EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: True Charity Network Is Igniting A Charity Revolution

James Whitford has ignited a charity revolution, and the flames are spreading.

That’s the conclusion I came to after spending a couple of days this week with Whitford and nearly 300 ministry leaders who make up the True Charity Network. They held their annual conference in Huntsville, Alabama, and it was the group’s largest to-date.

We’ve told Whitford’s story before here at MinistryWatch. He earned his doctorate from the University of Kansas Medical Center before he and his wife, Marsha, founded Watered Gardens Ministries in 2000. Watered Gardens is a ministry to the poor in Joplin, Missouri. In the beginning, it did things in conventional ways for such ministries. It fed and clothed the poor, and it could tell donors that it served thousands of meals each year. What it didn’t say was that it was feeding the same people month after month, year after year. Its work was well-intentioned but had limited effectiveness. It was transactional, not transformational.

So Whitford took Watered Gardens through a transformation of its own. In the process, it has moved into the forefront of the “effective compassion” movement. In 2019 it won WORLD Magazine’s “Hope Award for Effective Compassion.”

Watered Gardens takes no government funds, and it puts Scripture front and center in its work. That means no handouts, and a strong commitment to work as the best way to lift people out of poverty and restore confidence and self-worth. Whitford says that true freedom and dignity cannot flourish if people are trapped in dependence – whether than dependence is on alcohol, drugs – or the government.

If you have read Brian Fikkert’s When Helping Hurts, Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, or Bob Lupton’s Toxic Charity, these ideas are not new to you. It wasn’t long before the success of Watered Gardens caused others to ask Whitford how he did it. That question gave birth to the True Charity Network. What is unique about the True Charity Network is its ability to bring these ideas to life in practical, “boots on the ground” ways. It offers training, encouragement, and a support network for ministries pursuing the ideas Fikkert and Olasky and Lupton.

So what is true charity? The True Charity Network has identified some principles that help answer that question. The best form of charity, it says, is:

• Voluntarily Resourced. That means, in part, that it takes no government funds. The funds are provided by people who care.
• Challenge Oriented. It “leverages relationships and accountability to challenge recipients to help themselves.”
• Outcome Driven. It achieves long-term, measurable results.

These principles sound common-sensical, but they are extraordinarily difficult to implement if your ministry has been operating using conventional methods. For example, a lot of homeless shelters give away toys to kids every year at Christmas. Or they give toys to the parents to give to their children. If you are giving away stuff, it is easy to rack up big numbers. It’s relatively easy to get donations for toys and give them away by the thousands. On paper, it looks like you’re doing a lot of good.

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But what happens when you realize that such “transactional, not transformational” activities leave donor, doer, and recipient disconnected from each other in ways that hurt all three? What would happen if they were in a real relationship, working together? What if, instead of giveaways that create dependency, that same homeless shelter created a Christmas store that allowed parents to earn the toys they give to their children, giving them a sense of accomplishment and confidence? What if donors could give not just money, but time as volunteers? Such charity provides not just “stuff” to people who don’t have “stuff.” This kind of charity provides dignity, confidence, social capital, and skill. It has the potential to change lives.

Christmas stores are just one example of many small but pivotal ideas the True Charity Network helps its members implement. They’ve even published a booklet called “Running a Christmas Market” that provides step-by-step instructions. It’s one of a dozen such checklists – called “Model Action Plans” — published by The True Charity Network. Other Model Action Plans include “Starting a Transitional Housing Program” and “Starting a Vehicle Ownership and Maintenance Program.”

Brian Fikkert, the co-author of When Helping Hurts, was a speaker at this week’s conference. He summed up the work of the True Charity Network when he told the group that “opposite of poverty is not affluence. The opposite of poverty is flourishing. The opposite of poverty is relationship, relationship with God, oneself, other people, and the rest of God’s creation.”

At the True Charity Network, members are learning how to bring these ideas to life.