Charitable Giving

The Fuel Fund: a pioneer in aiding low-income customersA recent letter stated that BGE's Customer Assistance Plan has been in place since 1994 ("Energy deregulation won't shred safety net for poor customers, Dec. 13). As a retired BGE employee, who was involved in establishing The Fuel Fund and BGE's low-income assistance efforts, I would like to clarify that the program was actually launched in 1979.It was the first program of its kind in the country and has since served as a model for many similar programs.

AS THE year winds down, many people are making last-minute decisions about charitable gift giving.One question that perennially pops up is whether or not tax concerns affect such giving.In the past 25 years, 11 major tax law changes have created a mind-numbing 9,455 Internal Revenue Service tax code revisions. Despite the 1997 tax overhaul, we already have proposals before Congress for new changes. Some of these proposals could have a major impact on our nation's charities and, by extension, on the quality of life in our communities.

Maryland taxpayers are giving less to charity than before and the big earners here aren't giving as much as their counterparts elsewhere.That's the word from the Chronicle of Philanthropy, a newspaper for professionals in nonprofit organizations and published by The Chronicle of Higher Education Inc. In its Aug. 8 issue, it analyzed figures of the Internal Revenue Service on a state-by-state basis for 1994, the most recent year for which data are available.Maryland...

Charitable giving has barely kept pace with inflation, voluntarism is declining and government doesn't keep up with the demands on social programs, says the Maryland Association of Nonprofits, citing local and national surveys.Private donors may contend they are squeezed enough and the association says, "Private charity can't do it all." But that isn't keeping the association, some nonprofit organizations and some businesses from this conclusion: Maryland needs more giving.The association helped push a bill through the General Assembly this year, creating "The Maryland Gives!

Late each spring, a packet of material arrives on my desk from the American Association of Fund-Raising Councils (AAFRC) that details giving patterns among Americans for the previous calendar year. The 1993 statistics were encouraging.Despite economic woes at home, Americans managed to keep their charitable giving in pace with inflation. Americans donated $126.22 billion to charity, an increase of 3.6 percent from 1992.Giving by individuals, whether living or by bequests, accounted for 88 cents of every charitable dollar received by nonprofits.

The drop-off in donations to Baltimore area charities and social service organizations during this holiday season hasn't been felt in Howard County. While other suburbs say a bad economy has discouraged charitable giving, groups in Howard report that donations have remained at least the same as in recent years. They expect the Christmas season to be equally rich with contributions.The easy answer to why Howard has fared better than all other area counties would be to suggest that the county's relative affluence has insulated it against the economy's downturn.

Compassion fatigue seems to have hit some Maryland charities hard this year, with the shortfall in charitable giving especially severe in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties.Some of this decline is understandable. While a gradual economic upturn has started in many other regions of the country, the Maryland economy is still hampered by a lingering recession. Anne Arundel County, which was particularly hard hit through layoffs at Westinghouse Electric Co. and other defense contractors, is continuing to have rough going.

Compassion fatigue seems to have hit some Maryland charities hard this year, with the shortfall in charitable giving especially severe in Carroll, Anne Arundel, Baltimore and Harford counties.Some of this decline is understandable. While a gradual economic upturn has started in many other regions of the country, Maryland is still mired in recession. The wholesale trimming of the work force by defense contractors, for example, is continuing to have its impact on the entire Baltimore metropolitan area, including Carroll County.

Compassion fatigue has hit some Maryland charities big time, with the shortfall in charitable giving especially severe in Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties.Some of this decline is understandable. While a gradual economic upturn has started in many other regions of the country, Maryland's economy is still mired in a lingering recession. For example, Anne Arundel County, which was particularly hard hit through layoffs by Westinghouse Electric Co. and other defense contractors, continues to have rough going.

Washington. -- The definitive history of greed is yet to be written but the broad outlines are well-known. Greed was inserted into the human story a while back by a serpent. Since then it has waxed and waned.For example, there was a little of it during the Dark Ages, when there was little to covet. True, the Visigoths were grasping people, but a distinction should be drawn between their innocent Third World ebullience and the greed Ronald Reagan let loose in America.There were gobs of greed during America's Gilded Age after the Civil War, when robber barons made disgusting amounts of money.

