As taxpayers receive $38 billion in rebate checks this year, churches and charities with a generally liberal political stance have started a grassroots movement of Web sites, word of mouth, and the occasional op-ed piece to encourage people to do good works with Caesar's cash.
Peace Mennonite Church in Dallas sponsors Rebate Redirect, a Web site that suggests people "consider donating your tax rebate where you wish the government had invested it."
The site proposes childcare, gang-intervention, and job-training programs as worthy recipients of the $300 to $600 checks.
Stan Harder, who maintains the site, says he'll support his belief in nonviolence.
"[Government leaders] have chosen not to buy land mines with it, so that gives me the opportunity to do something else," he says.
Harder has received several supportive e-mails, and he is aware of a handful of other churches that will pool their rebates. Associate Pastor Tammerie Spires says she estimates the church could raise $8,000 among its 70 members.
The funds will go to a local childcare center and the Dallas Peace Center, founded in 1981 by Peace Mennonite. The largest, oldest such organization in Texas, the center engages in peace research and education, and works with a number of local, national, and international organizations on grassroots campaigns focused on human rights, social justice, and disarmament.
Pat Ireland, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in rural Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, learned about Peace Mennonite's Web site through a parishioner. The church passed the idea along through an insert in its weekly bulletins. Ireland also wrote a letter to the editor of the local Chase County Leader-News encouraging people to give to charities. "We're just throwing bread on water," she says.
Rancher Jane Koger says she heard of the idea through a Mennonite e-mail newsletter before seeing Ireland's letter. Koger gave her $300 to Chase Children's Services, a nonprofit preschool run by First Presbyterian. Ireland says Koger's donation will subsidize the costs for two children at the $40-per-month preschool, the only childcare facility in the county of 3,000 people.
Other denominations have made appeals for the rebate. In July, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Moderator Jack Rogers asked members of the 2.5 million-member mainline denomination to tithe their federal tax rebates to support the church's mission work, in response to a resolution passed at the church's General Assembly this summer. The campaign theoretically could raise $50 million, Rogers says. The United Church of Christ is also encouraging members to donate part or all of their rebates.
One secular group, Third Millennium Advocates for the Future Inc., sponsors donaterebate.org, a Web site that links potential donors to helping.org, a giving portal that allows them to donate to one of 700,000-plus charities online, including Campus Crusade for Christ and World Vision. The group tries to involve young adults in public policy. Richard Thau, president of the organization, says the effort is "a way to turn taxpayers into philanthropists."
Richard Socarides, a spokesman for the AOL Time Warner Foundation, which covers operating costs for helping.org, says that the number of donations increased by 6 percent between July and August. The amount donated increased by 39 percent. He says donations from the tax rebates provide the most logical explanation for the increase.
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