1939: Social Service, Private

No satisfactory definition of private social work has yet appeared. As discussed in this article, the term comprises all privately-operated, non-profitmaking institutions and agencies specifically concerned with the prevention, amelioration, care or treatment of dependency, delinquency, defect, disease and other human ills, and the positive promotion of socially desirable conditions. While all these agencies are supported in whole or in part by private funds, many derive a large part (and some even a major part) of their income from public tax sources.

The year 1939 saw a continuation of trends that have profoundly influenced the field of private social work during the past decade. The Great Depression has been a major conditioning factor in the field. Its impact on the public conscience, resulting in the acceptance of public responsibility for wide areas of social welfare which had previously been considered the domain of private philanthropy, necessitated a reorientation of the latter. Sharp contraction of private resources also influenced the development of this field. On the other hand, certain outstanding trends in private social work antedated the depression in their origin. Chief among these are the tendencies toward centralization and coordination of activities, especially as reflected in the financing and administration of private social agencies.

Central Financing Organizations.

In urban areas of 25,000 population or over, the most widely used method of central financing is the community chest, a cooperative organization that carries on centralized fund campaigns each year for its affiliated health and welfare agencies. There were over 518 chests in 1939; of cities with populations of 100,000 or over, only five had no chest.

Community chests operate on the principle that it is more economical and expedient to raise funds for private social service by concerted and intensive community-wide drives than by uncoordinated campaigns of individual agencies. Funds thus raised are distributed among the member agencies according to a prearranged budget. Most chests are nonsectarian or inter-sectarian in makeup. The chest idea is by no means universally accepted, and many organizations, large and small, continue to carry on independent campaigns for funds.

Closely allied to the community chest principle, but differing from it in several important respects, are the Chicago Community Fund and the Greater New York Fund. These central financing organizations, both of which are nonsectarian, accept no individual donations, but instead restrict their campaigns to business and employee groups. No degree of budgetary control or supervision is exercised over member agencies, which are permitted to carry on their own campaigns for contributions, with the provision that they shall not again solicit from groups that have already contributed to the central fund. In its 1939 campaign the Greater New York Fund raised nearly $3,400,000 up to September 30 of that year, to be distributed among its approximately 400 participating agencies.

Other organized methods of financing private social work include charity balls, benefits and parties, tag-day and membership drives, and special newspaper appeals, such as the New York Times' 'Hundred Neediest Cases.' Federated bodies of Jewish or Catholic social agencies carry on joint financing campaigns in many communities. Every year a nation-wide Mobilization for Human Needs is conducted on behalf of 35 national private social agencies, as a means of reinforcing local campaigns. Outstanding examples of direct fund-raising drives by national organizations are the annual roll call of the American National Red Cross and the Christmas seal campaign of the National Tuberculosis Association.

Contributions to Community Chests.

It is impossible to present an estimate of the total amount raised annually for all private social work, but community chest figures give us some indications of current trends. A total of $82,808,793 was raised by 518 chests of 1939 (Funds budgeted for 1939 were raised during the previous year.). This amount represents a decline of about one million dollars from that raised for 1938 by 480 chests. One-third of the 1939 total was accounted for by the ten largest chests, which raised sums ranging from $1,800,000 to $4,500,000. The peak year for community chest drives was 1932, when a total of $101,377,537 was raised. This year marked the last desperate effort of private philanthropy to maintain major responsibility for unemployment relief necessitated by the great depression.

An analysis of contributions for 1939 in 125 cities made by the Community Chests and Councils, Inc., shows that seventeen out of every hundred persons in these cities subscribed to the local chest. Thirteen of the seventeen contributors gave less than $5, averaging $1.61. It is significant that the percentage of givers of amounts of $25 and less has been steadily increasing in recent years. An important factor influencing the extent of contributions is the income tax exemption on gifts to private charitable enterprise.

It is likely that taxes on wages and payrolls in connection with the social security program will have some effect on voluntary contributions to welfare agencies, although no marked influence is discernible as yet.

Sources and Disposition of Income.

Besides voluntary gifts and bequests, the income of private social work is derived from tax funds and fees paid by clients. It has been estimated that member agencies of community chests in 1938 received 37.8 per cent of their total income from the chest, 36.1 per cent from fees charged to clients, 8.1 per cent from public tax funds, and 18 per cent from miscellaneous sources, including income from endowments. Hospitals and leisure-time agencies derived a large proportion of their income from fees paid by clients, such payments accounting for 64.5 per cent of hospital income and nearly 40 per cent of the funds of leisure-time services. Child-caring agencies derived about 25 per cent of their income from beneficiaries, and 16.5 from tax funds. Tax funds account for nearly 20 per cent of the income sources of hospital and other health services. There are two types of public subsidies to private agencies: per capita payments on the basis of services rendered, and lump-sum subsidies. A joint committee of health and welfare officials recently stated its preference for the former over the latter type of public payment.

As for the distribution of community chest funds for 1939 statistics covering 96 cities which raised nearly half the grand chest total indicate that about one-fourth of the total amount was allocated for family service and general dependency, 23.7 per cent for leisure-time activities, 18.4 per cent for the care of children, a little more than 20 per cent for hospitals and other health services, 2.9 per cent for delinquency, 1.6 per cent for care of the aged, and 10.1 per cent for the Chest and Council. Private expenditures for the care of the aged have declined sharply of late, due in large measure to the extensive public programs for old age security. On the other hand, an upward trend in support of leisure-time services has been noted since 1933.

