GIVE: Where?

“And let our people learn to devote themselves to good works, so as to help cases of urgent need, and not be unfruitful.”

Titus 3:14 

I recently received this email from a reader:

Every day, I get donation requests from several ministries/missions – each seems like a great cause. The problem is, how to pick which to give to and how much??? After every “pay day”, I sit here, going through/praying through my stack of letters trying to figure out how God would have me stewart finances toward these. 

I believe that as we submit every dollar to God in prayer He will make it clear where He wants His resources to go, but may I also share a 3-part guest post from my brother, a godly elder and man passionate for God’s glory and for helping people:

About 1.7 billion people live in absolute Poverty.

Poverty is the inability to meet basic human needs, such as clean water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter due to insufficient finances. The United Nations defines poverty as living on less $1.25 (US Dollars) per day (less than $465 per year). About 18 million per year (a third of the deaths in the world) are a result of poverty-related causes. But the real tragedy is the fact that this continues when there are abundant resources to alleviate this suffering. There are plenty of disturbing comparisons of the relative ease with which we bring relief compared to the things which we spend money on here in the states.

For example, the most extreme poverty in the world could be eliminated with the amount we spend on ice cream in America, and the cost to bring clean drinking water to most of the worlds poor is less than we spend on our pets in America.

America gives about 0.1% of US GNP to overseas relief, making it one of the least generous developed countries on the planet. The United Nations has long had a goal of 0.7% of Gross Domestic Product, although in 2005 they dropped this to 0.5% since only four countries were achieving the goal (and America obviously wasn’t even close).

Of course these statistics are nothing new, but I wanted to share them as a defense of international giving as a priority over domestic charitable causes. Currently the charitable donations in the US total about $250-300 billion per year. Less than 10% of that goes internationally (and about 20% of that goes to military funding). However, basically all of those living in absolute poverty are outside of America. America doesn’t even keep statistics on UN defined absolute
poverty because the UN poverty line is so far below the lowest income levels and freely accesible resources. It is difficult to avoid even tripping over $1.25 worth of commodities in a day in America. If the overwhelming majority of the needs are overseas, why does international giving comprise such a small part of our giving?

To be clear, I am not suggesting that it is wrong to give domestically. I certainly wouldn’t discourage local giving. But everyone of us are people of limited resources. We can only give so much.

If the purpose of your giving is just to satisfy some religious obligation or clear your conscience, than I guess it doesn’t matter where you give it. If the purpose of your giving is to make a real tangible difference in people’s lives, why not look for how your monies can make the biggest impact for those that need it most?

 FAQs tomorrow. Thanks for reading!