Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?(charitable giving in America)(Column)

Byline: Conor O'Clery

In most American cities you can't avoid being confronted by people down on their luck, asking if you can spare a dime. I often agonize over what to give them--a few coins, maybe, or a $10 bill. The change amounts to almost nothing; the bill might actually make a difference. Cheapskate that I am, I usually opt for the coinage.

It's not the only request for help I get as an Irishman living in America. Letters come regularly soliciting donations for this or that good cause, ranging from homeless shelters to museums to public-radio stations. Everywhere one turns, it often seems, somebody needs help. Indeed, the business of fund-raising--whether on the New York subway or at a black-tie event in a swanky Manhattan hotel--is pretty well institutionalized. And so, too, obviously, is the culture of giving.

Wealthy individuals, foundations and corporations in America give some $200 billion a year to do-gooding nonprofit organizations. They fork out much more than rich people in other countries. In Europe, governments collect higher taxes and are expected to take care of most social problems. Here, individuals and institutions fill the void.

Big tax breaks make the giving easier. Write a check for $100 to Save Baby Martians, say, and you can write it off as charity. Gifts are also a good way to avoid estate taxes, though these are currently being phased out--a disaster in the making for philanthropy. Public relations and vanity come into play, too. Big donors on New York's Upper East Side compete in the social columns to show how they excel not just at accumulating wealth, but also in putting it to good use. Yet at the same time, many wealthy Americans genuinely take to heart their forefathers' ideas of civic humanism, and the century-old injunction from Andrew Carnegie that ...