Priority: Charity or Baha'i Funds?

Wealth is praiseworthy, if it is earned honestly and used for philanthropic purposes. The desire to better the world leads to figuring out how best to give away money intentionally, getting the most value out of every dollar donated. Giving efficiently means not always responding to the needs in front of your face, but giving consistently to address root problems with a long-term vision.

Naturally, a question arises for Baha'is: how much should I give to charity versus the Baha'i funds?

It turns out, there are many writings already addressing this, and it seems clear that giving to the Baha'i funds should be the highest priority for Baha'is giving to charity. Although it may not be obvious at first, giving to the Baha'i funds is the best way to help the world, because it is building up a solution to address underlying problems. I have two analogies that convey the principle.

Can Baha'i Assemblies provide welfare?

(I recently wrote about wealth and giving away money, which provide some background to this post about how the Baha'i Funds interplay with charity and welfare.)

I was once on a Local Spiritual Assembly that investigated setting up a humanitarian fund to help individuals in the community who fell on hard times. Of course, superficially this sounds simple: set aside some money and give it to the needy. Similar to the complexities of aid work, there are many pitfalls when crossing over that line of giving away resources. Trying to develop a framework for a local humanitarian portion of the Baha'i Fund was a long process that drove me into researching some interesting areas of the Baha'i Writings.