Central Planning.

Central financing, as illustrated by the chest idea, represents one major aspect of the trend toward coordination in private social work. Central planning, as represented by councils of social agencies, reflects another. In a number of communities the chest and council are combined in one organization; in others they are separate and independent entities. While financing must inevitably have some effect on policy-making, it is still a disputed question whether the community is best served by having both financing and planning functions vested in a single agency.

The council idea is an old one, but only in recent years has it been put into effective operation in a large number of communities. It represents a distinct departure from the time-worn custom of social agencies to act independently and even in competition with one another. The ideal methodology of the council includes a broad study of community needs and an analysis of the available and potential resources for meeting them, from which a community program is carefully worked out with the aim of obtaining a maximum degree of cooperation and efficiency from each member agency. Duplication and competition is eliminated or minimized wherever possible.

Public and Private Social Work.

The unprecedented expansion of public welfare since 1933 has profoundly affected the course of private social work in several respects, as previously noted. The continual growth of Federal and state Social security programs has greatly reduced the need for private social work in certain fields in which it formerly played an important and even dominant role. This trend has been reflected most sharply, of course, in the field of general relief. Statistics based on a study of 116 urban areas show that in 1929 nearly 25 per cent of relief funds came from private sources; in 1931 it reached a peak of 29 per cent; in 1939 private funds accounted for considerably less than 1 per cent of total expenditures for relief. In July, 1939, more than $101,000,000 was expended in these 116 urban areas for public assistance and earnings from WPA-operated projects, as compared with only $768,422 expended by private agencies for relief, representing .8 per cent of the total outlay. The contribution of private agencies to the total relief bill has remained substantially under 1 per cent for several years. In rural districts, according to statistics gathered by the Social Security Board, the ratio of private to public funds for relief is much less than in urban districts.

As public welfare has pushed onward along the frontiers of material aid, private social work has concentrated increasing attention on the development of non-material services. Private agencies are tending to accept the theory that the supplying of basic economic needs is essentially a governmental problem. Generally more flexible than public welfare bodies, private social agencies have proved of great benefit as experimental laboratories, initiating many programs that were later taken over as permanent activities of public agencies. The better private agencies also may be credited with maintaining and improving standards of social welfare, both public and private.

While non-material services are receiving more emphasis in private social work, relief-giving still constitutes an essential though declining part of its activities, especially in the area of family welfare. Statistics covering 59 sample private family welfare agencies, compiled by Ralph G. Hurlin of the Russell Sage Foundation, show that relief cases constituted about 39 per cent of the total number of their active cases in September 1939. This figure compares with a ratio of 48 per cent in 1936 and 1937, and 40 per cent in 1938. The extent of material relief granted by private agencies is naturally conditioned by the public assistance program prevailing in the community.

Family welfare agencies have continued the exploitation of the social case work process in meeting the problems of their clients. It is interesting to note, however, that the highly individualized approach to social unadjustment, in which the individual client was regarded as the unit of treatment, is now giving way to a return to the old principle of the family as the proper unit of the case worker's attention.

Coordination of Private Social Work.

The general trend toward coordination of private effort was reflected in the family welfare field in 1939 by agency mergers that took place in Greenwich and Stamford, Connecticut, Peoria, Illinois, St. Paul, Minnesota, Elmira, New York, and New York City. Most of the recent mergers in private social work have been between family welfare and child-caring agencies.

One of the most significant events of 1939 was the consolidation of the two largest family welfare agencies in the country — the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor and the Charity Organization Society in New York City. Established in 1843 and 1882, respectively, the two organizations were merged into the present Community Service Society, with a combined capital fund of about $28,000,000. Expenditures of both agencies in the year before the merger aggregated more than $2,700,000.

The consolidation was preceded by a long and careful survey of the activities of both agencies within the community framework. It was found that the two organizations — which had espoused markedly similar aims from the very beginning — had been drawing closer together in attitudes and activities in late years, that they were duplicating each other's work at some points, and that the community would be more effectively served through a consolidated society. The final report of the New York A.I.C.P. contains a significant commentary on contemporary trends in private social work:

'There is a growing feeling that there are now such a large number of differentiated and specialized social service organizations that the whole field of social work suffers; that, in the community's organized efforts to deal with its problems, a pattern of service has developed which by its very complexity obstructs their usefulness. It is growing more difficult not only for individuals to act alone but for individuals in small groups to act separately. Team work, organization, planning together, must increasingly be the order of the day.'

The outcome of the consolidation of these giant agencies will be watched with interest.

The desirability of large-scale mergers in private social work, especially with respect to fund-raising aspects, has been questioned. Some observers incline to the belief that financial contributions are more easily obtained in behalf of special services (such as aid to needy children, the aged, etc.) than for general services. A substantially similar issue is being debated in the public welfare field by the proponents of 'categorical' relief as opposed to 'general' relief. Any survey of present trends in private social work would have to take into consideration the tremendous developments in public social security programs during recent years.