Community Chest Campaigns as an Index of Community Integration

O NCE each year in hundreds of American communities the citizenry participate in Community Chest campaigns. Analysis of these campaigns can serve both operational and scientific purposes. Any diagnosis of the factors affecting the outcome of the drives should be welcomed by the overworked Chest executives as well as by lay leaders. Something may be added also to our meager knowledge of "community integration" by comparing the performance of different communities in these campaigns.' The procedure of this exploratory investigation is simple, for only scattered data bearing upon the problem are available.2 Criteria of community achievement in the Red Feather campaign were set up, and a few factors presumably determinant of varying levels of performance from city to city were related to these criteria. In all, 181 cities were studied.3 The first criterion of success utilized was the amount of money raised per household. Since cities vary in population, the total Fund4 had to be reduced to some comparatively uniform population basis. To offset differences in age composition and in the proportions of persons dwelling in families, it was decided to use the Census total of "families plus unrelated individuals reporting incomes" as the denominator.5 This incomereporting unit is hereafter called "households." The total amount collected for the Chest per household varied among the 181 cities from about $3 to over $30, with the median sum just under $10 (Table 1). Since cities differ in average family income and hence in economic ability to contribute, a second index of performance was selected: the ratio of the sum raised per household to the average family income for the given city. Initially the Censusreported 1949 median incomes were used in this computation, and the typical ratio for the 181 cities was about 34, per $100 of median income (or one-third of a cent per dollar of the average household's income) with a range among the cities from about 12, to something over a dollar. While the 1950 Census enumeration of 1949 incomes may be fairly dependable so far as intercity contrasts in the levels of incomes are concerned, it appreciably underestimated those levels. Incomes have also increased greatly since 1949. Hence these data were supplemented by the average "Effective Buying Income" of families, 1 Extensive exploration of differences in the quality of urban life has been conducted by Robert C. Angell, "The Moral Integration of American Cities," American Journal of Sociology, 57 (July 1951), Part 2; and E. L. Thorndike, Your City (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1939), and 144 Smaller Cities (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940). The present study is modeled on an earlier analysis: C. Arnold Anderson and Bryce Ryan, "Differential Achievement among Iowa Counties in Civilian War Programs," Rural Sociology, 8 (June 1943), pp. 130-138. 2 The availability of a list of cities with the sums of money raised in the 1952 campaigns was brought to the writer's attention by Professor Harold Wetzel, Department of Social Work, University of Kentucky; these data appear in Community, 28 (February 1953), pp. 115-119. 3 It is becoming the practice in some cities to include national drives, such as the cancer fund, in the local Chest campaign; none of the cities used in this study included these newer agencies. Cities with less than 10,000 population (essentially cities raising less than $50,000) and cities raising over $1 million were excluded to obtain some homogeneity of city type. 4 It has been impossible to obtain the sums raised in cities with separate Jewish and/or Catholic campaigns. It is doubtful that this omission seriously affects the results in view of the erratic scatter of the cities in relation to the factors used in this analysis. 6 Reported in State Tables 37 in U. S. Bureau of the Census, U. S. Census of Population: 1950. Vol. II, Characteristics of the Popilation, Parts 2-50 (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1952). Solicitation of funds does not stop at city limits. It was decided to use "the urbanized area" when this was given by the Census. An urbanized area corresponds to the densely settled area that embraces a legal city; it is also the core of a metropolitan area. If the Census did not report for an "urbanized area" but did for a "standard metropolitan area," the latter was chosen. In a few cases where neither unit was designated for a given city, the number of "households" in the "urban place" was the denominator.