Charity Detox

What Charity Would Look Like If We Cared About Results

By: Robert D. Lupton

Narrated by: Mike Lenz

Length: 5 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

The veteran urban activist and author of the revolutionary Toxic Charity returns with a headline-making book that offers proven, results-oriented ideas for transforming our system of giving.

In Toxic Charity, Robert D. Lupton revealed the truth about modern charity programs meant to help the poor and disenfranchised. While charity makes donors feel better, he argued, it often hurts those it seeks to help. At the forefront of this burgeoning yet ineffective compassion industry are American churches, which spend billions on dependency-producing programs, including food pantries. But what would charity look like if we, instead, measured it by its ability to alleviate poverty and needs?

That is the question at the heart of Charity Detox. Drawing on his many decades of experience, Lupton outlines how to structure programs that actually improve the quality of life of the poor and disenfranchised. He introduces many strategies that are revolutionizing what we do with our charity dollars, and offers numerous examples of organizations that have successfully adopted these groundbreaking new models. Only by redirecting our strategies and becoming committed to results, he argues, can charity enterprises truly become as transformative as our ideals.

©2015 Robert D. Lupton (P)2020 Tantor

a must-read for everyone hoping to help the poor

essential read if you desire to help lift people out of poverty and not be a part of the problem I have played our country in world for a long time.

Fundamentally Flawed

I wanted to like this book. I read "Toxic Charity" with interest. But as a nonprofit CEO that runs a homeless shelter and services agency, as well as a poverty and nonorofit researcher, this book lost me in the first chapter because it is so fundamentally flawed, it's devoid of value. First, Lupton uses perjorative terms for people with addiction and major mental illness. This is deal breaker. Access to healthcare is critical to helping many transition to stability and speaking about folks in this dismissive way doesn't solve long-term and chronic poverty. Some may never be "self-sufficient". The focus on self-sufficiency, rather than stability or some other measure, is also flawed. Lupton highlights the Rescue Mission movement. Their model is wrong and it makes my stomach turn. Years of empirical research on homeless demonstrates that Housing First strategies - focusing on getting into housing rather than job skills - has the best long term outcomes. And without a deep analysis of structural inequality delegitamizes any discussion of other programs that focus on financial literacy or job skills development. We cannot speak of people living in poverty as a monolith. They need a range of light and deep touch strategies. But we also need deep structural and policy change. Without this analysis, Lupton's approach is as toxic as the charities he criticizes.