‘Communal Complex’ Is Fading

In Seattle, where high-tech fortunes bloom like rhododendrons, charitable organizations reap huge benefits.

In the past decade there, contributions to United Way have increased from $38.9 million to $68.6 million. In the high-tech sector, ten-fold growth is the norm. Microsoft’s contributions alone have soared from $938,000 to $10.5 million.

Such figures dramatically illustrate a cosmic unfairness: Prosperous communities can generously support the charitable causes for which they have relatively less need.

On the other, tarnished side of the coin, communities that struggle economically have higher levels of need but less financial capacity to address it.

Is Spokane such a community? A lot of people think so, judging by one recent sampling of public perceptions.

When the Spokane YWCA contracted for a feasibility study about a capital campaign, the consultant convened focus groups and conducted individual interviews with 100 community members. The opinions that were collected are open to challenge, but they were not encouraging.

The consultant discovered a prevailing belief that only about a half-dozen people in Spokane have the means to be significant philanthropists. As far as charitable giving is concerned, said Monica Walters, executive director of the YWCA, the community is thought to be “tapped out.”

As she noted, however, more than 2,000 reservations have been received in “tapped-out” Spokane for Monday’s Women of Achievement luncheon, a $100-a-plate affair featuring poet Maya Angelou.

Still, Spokane’s belief in its own inadequacy is enduring. Or, as the YWCA’s consultant put it:

“Like a plague that finds its way into community meetings and local news, Spokane’s `communal complex’ reinforces the belief that the community’s problems are insurmountable.”

Such an attitude, misinformed or not, tends to be self-fulfilling, forcing nonprofit organizations in the community to constrain their goals.

“As a result of not asking, we don’t get,” Walters said.

However, if you just look in the right places, there is ample evidence that Spokane has substantial capacity for philanthropic work.

While it’s true that Spokane has a higher proportion of low-income families than the national average, it’s also true (but less often discussed) that we have a higher proportion of upper-income families. No, Spokane can’t claim anything like the 74,000 $1 million net-worth households found in the Puget Sound region - or the charitable-giving sums such wealth generates - but neither is the picture as bleak as so many respondents to the YWCA’s feasibility study believe.

On Wednesday, more than 275 people crowded into the Spokane Club’s banquet room for the Inland Northwest Philanthropy Awards. It was reportedly the largest banquet ever held there and at least 40 more would-be ticket-buyers were turned away.

If that doesn’t say something about community support for good works, the commendable deeds of award-winners and other nominees certainly do. One-time mayor and long-time civic advocate Neal Fosseen was honored as the community’s individual philanthropist, Metropolitan Mortgage and Securities Co. in the corporate category and Women Helping Women for nonprofit organizations.

In conjunction with the banquet, a report was released on the direct contribution the nonprofits make to the local economy. The combined payrolls of just the 105 nonprofits that answered a questionnaire is $137.6 million - about the same as the military payroll in Spokane - and their combined operating budgets total $300 million.

As those operations get less and less funding from state and federal sources, more and more has to come from the private sector - individuals, foundations and businesses.

The “communal complex” view, that we just can’t carry that burden, is being whittled away.

A year ago, after coming to Spokane from Houston where he’d participated in United Way’s Tocqueville Society, Tom Matthews, president of Avista Corp., introduced the concept to Spokane. He and four others made individual donations to United Way of at least $10,000. This year the Tocqueville Society in Spokane has more than tripled to 13 members.

How large the group will grow is unknown but it wouldn’t have formed at all if somebody hadn’t asked. Significantly, the person who did the asking was new in town and hadn’t been exposed to the can’t-do virus.