The Spirit of Giving

As we approach the heart of the holiday season, the spirit of giving is at its yearly high. A lot of us are busy trying to find that perfect gift for friends and loved ones. This can be stressful. Why do we do it?

You’ve heard it said that giving is better than receiving. As a kid, I thought that was a really crazy idea invented by adults to stop us kids from complaining when we didn’t get what we wanted. But it turns out to be true… giving heartfelt gifts feels really great!

I know it may seem self-serving for me to tell you that making a donation to CANI will make you feel really good. But it’s true. Imagine the power of a gift that helps people who are struggling to make ends meet. Imagine a family who cannot put enough food on the table, or is facing eviction or foreclosure, or having their heat disconnected during this cold winter season… and then imagine that you can help.

Without question - in my twelve years at CANI - I have never seen the demand for help so great. We are literally getting over 1,000 calls per week for heating assistance. While we have been able to help more people in certain areas, we continue to have waiting lists in virtually every program we provide. And I know that we are not alone - our partner agencies are experiencing the exact same thing.

Unfortunately, this increased need has been coupled with more pressure than ever before on the resources we have to help people. CANI, like many organizations in our community, has seen funding cut severely or altogether for some programs. This very simply results in fewer resources to help people at a time when we have more people to help.

My appeal to you now is to consider a gift that will last longer than the holiday season. CANI is just one of many agencies in our community that can help you give a gift that you can feel really good about now and throughout the year. If you give to your United Way, your local food bank, or your favorite other social service agency - it will help people. You may even know someone yourself who is struggling – you can help that person or family directly.

If you have the ability to give, please consider a gift to those who are less fortunate – those whose needs may be greater than yours at this moment. There are so many ways you can help – how you do it is not important. The important thing is that you do it. 

CANI's Service Delivery Model

In my last blog post, I spoke about CANI’s mission and the various aspects of what it all means. I wanted this time to delve further into our philosophy to reach every family and individual who lives in poverty and provide services in a timely, coordinated manner, so that they can leave poverty behind forever.

CANI serves over half of all the people in poverty in Northeast Indiana every year. Because of this, we are one of the few organizations that can have a true impact on our area’s poverty rates. The trick, of course, is having the system and resources in place to help move all of these families out of poverty for good. That is our challenge, but that is exactly what we’re trying to do.

What does this system look like? Typically a family comes to us for help with a single issue. For example: they need help with their utility bills, or a housing situation, or child care. But what we know is invariably these families have more than one issue they’re facing. If they can’t pay their utility bills, they likely have issues with other bills as well, or they are struggling in their employment situation, or are lacking a certain level of education. They may even be dealing with domestic violence or addictions issues. The point is:

Every family is unique, but almost always, their situation is more complicated than a single program or service will solve.

Our goal then is to build a system that no matter who comes to us or for what reason, we take the time to fully assess the family’s situation, not just their “presenting need” (the reason they came to us.) This process is undertaken together with the family, so that both parties see a more complete picture of the situation.

The key piece then is the next step. When multiple issues are identified we want to be able to provide services to families that meet all those needs, and in a timely manner. Timeliness is crucial. I often think about the finger in the dam analogy here. Families can fix one “hole” at a time, but if they can’t fill all the holes at once, the dam continues to leak and eventually gives way.

And when we speak about services to meet all needs, we’re working on that in two ways. First, and the most desirable, is to create truly integrated relationships with our partners within the community who can provide needed services. By “integrated” we mean, not simply giving a name and number to call, but actually providing access to the service, perhaps even delivering our partners’ service ourselves.

The second way is to add services that CANI itself delivers where it is determined that there are gaps in our community. (In future blog entries, I’ll explain more fully our concept of what the spectrum of family needs is, and more specifically illustrate our collaborative efforts with partners.)

We believe our concept is a good one, but our challenge - why this isn’t fully in place today - is that all this takes resources. Our grants and funding often are constructed in a manner that provides barely enough funding to simply deliver one service, certainly not to provide for the extra time we need to spend with a family to make this concept work.

But we are working every single day to develop those resources and make this system a reality. When we do, we’ll have even more impact on families and our community than we do today.

CANI's Mission or Why I Work at CANI

As I sit here contemplating what my first blog topic should be my mind keeps going back to our mission. After all, our mission is where it all starts. It’s what we’re all about. It dictates what every person in this organization does every day and how we do it.

And – while I love working at this place and love working with the people here – our mission is why I love this job so much.

CANI’s mission is to help communities, families, and individuals remove the causes and conditions of poverty. Sometimes, when we’re in a hurry to tell our story, we abbreviate that statement, and just say our mission is “to eliminate poverty.” While I think that is fine at times, our full mission statement is important because it conveys the full scope of what it will take to actually eliminate poverty in our community.

The first part of the statement talks about helping communities, families, and individuals. This is an important distinction. I usually describe this part of the mission as “macro” and “micro” level efforts.

Definitely, a very huge part of what we do every day is helping people on the “micro” level, with families and individuals themselves. Our basic philosophy is to reach every family and individual who lives in poverty and provide services in a timely, coordinated manner, so that they can leave poverty behind forever. (I will cover this more in my next post.)

But poverty is also impacted by bigger, “macro” types of issues like the systems and policies that affect people and the economic conditions in which they live. Tackling these issues requires work in advocacy, system-building, capacity-building, and economic development.

The second half of our mission statement is just as important as the first: “remove the causes and conditions of poverty.”

Obviously, our greatest hope is to get to the root causes of poverty, because ultimately that’s where true, lasting change will occur. We would much rather “teach someone how to fish” rather than “give fish away.” In fact, the bulk of what we do is developing programs and designing systems that help families get at the root causes of the issues they face.

However, to comprehensively fight poverty, we cannot ignore the conditions of poverty.

This is where Maslow’s hierarchy of needs applies in our world – people need to have their basic needs met before they can concentrate on higher needs. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to focus on things like getting an education or building assets when you must be focused on things like how you’re going to eat today or where you will be sleeping tonight.

Can we ever eliminate poverty?

In my 12 years at CANI I’ve had many, many people tell me that we can’t. But I believe emphatically that we can! It’s a huge job – and it might take longer than I’ll be around – but here’s the very simple reason why I know we can do it…

I see families we serve leave poverty behind all the time.

Why do we presume that not everyone can do it, when we have proof that so many can? It’s CANI’s challenge, and privilege, to help all families and individuals in our community leave poverty behind forever.