Introduction to Charity

Throughout this semester, I will be focusing on charity. I will look at its history, evaluate the benefits and disadvantages of charity, and examine other details relating to this topic. I decided to investigate this subject because I like helping people and I often feel like the best way for me to help others is through charity. I wanted to find out about the harm that charities do, the good that they accomplish, and see if the good outweighs the bad.

The theme of charity is an important one in our world because, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) from the Urban Foundation (nccsdataweb.urban.org/PubApps/profileDrillDown.php?state=US&rpt=PC), there are 973,354 charities in the United States alone. These charities have $2,569,061,700,990 in total assets and brought in $1,393,401,601,582 in revenue in 2009. An incredible amount of money flows through charities and they do a lot of work in the world. Because of this, it is important to analyze how important, efficient, and helpful various organizations are to see if they really are doing good in the world and to figure out which charity to donate to.

Besides money, people donate a lot of time to various organizations. The NCCS’s Nonprofit Almanac (http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/kbfiles/797/Almanac2008publicCharities.pdf) cites that in 2006, 26.7 percent of the population of the United States volunteered for some type of nonprofit organization. These people volunteered for a total of 12,864,875,000 hours- that is almost 13 billion hours! If people are going to put so much time, money, and energy into a nonprofit group, they should make sure that the group is really helping people.

This blog is for a class titled Globalization and Inequality. The concepts we learn in class have a lot to do with the topic of charity. First of all, many charities are international in scope. Charities that help in developing nations are often based in a different country. This means that money from the home countries goes across the globe to other countries. Additionally, Zygmunt Bauman’s ideas of lower classes being failed consumers play into charity in a large way. Many charities serve people of lower classes so how they are viewed is important. The themes of globalization and inequality are very involved in charity.

I am hoping to find out about the effect that charity as a whole has on the world. I would also like to delve into ways to evaluate charities to find out which do the most good. The subject of charity is more complicated than it would seem at first glance so I hope to learn about the complications and have a better rounded idea of charity in our world.