This may seem a bit off the political topic, but it sure relates to lost faith. Bear with me:

For years, I have been a member of a certain well-known organization that is nominally, and generally in practice, very apolitical and open to all, even in the same place at the same time. I've used the benefits my lifetime membership offers.

Currently they are doing a major fund raiser. I thought I might send some money, but then I noticed that donations would be processed by a third-party organization that acts as an umbrella fundraiser for a variety of charities and causes. Still, online research showed it to be a reputable fund-raising outfit, with famous name support and moderates costs. So far, so good.

But one or two bloggers noted that, in their case, it seemed to be that funds were being pooled, so that a donation might not go precisely where it was intended. That got me to thinking. So, I looked up the kind of place that raised funds using this outfit.

There were the usual victims of floods, diseases, and so forth. But search for the fundraiser's name accompanied by key words such as "pride" or "abortion," and you find that there are numerous radically leftist affiliates. I was not able to find a single affiliated charity that was raising funds for an American cause with even the slightest political implication, where the cause was not radically leftist.

This is not a super surprise. Many readers here know of the kind of person who gets news only via MSNBC and NPR, and thinks that anyone else (hiss, boo) only gets it through Rush Limbaugh. That seemed to be the kind of charity that had used the umbrella network, except for the foreign disaster victims.

Now, I surely do not wish to donate money that might be diverted to fund free-for-all abortion clinics, rainbow parades, support for illegal immigrants, and so forth. That's always a minor risk. The only countervailing cause that might be of conservative interest was a program to stop runaway girls from getting into the kind of lifestyle that they often do.

Maybe I am over-reacting. If the umbrella organization were a notorious cover for radical leftists, then then some bloggers on the right would have noticed (but apparently not). Still, that's why I put this under "lost faith." After awhile, it's the sensation one gets when you realize that the poor guy on the corner has been getting worse and worse because he's buying alcohol with the money you give him.

There is much to what you (mcgruff) wrote. Incidentally, the umbrella organization to which I referred was not the United Way or any traditional grouped charity. It is one of several organizations that are currently trying to take advantage of "social networking" for fundraising, via channels such as Facebook and others.

The end-user organization is a regular nonprofit rather than an ad hoc charity. It can process credit cards, do mailings, and run its own web site; it's been doing it for years, and is not obscure. But this time, a portion of donations would go to what amounts to development of a primarily leftist tech-based organization that is using social networking to raise funds for numerous causes. Not all of them are leftist, but I have seen none that one might call traditional. Indeed, searching for the umbrella's name with "traditional" pulls up nothing but radical groups opposed to "traditional" you-know what.

It could have been the other way. The same group and technology could be used as well for the up-tight crowd. But we know who you are, where you live, what you look like, and now we also know what causes you donate to, and anyone can look it up. We don't want potential employers to think you're up tight, now do we? (If you were in financial analysis, you wouldn't be using such services anyway, I presume.)