c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of Religion News Service and author of”Turn Toward the Wind.”)

UNDATED _ What exactly motivates someone to donate money to a charity? Is it guilt, knowledge, empathy, or sympathy?

Fund-raisers have debated this question over and over again, coming to a variety of conclusions. Some show images of starving children to motivate givers. Others offer statistics. Some even quote the Bible.

But now there is yet another motivation to give _ and give big. It’s the hope that by giving you will be added, along with other elite donors, to the subscription list of The American Benefactor magazine.

This new, glitzy quarterly publication is clearly aimed at the top echelon of donors. Featuring Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates on its premier cover, it includes ads for Mercedes-Benz, Cartier and Four Seasons Hotels, among others. The full-color graphics and expensive paper further emphasize that this magazine is not for the average donor.

In the opening letter, the magazine’s editor explains that one of the purposes of The American Benefactor is”to create a community of the charitable.”Referring fondly to the Rockefellers and Carnegies, he seems to miss the days when only a few families controlled the giving in America.

Besides the editorial intent, there’s a marketing raison d’etre: The American Benefactor is offered to charities as a high-class premium for top donors. The charity pays for the subscriptions, signs up the mega donors, and then sits back and waits for major bucks to pour in.

Fund-raisers have an 80/20 rule: 80 percent of a charity’s income comes from just 20 percent of its donors. And clearly, The American Benefactor is aimed at those donors who can easily drop a $20,000 check in the mail.

That may be the most important focus for some charities, but I have my doubts about the wisdom of this approach.

For every organization trying to find their own Bill Gates, there are hundreds of others sustained by the ongoing support of folks who send $25 a month, year after year. These regular givers rarely ask for a wing to be named in their honor, and they usually don’t try to tell a charity how to go about its charitable business.

Average donors are people who give because they believe in the work of a particular nonprofit organization. They give because they want to support that work, not join a club. It’s the regular givers who should be receiving the attention of charities, not those who can afford to peruse luxury car ads.

It seems to me that many charities are adversely affected in the long run by pursuing mega-donors.

For example, the head of a private school recently confided his days are spent taking calls from major donors who believe that because they have given a large gift they can weigh in on the most mundane administrative detail.

And the president of a relief organization told me privately the entire focus of a charity can change if a large donor wants to give a gift directed at one type of work or aid a particular area of the world.”Do we refuse the gift knowing that it will still help people?”he asked rhetorically.”Or do we let the donor determine our purpose?” These are not the questions asked about those of us who donate less than $100 a month.

Sitting in a church meeting recently, I heard a man express his desire to see the church get more involved in supporting a controversial position.”I want to designate a large gift to that cause,”he announced. Later, the man was told the church had already determined its budget priorities. He could designate his gift to one of those areas if he wished, but the church would not rework its budget to pursue his agenda. In response, he announced he would give his money instead to another organization. The church committee respectfully let him do so.

I was pleased to see the strength of that committee in the face of such temptation. Money buys many things in this country, but it shouldn’t buy a charity.

The American Benefactor may make good sense for some organizations, but what it says about the relationship between wealth and charities is not altogether healthy. No other country has the diversity of charitable organizations or enjoys the support of so much of the population. That’s the strength of charities in this country.

When a charity spends a great deal of time and resources stroking its top donors, it can lose its focus. A gift is supposed to be just that _ freely offered with no strings attached. By making charity a transaction, we reduce it to one more commodity in our materialistic culture.

MJP END BOURKE