Giving for Social Change: Foundations, Public Policy, and the American Political Agenda.

By Althea K. Nagai, Robert Lerner, and Stanley Rothman (Praeger, 218 pp., $55)

WHEN Cicero a half-century before Christ tried to resuscitate the dying Roman Republic, he criticized the prodigal philanthropy of politicians who curried favor by distributing food and staging gladiatorial contests. Contributing one's own effort and courage, he argued, was morally superior to contributing money.

Cicero's observation is one of the nuggets to be mined from Giving: Charity and Philanthropy in History, an overview of attitudes toward charity over the past three millennia. Although Giving is full of fool's gold that author Robert Bremner fails to distinguish from the real thing, almost every chapter contains a quotation or two useful for conservatives bashed by the media for lacking compassion toward the homeless.

For example, St. Basil the Great 329-379), who lived in what is now Turkey, founded a shelter for needy neighbors and travelers--and also pointed out that a person who gives money to every wanderer "casts it to a dog, that is troublesome on account of his shamelessness, but not pitiable because of his need." The Jewish scholar Maimonides (1135-1204) similarly proposed caution: "One should not contribute to a charity fund unless one knows that the man in charge of the collection is trustworthy and intelligent and knows how to manage properly." Martin Luther noted, "There is no business in which so much knavery and deceit are practiced as in beggary," and Luther's contemporary Juan Luis Vives, a Spanish humanist living in England, wrote that alcoholics or those who lived dissolutely "must not die of hunger" but should feel its pangs. Daniel Defoe, 15 years before he wrote about the self-reliant Robinson Crusoe, argued in his pamphlet Giving Alms No Charity (1704) that governmental anti-poverty programs then being proposed would not be truly charitable but would instead relieve that poverty caused by "luxury, sloth, and pride."

I've seen through my own research that many people are "charitable" for selfish reasons; Mr. Bremner provides early examples. Ancient Greeks criticized begging but worried that, if they did not give, a beggar might reveal himself to be an angry god in disguise. The Koran ordered, "Spend in charity for your own good," and a British poet four centuries ago, Robert Crowley, detailed the scams of two beggars but advised giving nevertheless: "Though the beggars be wicked, thou shall have thy reward." Those less interested in their own reward would help able-bodied beggars to reform. Nathaniel hawthorne, however, practiced selfish charity: he called beggars he encountered in Liverpool "rats that nibble at the honest bread and cheese of the community," but he slipped coins to them anyway because "the good to ourselves, resulting from a kind act, is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it."

What Mr. Bremner's quotations illuminate is the debate throughout history between those who say, "Love your neighbor as yourself," and those who say, "Love yourself by giving coins to your neighbor." He does not challenge the feel-good charity that is prevalent today; but another new book, Giving for Social Change, does. Authors Althea Nagai, Robert Lerner, and Stanley Rothman stress the results of giving. They state flatly: "Charity means helping the poor," and then show that most recent foundation giving does not help the poor and thus should be seen as thumb-sucking, not benevolence.

Many conservatives see foundations as citadels of liberalism. That is objectively true, as Giving for Social Change shows, because foundations give liberal public-policy projects four times as much as they give conservative projects or groups. Subjectively, however, the story is different: when asked to rate themselves on an ideological scale, 42 per cent of the foundation trustees and officers surveyed labeled themselves as ideologically conservative, 37 per cent as liberal, and 21 per cent as moderate.

Such bi-polarism is unusual. Most elite groups swing toward either the Right or the Left: three out of four military leaders call themselves conservative, nine out of ten public-interest leaders call themselves liberal. But it is sad to see that foundation conservatives do not put their money where their mouths are. Miss Nagai, Mr. Lerner, and Mr. Rothman show that liberals fund liberals but conservatives largely fund moderates: as the authors put it, "Conservative foundations disburse most of their community and urban-affairs grants to neutral organizations."

Several reasons for conservative wimpishness stand out. First, many conservatives are merely traditionalists, espousing "a conservatism of sentiment, not of belief." Giving for Social Change points out that "conservatives are not in favor of increasing social change spending, but only a few conservative respondents actively favor cutting most social change programs. Most think programs should remain at current levels of support."

Second, except at the ideologically conservative foundations that knowingly support the Right's projects, liberal staffs dominate: "Liberalism and reliance on professional staff institutionally go together." Overall, the lesson from foundations seems similar to the one we've learned from watching Supreme Court appointees: ideologically in-your-face conservatives stay conservative; traditionalist conservatives become "moderate."

Giving for Social Change at times descends into academic turgidity, but its stress on objective results is nevertheless valuable. That same emphasis is apparent in Unhealthy Charities, which doggedly compares the "self-professed good intentions" of three big health charities--the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and the American Lung Association--with their sickly results.

James Bennett and Thomas DiLorenzo show that the "public education" efforts of these organizations are "little more than thinly disguised fund-raising activity." They show how the organizations, which call themselves volunteer-oriented, spend 34 to 43 cents of each dollar on compensation, sometimes large: in 1992 the American Heart Association paid its executive vice-president $246,000, plus $39,000 in benefits. They point out that the organizations now use big chunks of cash not for charity but to lobby the Federal Government.

Unhealthy Charities vigorously emphasizes a frequent lack of charity: "the American Heart Association spends nothing on patient services ... the American Lung Association allocates less than 1 per cent of its annual income to providing direct aid to lung-disease patients--despite fund-raising rhetoric suggesting otherwise." The miracles these organizations perform seem to consist largely of inflating the importance of their works at health fairs attended by captive high-school audiences. (Jesus turned five loaves and two fish into food for 5,000; the American Cancer Society turns the handing of brochures to eight students into the education of 2,500.

Unhealthy Charities concludes with a prescription: "Let the sunshine in." Messrs. Bennett and DiLorenzo note that "Typically, any organization considered |charitable' is viewed almost as a sacred cow largely immune from careful scrutiny by researchers, the media, and the public." Clearly, newspapers and magazines should have charity reporters who investigate, instead of merely recycling public-relations handouts.

But will that solve the problem? Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of poor individuals who were unwilling to sober up and work: "They wish to be saved from the mischief of their vices, but not from their vices." These books strongly suggest that many of those with the capacity to give cannot distinguish between virtue and vice, and so spread mischief wherever they go.

Mr. Olasky is editor-at-large of World magazine and the author of The Tragedy of American Compassion.