INDIANAPOLIS—Engineers and social workers seem to work from opposite ends of the brain.

But retiring Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana executive Jim McClelland has worked both angles with unusual success for 40 years.

WASHINGTON—Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Budget Committee, this week released a report detailing much of what’s wrong with the U.S. government’s 50-year-old war on poverty: In 2012, the federal government spent $799 billion on 92 often duplicitous programs that sometimes do as much to keep people in poverty as they do to help them out. 

“For too long, we have measured compassion by how much we spend instead of how many people get out of poverty,” Ryan said in a statement. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—City Rescue Mission serves a homeless population in Saginaw, Mich., a midsized town 100 miles northwest of Detroit. Founded in 1905, the mission helped a record number of people last year—more than 1,900—with food, clothing, housing, and the hope of the gospel. 

But record numbers don’t mean record revenue: City Rescue Mission is running its three facilities at 2007 budget levels—despite a 37 percent client increase since then. Sixty percent of that revenue comes from individual private donors.

The Obama attack on charity is underway, with the Senate discussing ways to reduce charitable tax deductions and thus give Washington more money to spend.

Americans donated more to organizations last year than they have since the start of the recession, according to a Giving USA report released last week. The 3.5 percent increase to education, the arts, health, religion, etc., seems promising, but with inflation that number gets cut more than half—down to 1.5 percent. And after four years of dwindling donations, many charities still struggle to make ends meet. Giving to religious groups, which mainly includes houses of worship, has dropped 2 percent when adjusted for inflation.

On April 9, 2010, at 6:30 a.m., Vernon Murphy woke up, rolled out of bed in his Coatesville, Pa., home and resolved to run.

He hated jogging, but he got up anyway. Because Murphy got up that morning, pulled on his shorts, laced up his shoes, and then gasped his way through a half-mile run, Barbara, who has advanced ovarian cancer, could cover last month’s rent. Gerry, who has scalp, lung, and colon cancer, could pay his electric bill. Darlene, who has late-stage colorectal cancer, got help with her medical bills.

The suggested retail price for a steaming serving of turkey chili in a bread bowl at Panera Bread is normally $5.89. But customers ordering that menu item at cafés in St. Louis can now pay more, less … or nothing at all.

Panera’s pay-what-you-can model, part of the company’s charitable hunger-fighting initiative, was first tried in the St. Louis suburb of Clayton in 2010, but this week the company expanded it to all 48 cafés in the metropolitan area.