@dlowan,
dlowan wrote:sometime sun wrote:You would hardly give to a religious charity.
I'd give to a religious charity if I thought it would get the job done best and that their religion did no harm to whatever they were doing.
For example, I think the Salvation Army are religious loonies, but I give to them because I know, in some of their projects, they are right in there in areas where people especially need practical help.
I once worked in the charity industry, and given what i know of them now, i wouldn't give to the Salvation Army with a gun to my head. Very, very little of your money will actually reach people on the street who need the help.
However, precisely because of those same experiences, i'd give (and have given in the past, many times) to Catholic Social Services and Lutheran Social Services. In both cases, i saw them giving a great deal of very useful help to people on the street, primarily homeless families--working to keep the families together--and in the former organization, especially to homeless single mothers (the Lutherans seemed to focus on homeless families, and finding a Lutheran congregation to directly help them). They took donations, but neither of them solicited publicly outside of their congregations, while other organizations such as the Salvation Army and Volunteers of America made an industrial project out of milking their charitable image for donations, which were converted to cash as quickly as possible and shipped off to the national headquarters to get brownie points for the local chapters.
Neither the Catholic Social Services nor the Lutheran Social Services folk inquired into the religious beliefs of those whom they helped, nor required participation in religious activities. The Catholic Social Services home in that city (which they had located in the poorest neighborhood) didn't even provide religious services on its premises. The Baptists i found particularly disgusting--they provided so very damned little, and expected so much from the homeless who ate their lukewarm, low quality meals. They had to wait to be prayed over before they could eat, and then they were locked until the preacher was done, no matter how quickly they finished the paltry meal they were provided. The Congregationalists were fairly generous, but only three times a year--Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.
I highly recommend CSS and LSS, and the rest can kiss my rosy red Irish ass.
