Charity is a universal, and one of the major attributes of a civil society. Charity allows the society to serve its interests directly, without a state intermediary. To a certain extent charity provides redistribution of incomes from most propertied to the least propertied citizens in shortest ways and in the shortest terms. Charity can become the tool by the means of which the society satisfies the main social and universal requirements more and more.
The research interest to understanding the motives of charities is shown by many humanities, and each field has its own variant of the answer. For example, philosophers and historians believe, that incentive motives of charity can be mercy, altruism, compassion, sacrifice and religiosity. Sociologists as dominating motives outline the aspiration to social recognition and the improvement image self-estimations. In social psychology the altruistic motivation of philanthropists, and also the interpretation of charitable interpersonal interaction as a special humanitarian transaction are marked. Some psychologists consider charity as a display of spontaneous and emotionally painted impulse and a help by the call of heart and soul. The latest world tendencies in the sphere of corporate social responsibility considerably transform the classical understanding of charity. The world business community has already come to understanding that charity means not merely giving money on a constant or short-term basis, but a competently built charitable policy which functions, justifying the made investments. This paper analyzes the concept of effective charity and benevolence programs in terms of how business attempts to optimize its charitable activities.
As far as the volumes of financing charitable noncommercial organizations increases, donors often ask questions of the efficiency expenditures and cost management. First of all, this question concerns the concept of efficiency with reference to social projects. The problem can be caused by the nature of the activity of the charitable organizations, where years and original techniques are necessary to estimate the effect of their activity, as the social effect of many charitable projects can be shown in decades after the start of the project. That is why researchers are compelled to rely on the palliative methods which are focused more on the measurement of the process, rather than on final results. If taken as efficiency estimation the classical indicators of profit, this will automatically lead to that the noncommercial organizations will ignore the task of receiving profit – its occurrence will almost automatically mean the termination of financing from donors. As a result, as shown in researches, effective social projects are seldom reproduced, whereas less effective can proceed for years.
Effective charities are impossible without effective partnership of donors with public organizations, mass-media, the state, volunteers and other social subjects. In the USA 75% of the charitable budget are donations from private individuals. (Hernández-Murillo and Roisman) Not all donors are major businessmen. Simply the charity became for a long time a part of life. Making the charity effective is not always connected with giving money. Those who have no possibility to participate with money, can participate in charitable projects with own work, and talent. Charity becomes a part of life of the majority of citizens, instead of being a responsibility of large companies or wealthy people. If each person considered charity as a sincere requirement, and if charity turned into a mass phenomenon in which most of the society participate, charity will have powerful resources. Charity can become effective only when it is a display of a civil stand which is not limited to voting on elections and the payment of taxes. Giving money is the easiest part. It is more difficult to transform them into effective social mechanisms. After all, the purpose of the charity is to give people the possibility to solve rather important problems for them which owing to various reasons the state cannot solve them all.
Another approach to make the charity programs more effective is made by charity organizations. This approach implies providing all the necessary tools that make the charity process manageable and transparent. For example, Philanthropy International states that “Today there are more than 1.4 million charities in the United States yet less than 2% have a formal planned giving program or a dedicated planned giving officer. Few are equipped to handle the more complicated gifts often discussed in planned giving.” Their approach to effective charity consists of their Partner Program that “will create a business model for delivery of planned giving services, and a workable strategy reflecting the charity’s needs and mission.” (“Partner Charity Program”)
The MFD charity program “Help” which provides medical services to the people in need, where “on regular basis, MFD carries out various discount campaigns, in the course of which prices on popular but expensive medical services are being reduced up to 50%, thereby these medical services become much more available to the needy people” (“MFD Charity Program “Help”).
Additionally, there are non-profit organizations which are not directly responsible for charity programs but put their goals as “to maximize the effectiveness of every dollar contributed to charity by providing donors with information they need to make more informed giving decisions.” (“Inspiration, Self-Help Info, Support Group Listings and Plenty More”) An example of such organization is “Heart and Mind” which dedicated an informational web resource that has many links to start donating in categorized fields either by donating financially or volunteering.
Another similar projects in terms of providing information, is “Charity Commission” which set guidelines and standards for effective donations. These guidelines could be summarized as:
- Clear about its purposes and direction
- A strong board
- Fit for purpose
- Learning and improving
- Financially sound and prudent
- Accountable and transparent (“The Hallmarks of an Effective Charity”)
In regards of financing the guidelines state that in order for the charity to demonstrate the ability to have financial and other resources needed to deliver its purposes, the charity “integrates financial planning with wider organizational planning and management, ensuring that funds are available when the charity needs them and are used in the most effective way to the benefit of the charity”.
Today many companies claim the rank of socially-responsible business, however while, in most cases, representatives of business are neither the authors nor the initiators of social projects, but at best merely investors or simply philanthropists. To make the charitable program of company really effective and raise it to qualitatively new level, it is important to begin with understanding, that corporate charity is a whole system demanding accurate and consecutive actions and decisions.
Today a reasonable help to the charitable organizations from business structures is necessary. The interaction between charity organizations and donors should establish at the level of partner relations. Helping could be possible not only with money, but also with human resources. Public organizations often do not have competent, good financiers. For known reasons they are working in banks and other financial structures. Shortage of competent financial management negatively affects the work of charitable and public organizations. Therefore help with personnel can appear more usefully, more effectively for the addressee, than a certain sum of money. Such variant of charity is not yet developed, though is very reasonable.