An interesting exchange took place not too long ago on a large pagan e-mail list to which I belong. A member of the list suggested undertaking a community service project. Initial reactions were quite positive. Several good charitable causes were suggested. It was obvious that many of the charities were personal favorites. What was interesting about this conversation was the fact that not one of the organizations mentioned in the initial rounds was pagan.
To be fair, the charitable causes that were suggested were all themselves fine organizations, and a single pagan list, always subject to the vagaries of e-mail, should never be considered representative of the entire pagan community. At least, that's what I thought until I found another online resource called Pagans Donate.
Pagans Donate (www.pagansdonate.com) is a great Web site operated by Lorna Tedder out of (where else?) "Niceville," Florida. To promote the idea of charitable giving by pagans, Lorna asked her site visitors to tell her what and to whom they donate. Of the 152 organizations she lists as the recipients of pagan donations, only one could be rightly called pagan (The Military Pagan Network). The remaining 151 are all ecumenical, secular or Christian.
While the kinds of charities and nonprofits that appear on Lorna's list may surprise some, I'm actually pleased to see so much diversity in pagan philanthropy. Pagan giving, regardless of ideology, is a profound way to demonstrate a broad and unselfish commitment to the world in which we live. I also feel good work should be honored no matter what religious symbol happens to hang over the door.
What I think much more odd about Lorna's site and the e-mails filling my inbox are not the groups listed, but those that seem to be missing. Fairly well-known organizations such as The International Pagan Pride Project (IPPP), The Council of Magickal Arts (CMA), The Pagan Educational Network (PEN), Witches Against Religious Discrimination (WARD) and The Witches' Voice (TWV) are all conspicuously absent.
As someone who regularly volunteers for a pagan charity, I find this somewhat disconcerting. I would never advocate the support of one organization over another, but I would have thought that pagan causes would receive at least as much mention among pagan donors as their nonpagan counterparts. The fact that they do not gives me pause. There is a lot of work yet to do in our own communities, and our existing pagan organizations are some of the most effective tools we have for getting that work done. If we can't (or won't) find a way to support those tending our own gardens, then I shall begin to fear for the rosebushes.
Sadly, one of our community flowers is already gone. The Green Egg, a publication of The Church of All Worlds, is a magazine that served our community off and on since 1968. Despite a long and rich history, including the first publication of the Rede of the Wiccae in 1975, The Green Egg finally ceased operations last year in part because (to quote its editors) "We have not been able as yet to muster the support necessary to publish the next issue."
Another rose that may be edging towards the endangered species list is Betwixt & Between (www.betwixt.org). A landmark in the Texas pagan community, and one of the first open pagan community centers ever established in the United States, Betwixt & Between is now facing a budgetary shortfall in the face of a new lease agreement that could threaten their facilities and leave the Dallas community without a pagan center for the first time in four years.
And these groups are not the only ones struggling to find operational funds. In the GuideStar.com directory of nonprofit organizations, most pagan tax-exempt organizations required to list such things report revenues of less than $25,000. In other words, if these institutions were a family of six instead of a community cause trying to serve hundreds, they would easily fall below the national poverty line.
At the same time, the tasks our organizations have set for themselves continue to be identified as important. This past August in Virginia Beach, Virginia, the pagan newspaper PagaNet gathered group leaders from across the Mid-Atlantic in an attempt to identify the critical needs facing our community for the next five years. An entire laundry list of needs was named at this gathering (now called the Mid-Atlantic Pagan Leadership Conference), including community centers, libraries, prison ministries, advocacy groups, networking resources and educational tools. What also became apparent was that many of these needs were already in the process of being addressed, in whole or in part, by existing pagan philanthropies. Indeed, another need identified at the conference was the desire to find ways to support those organizations already in the trenches and working to meet these community challenges.
If the work done by our pagan institutions is important, than why would they ever fall off the community radar screen? If the needs they are addressing are relevant, then shouldn't they be the first supported by pagans? Obviously this is not universally so, and I think the fault, to paraphrase the Bard, lies not in our stars, but in both us and our philanthropies. We need to do a better job supporting our community services, and our organizations need to do a better job building relationships with their donors.
For those of us who work with a charitable cause or nonprofit (or are thinking about starting one), I would highly recommend the philanthropy standards promulgated by The Council of Better Business Bureau's Philanthropic Advisory Service (PAS) and the National Charities Information Bureau (NCIB). These voluntary standards embody some of the best thinking on how to establish sound and trustworthy charities, or (to say it another way) charities with whom we might feel comfortable "trusting our worth." These standards can be retrieved from the Web for free at www.ncib.org/standards/ncibstds.asp.
For those of us who don't work with a charitable cause or nonprofit, there are some hard questions we need to ask ourselves. Have we identified a cause important to us and the pagan community? Have we identified an organization serving that cause? Have we made a donation or volunteered this year? Has our family? Has our group? If the answer to any these is no, then the next question should also be "Why not?" Pagan philanthropies are some of the best engines we have for driving new community services and resources. As we motor through the country(dweller)side, would it kill us to pitch in a little gas money?
And before the ever-present cry of pagan poverty echoes through the trees, please know that it doesn't take much to support these organizations. You can become a supporting member of The Open Hearth Foundation for $30. You can become a "Silver" member of WARD (the most expensive they offer) for only $60. Their cheapest is a mere $10. I've seen pagans spend more at a single restaurant sitting than it would cost to sponsor The Witches' Voice for two whole years.
Indeed, when it comes to money the greater pagan community may have more to work with than it realizes. According to the American Religious Identification Study (ARIS) released by the Graduate Center at the City University of New York early last June, there are now as many as 134,000 Wiccans, 140,000 pagans, 68,000 New Agers, and 33,000 Druids currently residing in the United States. If only 10 percent of this population tithed $10 a month, an additional $4.5 million of funding for community services could be mobilized every year.
One of the things I've always found exciting about being pagan at the start of this new millennium is that so much of our future is already visible. You see it in our courtrooms. You see it in our laws. You see it in our cultural perceptions. There are still bumps along the way, of course, but I would much rather be a pagan in 2002 than 1702, if you catch my drift. Things are much better than they were, and starting to move along much more quickly.
Even more exciting, our future is already evident in the great ideas we are just now starting to make real. Capital-intensive resources such as buildings, libraries and land retreats (things unimaginable a few decades ago) are either here or already on the way. But like most everything else worth having, these resources still require time. They still require energy. And they still require money.
These are the harsh realities of charity work. Believe me, if I could raise a pagan community center with chants instead of capital drive campaigns I would have chosen that path years ago. Instead, I spend my time engaged in a completely different kind of group ritual and spellwork: asking people to donate.
For those of us who support pagan causes, I do have some good news. What we give is coming back. Like the threefold law, donations to organizations directly serving our community return to us as members of that community. The services and resources these organizations create are yours. They are your community centers, your online resources, your legal defense funds and your libraries.
With this in mind, I would encourage all of us to identify a favorite pagan charity or nonprofit (which one is entirely up to you) and to keep that organization in mind the next time a call is put out for community service. It's pretty good magick theory. It's excellent community activism. And that tax-deductible receipt ain't too shabby either.
Shea Thomas is the current Chair of the Board of Governors for The Open Hearth Foundation, Inc, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) pagan charity working to create a pagan community center in the Washington, DC, region. Portions of this article first appeared in the Beltaine issue of PagaNet News. Vol. 9. Issue 3. 2002.