It is very difficult to give money away and have it do much good, whether you give it to a charity or directly to a person. I have been involved with several non-profits, few of them were willing to open their books and let me take a look. I could write a book about it, actually...
Second, I would point out that you cannot say "society owes" without conscripting everybody to provide. You just can't. The idea that you could ration health care is no exception, as you're then conscripting healthy people who are able to pay to inferior care.
I am absolutely against government playing in this arena, because waste and fraud in government is far worse than in the charities I looked at. (That's another conversation entirely, which I would start with the government pretending to provide health care for our Vets. I'd best not get started...)
On a more personal level, I have offered to buy lunch or dinner for panhandlers many times, never had my offer accepted. I have passed fast food out my car window, only to see them in my rear view mirror throwing it in the weeds or feeding it to their dog as I pulled away from the light.
The one time I was able to make a direct measurable difference in a few people's lives was when, through circumstance, I was able to meet people in need who were already trying to do something to improve their own situation.
At that time, I owned a hearth store, which is a business that sells and installs fireplaces and stoves. Every fall, we would get calls from people very worried about heating their homes. These calls always came from women, and these women almost always turned out to be single moms who were struggling to make ends meet. They were hoping a wood stove would be a cheap way to heat, and they were universally disappointed to find out how much they cost and how much firewood sold for.
After the first busy season, I kept an eye out for used wood stoves that were post-1986 EPA approved, which they had to be to be used in the Denver metro area. Sometimes a customer would give mue a used take-out, we found a couple on craigslist. From the second year on, we gave away a stove, brand new chimney pipe and labor to install to one or two people per year who were in obvious need. I was able to connect most of those folks with people in the tree business who were frequently paying to dump wood in a landfill.
Note that none of them were standing on a street corner holding a sign that said "need a way to heat my house this winter", either. They all had a job, often two, yet they found a way to make calls during business hours in a sincere effort to solve their own problems.
It was very satisfying to be able to do that!
