Are some charitable organizations whose purpose is to help the disadvantaged, unwittingly creating a new class of tin cup users?

Is the well-intended over-arching charitable climate becoming a playground for abuse?

Those were the questions haunting me after I recently attended a meeting for persons with challenging disabilities.  Was I feeling an undercurrent of misuse of programs designed to assist, benefit or simply make life more enjoyable for such persons?  Was I seeing the birth of new class of entitlement seekers?

It’s currently fashionable to bash charities that rip off the public and disgrace the field.  Those charities that are con jobs should be tarred and feathered and run out-of-town.  Here, though, we’re talking about legitimate charitable groups that are doing their best to provide whatever assistance they can for challenged people.  The problem then arises as to what persons should be selected for the program.

Most of the applicants are probably deserving of a shot at the program.  What concerns me are the few who have become a professional class with a vocational outlook on qualifying for every single offering available.  Not necessarily in the interest of improving themselves but of having a great time on somebody else’s nickel.   It becomes their job to see how many free programs they can attend per year.  This is especially true where the programs offer recreational opportunities of any type.

Consequently, I perceive this corps of “gimme, gimme, free, free”  individuals evolving and I don’t like it.  I appreciate the efforts of the charities to do good works; I’m not fond of the actions of those whom I believe are abusing the system and the generosity of the sponsors.

What to do?

This isn’t an easy question. 

I do believe that any well-meaning charitable program should look around to see if other organizations are offering essentially the same thing.  Is it wise to offer something that is already there?  Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t.

What is the intent and what are the outcomes sought?

One example that I’m aware of is a well thought out offering that had positive benefits for those that completed it, fell victim to its participants.  It had sort of three step approach with the final leg starting with a nice free lunch.  Trouble was, a number ate the lunch and left, leaving barely a few to complete the exercise.  That doesn’t seem to reflect well on those who signed up.

That moves us on to the question of how much of a good thing is enough?

This applies to all forms of gifting including not only the privately and publicly funded charities but also “governmental charity”.  Give-away programs at the taxpayer expense are proliferate.  The question is what percentages really do good or are they actually harmful to targeted populations?  We all want to see the poor and the misfortunate have a better quality of life and rewarding experiences.

We ought to examine any program very carefully to see where it’s going.  I believe that incentives need to be built into these and that the beneficiaries need to have some skin in the game.  This should produce better outcomes for the individual participants and society at large.

Generosity is a wonderful mind state.  Over-generosity could well lead to undesirable outcomes and I really don’t believe it’s in the public or anybody’s interest for us to find out that we’ve created a new class of tin-cuppers.