The student member on the Howard County school board was selected to take part in a program this month with an exclusive group of high school juniors. Adejire Bademosi went to Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., on April 16 as part of the 2009 Bentley Tomorrow25. Bademosi joined 24 other students from around the world for the conference that featured interaction with industry leaders about environmental change, fair trade, health care and charitable giving. Bademosi, a junior at Marriotts Ridge High, will appear along with the other students on the list in an ad in Time magazine as part of Bentley's advertising campaign.

More people than ever are calling the Salvation Army's Baltimore offices this year, asking for help paying their utility bills or for food to feed their families. And contributions from individuals, the charity says, are down $100,000 from a year earlier. Around the state, nonprofits are seeing donations fall and pleas for help increase. Their costs to supply food and other assistance are soaring. And they worry that fundraising will fall far short of goals this year, with even the most steadfast of donors, from individuals to foundations, tapped out in light of the economic slowdown.

AMHERST, Mass. -- Everyone agrees that it's good to donate to charity. Less certain is whether the U.S. government should allow tax deductions for charitable giving. The answer may seem like a no-brainer, but consider this: They don't necessarily encourage giving, and they don't always help the poor. A growing chorus of voices has been complaining about tax-deductible gifts that appear to benefit the giver. A hefty donation to a local symphony hall, for example, gets the donor noticed as civic-minded and cultured, but the benefit to society is far more difficult to pin down.

You might think of it as "painless giving." Or, perhaps -- a term coined by popular-culture pundits -- as "philanthrotainment." Both phrases refer to the current slate of reality television shows that seek to attract viewers by benefiting good causes. Tonight, Fox's top-rated American Idol is throwing a huge, celebrity-studded concert featuring the likes of rock star Bono, comedian Ellen DeGeneres and Academy Award winner Helen Mirren. Proceeds will benefit poor children in Africa and the U.S. But in a field that contains shows such as Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, the two-hour extravaganza that is Idol Gives Back has come up with a novel approach to philanthropy.

With support waning from United Way and frequent shifts in corporate and government giving, Howard County's nonprofits are working on a new fundraising strategy - bequests from increasingly wealthy baby boomers. It is a largely untapped source of money for charitable endowments that is easy to set up and often attractive to people with adult children who want to create a legacy, said consultant Jean Moon. Moon conducted a study of philanthropy last fall for the Columbia and the Horizon foundations.

Hats off to you, America - charitable giving is up this year, and Charity Navigator predicts that Americans will contribute at least $100 billion in individual donations to charities during this holiday season. To help you spend that money wisely, Charity Navigator has created its Holiday Giving Guide for 2006. Says Sandra Miniutti, a spokeswoman for Charity Navigator, "The key is to do your homework and check up on the charity you're donating to." Here are a few other things to keep in mind when deciding who gets your dollars: Arts and cultural charities need your money.

You and famed investor Warren E. Buffett may have more in common than you think - at least when it comes to charitable giving. Sure, you can't donate as much: Buffett announced last month that he would start to give away roughly 85 percent of his fortune, worth more than $40 billion. But the way he decided to make his donation - entrust the bulk of his funds to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, whose co-chairs he believes will "do a good job" with the cash, according to an interview in Fortune magazine - mirrors the thinking of many young philanthropists today.

After Hurricane Katrina, Congress was so concerned that donations for hurricane relief efforts would cut into other charitable giving that it passed one of the biggest temporary tax breaks in history. The legislation, which allowed a larger deduction than usual for cash donations, cost the government billions in revenue, but in some cases spurred wealthy donors - including Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife - to accelerate their giving. But concern about so-called donor fatigue was largely unfounded, according to a new survey by the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

The nation's economy is on the mend, but Maryland charities are still mired in a recession at a time of growing need. The United Way of Central Maryland appears unlikely to meet its fund-raising goal again this year - the third year in a row - falling an estimated $500,000 short of the $40.4 million it hoped to collect and $3.6 million short of the goal two years ago. While the United Way's income has been slumping, the need for aid provided by the...

IN THE WORLD of giving, Rob Cradle stands out. He doesn't have millions to bestow on the charity of his choice. He isn't a professional philanthropist.. And he doesn't run a soup kitchen. He's a barber from Odenton with a philosophy about helping his fellow man that might challenge or confound you. It goes like this: Anything you own or have, you can use for the greater good, no matter how insignificant. The inspiration is biblical; the application, practical. "If I worked at a job that had too many paper clips at the end of the year," he explains, "I would have a paper clip ministry."