Tag Archives: donations

Why do communities allow charities to collect money by standing at intersections?

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I live near a suburban intersection that regularly has people from charities standing at the stop signs to collect money. I suspect the suburb is willing to let this happen for two reasons:

  1. It is good for the city to allow local charities to be out in the community. This helps build good relationships between everyone. The charities then help people in the community.
  2. The strategy is effective. The people collecting money are in direct eye contact with possible donors. As people come to a stop, they feel obligated to drop some change into the bucket or jug. While this method likely does not lead to large sums of money being donated by a single person, it can add up quickly.

On the other hand, this is an odd way to collect money for a few reasons:

  1. Suburban drivers just want to get through the intersection, not be slowed down. Even if they do not give money and have an interaction with the person standing there, they have to be more careful with a person in the roadway.
  2. Many drivers would respond much more negatively if another party was collecting money or soliciting people at this same spot. Many communities have homeless or jobless people sitting at intersections looking for help or people selling items or services (like squeegeing a windshield without the driver asking for it).
  3. Having people stand in the roadway is generally not a good idea given the lack of attention paid to pedestrians.

Perhaps communities try to balance these two sides by only offering limited numbers of opportunities for charities to do this (it can’t happen every week, for example) or limiting activity to certain intersections where drivers are going slower and traffic is not impeded as much.

On the whole, this particular method is unusual and maybe only certain charities can get away with it with limited exposure to drivers.

The wealthy continuing to give to wealthy universities and colleges

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Gregg Easterbrook, ESPN’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback, continues to highlight a pattern: wealthy donors giving to already wealthy universities and colleges:

Don’t Give to Harvard! A running TMQ cause is that rich people give money to schools such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford, places already possessing gargantuan endowments, rather than to schools where money is needed. The rich underwrite elite schools for ego reasons — at cocktail parties they can say, “I just donated $10 million to Harvard, now a shower stall will be named after me.” At colleges and universities that serve average people, donations can change lives. If you’ve got money, donate to noble Berea College, which accepts only poor students and charges no tuition, or to gallant Bethune-Cookman, a historically black school that mainly serves the underprivileged. Alumnus Charles Johnson just gave $250 million to Yale — which is already sitting on a $19 billion endowment. At a place like Berea College, $250 million would have been a transformative event in the lives of the deserving. At Yale, it’s a rounding error in the lives of the privileged.

Reader Jon Miller of Beaumont, Texas, notes that despite having a world’s-best endowment of $32 billion — nearly double the GDP of Honduras — Harvard just kicked off a capital campaign, asking for another $6.5 billion. Rich people, show a little class: Don’t give to Harvard. Or Yale, Princeton or Stanford. Make your donation count.

This gets back to an old question: do elite universities perpetuate social inequalities? If giving patterns changed as Easterbrook suggests, perhaps there might be a shift…

Burr Ridge seeking donations from public to meet city’s needs

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In an era of declining revenue, a few communities are trying a new tactic: ask residents to donate money for needed city purchases.

The leaders of west suburban Burr Ridge have a list of dozens of items they want for the community, including a new patrol vehicle, a portable Breathalyzer and even a cordless saw.

But because they didn’t make it into the budget, they have put them on a wish list and are asking residents for help…

Stricker said village officials came up with the idea last year after learning that west suburban Riverside has a similar program. He said the village is still establishing a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) program, but added that residents have already given funds.

In 2011, Burr Ridge resident Alan Rose, the CEO of Rose Paving Co. in Bridgeview, donated $5,800 to the Police Department for new Taser devices, according to village documents. Resident Joyce Walsh also donated $5,000 to the Police Department in 2011 for its efforts in protecting the village.

As the article notes, Burr Ridge is pretty wealthy. The village of just over 10,500 residents, the median value of owner-occupied housing units is over $706,000, the homeownership rate is just over 95%, and the household median income is over $143,000, and 2.4% of the residents live in poverty. Perhaps in this sort of setting a donation program could work.

But, I can’t picture this as a viable long-term strategy for most communities. Could a local government wait for benevolent citizens? Could residents or businesses make donations and expect something in return like policies or decisions that benefit them? Public-private partnerships and cooperation in places like Chicago are one thing but relying on the public for donated money seems bound to lead to more trouble.

I wonder if this also could raise significant questions about what local communities really do need to purchase: if an item doesn’t make it into the budget, is it really necessary in the first place? Take the Burr Ridge items mentioned above: how worse off will the community be if the government doesn’t have a cordless saw or portable Breathalyzer?