poor."

One reason I find this scattershot method of individual philanthropy so appealing is that I know something about how major charitable institutions operate; I studied them for an abortive foundation-backed project in the mid 1970s. My research led me to the impolitic conclusion that the best way to aid the poor and the downtrodden in America was to pay one's full share of taxes--and the devil with the cherished charitable deduction. I discovered that with the exception of a few admirable, religiously motivated organizations like the Salvation Army, most charities were infinitely more interested in leveraging private donations to obtain federal grant money than in directly aiding the afflicted. How much more alluring it was to attend conferences on voluntarism and the independent sector than to minister to the needs of drunks and druggies who practice loathsome hygiene. No, the majority of the money was not squandered on new levels of bureaucracy and lobbying state legislatures. Instead, the once-voluntary agencies mounted overly ambitious programs that could not survive, even at a reduced level, without steady federal support. As a result, most United Way agencies, in particular, became as addicted to a regular government checks at the most inert welfare mother.

This 1970s habit of institutional self-aggrandizement left the charitable sector woefully ill-equipped for the rigors of the Reagan revolution. Just as the time when private caseloads were soaring, the charities themselves were reeling from draconian cutbacks in their own funding. This double whammy made a mockery of the nostalgic right-wing myth of a nation of...