Our government has no right to forcibly take their citizen’s money for charitable causes. American people are charitable as a whole, so appeal to them to freely donate to causes if they see fit.
Whether specific government expenditures are proper or not is certainly a reasonable discussion to have. Policy questions as to what we should or should not fund aside, I think it is remarkable how many people on this forum talk about government work as if the people doing that work are actual government "employees."
Most government projects are done by contractors. It is not like the State of NC has an army of DOT highway workers who are rebuilding roads in Western NC, that work is being done by contractors. The state doesn't have roving crews of construction engineers building new government buildings; those projects are put out to bid and completed by contractors. The government doesn't have highly specialized bands of software engineers running all their IT control systems, they contract out to companies like IBM. A lot of other government programs are run through government employees who are grant funded. For instance, the Violence Against Women Act funded prosecutors and victim advocates, school safety bills fund school resource officers, etc. Those employees are paid by government funds. The real government employees are the grant administrators, those who will be around running other grants as funding priorities shift. Those employees hired under those grants? Their employment ends with the grant funding cycle ends. Meaning, they weren't really an "employee" in the traditional sense.
If you want efficient government, it almost has to involve contractors. Otherwise, the size of government direct payrolls would skyrocket. And that workforce would cost a lot of money to maintain, as they would have to be highly mobile, building roads in NC one year and in FL the next, then to move to WVa, or Cali, etc... - workforce retention and relocation costs would be prohibitive.
Similarly, the humanitarian relief done by my friends' company is done by them as government contractors. They have the local in-country relationships and connections that take years to build, they can get things done more efficiently than sending a roving squad of Americans into a place where they don't even speak the language.
Again, putting aside the question of whether or not we should engage in relief efforts, or road building, or tech services, government workers are often the bureaucrats behind the administration of government programs. The people doing the work are very often local contractors. The trick for government is funding legit contractors who produce quality results at low cost. Not an easy task.
