Avoid the United Way, if You Can

It has been many years since I donated to the United Way. I have not done so since the last time an employer pressured me into it.  I think other people should avoid it as well.

In the first place a person’s contribution goes into a big pot from which other people who have earlier selected a set of beneficiaries will then select what fraction of the total each beneficiary gets. Most people who donate to charities have some groups or causes  they prefer over others (and perhaps some they actively dislike and would never choose to support).  When they give money to the United Way, they lose the opportunity to act on those preferences with their donation.  

Then there is the structure of the United Way’s campaigns and the behavior of its campaigners. By focusing on and working through employers,  the United Way makes improper pressuring  of employees likely and probably inevitable, and as the saying goes, this is a feature, not a bug.  Long ago when I worked as a programmer at a local bank,  employees dreaded the beginning of United Way season and its attendant shakedowns.  The bank’s president saw one hundred percent participation by its employees in the United Way as a matter of prestige in the local ruling circles and pretty much demanded it. He also wanted to see a certain amount of total donations and gave each department quotas.  I generally gave the least I could get away with until I became lead on a programming team after which I might donate enough to get my boss  to leave the people reporting to me alone. In those days (and perhaps still) there was a big deal made of giving one’s “fair share” as defined as one percent of one’s annual income. Since the quotas were less than that, most people did not do it. As well as I can remember from what others told me, some of  the main exceptions were up and coming brownnosers  among the  would be executives and some low paid  keypunch operators, maintenance people, clerks and so on (many of whose incomes would have qualified them as recipients of help from some of the agencies on the United Way’s list) who were afraid for their jobs.

A few years later my brother had the bad luck to be lent by his employer to the United Way.  In one of the meetings he attended,  it came up that a local business was refusing to solicit its employees for the United Way. The response from  one of the United Way’s executives was to announce that he would find out which local bank had that businessman’s loans and arrange for it to help him change his mind. I don’t know if this sort of thing still goes on in my town or other places, but given the structure of the thing, I would think that is the way to bet.

There are far better ways to generous than donating to the United Way.  I hope those who have a free choice use  them and those being pressured fork over as little as they can get away with.

A Word Against the United Way

I would like to offer a minority opinion and say a word against the United Way, at least as it has operated in my city. The fundamental problem with the United Way is that too often it operates in the workplace as a shakedown. In less desirable working environments this is often done explicitly and directly. Even in better companies where employees are not coerced, there can be a strong implicit pressure when the boss is the one passing the hat.

  I once worked in a place where employees were heavily pressured by their bosses to donate to the United Way. Each year among the most reliable givers of their “fair share” were the least educated, lowest income employees - some of whom probably could have qualified for benefits from some of the agencies - who, fearful for their jobs, dutifully ponied up. The whole thing was disgusting. It was not only a shakedown of those of us who might resent it but at least could afford it. It was also a disgraceful shakedown of the most vulnerable, and it was done blatantly and with no purpose other than to allow our repulsive little CEO to appear among the other civic leaders and announce that our goal had been met. (The very most reliable fair share givers in that dysfunctional outfit were the up and coming careerist brown nosers who tended to see the whole thing less as charity than as just one more item of cost on the road to ingratiate themselves with the bosses.)

The pressure is not restricted to employees within companies. United Way fund raisers pressure companies and business owners to have their employees participate as well. I know of at least one case of United Way teams deciding to threaten a business that did not want to participate with retaliation from the bank that held its business loans. The whole thing just smells bad. It is questionable in concept and callous and sleazy in practice. It often has less to do with charity than with the desire of a bunch of preening suits to show off, network, and congratulate each other on how “civic minded” they are.

  So I urge people to avoid it of they can. If they have the choice, they should select some of the United Way charities they find worthy and donate to them directly. It’s cleaner, and it has the additional advantage that each person can choose to give to things that most interest him.