Critiques of philanthropy and nonprofits appear to be intensifying, in part fueled by a broad and understandable distrust of powerful institutions and of the “elites.” That is healthy, of course: There is legitimate reason to be concerned about those who seek cynically to wrap themselves in a flag of charitable do-gooding only to perpetuate inequality or stand in the way of real change.
“Even as they give back, American elites generally seek to maintain the system that causes many of the problems they try to fix — and their helpfulness is part of how they pull it off,” writes Anand Giridharadas in a provocative op-ed in the New York Times. “Thus their do-gooding is an accomplice to greater, if more invisible, harm.”
Books such as The Givers: Money, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age, by David Callahan, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, by Giridharadas, and the forthcoming Just Giving: Why Philanthropy Is Failing Democracy and How It Can Do Better, by Rob Reich, raise important questions about whether philanthropists are wielding inappropriate levels of power and influence.
Such skepticism of big givers is often warranted and has always been part of our country’s philanthropic history. But I worry about the potential to overlook the positive stories about giving in the United States and about all the nonprofits that depend on private giving to support their missions.
Let’s not take for granted the good — indeed vital — work being done each day by crucially important nonprofit organizations, often supported by generous donors across a range of income levels who don’t look anything like the Davos-attending ultrawealthy power brokers whom Giridharadas describes (and often rightly calls out).
Powerful Motivations
Many philanthropists — yes, even among the very wealthy — have motives that are pure and powerful. I am talking about people like Rose Letwin, the donor behind the Wilburforce Foundation.
“I grew up in a small Midwestern farm town and have always had a passion for animals,” she explains. “I moved to Seattle in the 1970s and fell in love with the outdoors. These interests led me to volunteer at a wildlife rehabilitation center, where I faced the devastating truth that many of these animals, once healed, had no home to return to. Seattle and its surrounding communities were growing rapidly, and there were fewer spaces where wild animals could just be.”
The work of Letwin — who found herself very wealthy after a successful career in technology — and Wilburforce and the often very small, local nonprofits they support has contributed to preserving millions of acres of land in the Pacific Northwest alone. This is the kind of giving, supporting hard work by small and unsung nonprofits, that doesn’t make headlines. When you drive or take a hike through that beautiful part of the world, which I know well having grown up there, you probably don’t think, “Thank goodness for philanthropy, without which this land would not be largely untouched in the way that it is.”
But it would be logical if you did.
Effective givers understand the vital role of nonprofits and foundations, which often take on the challenges that markets or the government have failed to meet.
I am talking about donors like Bob Bennett, a retired Houston lawyer I met this summer while visiting Epiphany Community Health Outreach Services, a Houston group often referred to by its acronym Echos. The organization was formed in 1999 and caters to what Cathy Moore, its executive director, describes as “poverty-stricken, vulnerable families.” The nonprofit connects “people in need with the health, social, and educational resources that can improve their lives.”
With nine staff members and a budget of $500,000, Echos struggles to meet the needs of all its prospective clients, who are desperate for help. Donors and volunteers like Bennett are crucial to the organization’s success, as is the support of the Episcopal Health Foundation, also based in Houston. Bennett told me with great pride of the role Echos played in the wake of Hurricane Harvey — and of the way staff and volunteers rose to the occasion to help those in need. Among other things, Bennett coordinates the logistics for the vision screenings Echos provides.
“You’re making such a difference” for the clients Echos serves and the organization, I remarked. Bennett looked at me intently, a little perplexed, and paused. “No. They’re making a difference for me,” he said.
Generosity of Pocket and Spirit
Selflessness of the kind personified by Bennett and tens of millions of other Americans — connected in one way or another to the nation’s more than 1 million nonprofit organizations — is at the heart of the best of what this country is.
We need this generosity of both pocketbook and spirit now in a way we rarely have before, as our federal government turns its back on the vulnerable and those with the least power. Some observers worry about the role of philanthropy in policy (even though the Foundation Center estimates that less than 3 percent of foundation giving in 2015 went to “public policy, advocacy, and systems reform”). Their concern is that such giving undermines democracy. I get it, and in particular instances I have shared that worry. But I am also often inspired by philanthropy’s role in promoting and protecting democracy, and if anything would like to see more givers step up in this way.
I am grateful to the givers and nonprofits that have sought to protect the individual rights of all the citizens in the United States, to combat voter suppression, and to protect the institutions that are bedrocks of our democracy. Look, for example, at the donors and foundations, like the Barr and Libra foundations, that have made grants to organizations working to protect America’s free press or respond to the humanitarian crisis at the Mexican border.
In fact, giving is an engine of citizen engagement. A majority of Americans give to charity. According to “Giving USA,” giving in 2017 was $410 billion, nearly 80 percent of which came from individuals, counting bequests. This represented a 3 percent increase in inflation-adjusted dollars over the previous year. Total giving has been around 2.1 percent of gross domestic product since about 2000, up from about 1.7 percent in most of the previous three decades.
Obviously, huge questions loom about this year and the coming ones as the new tax law reduces the number of people who itemize their returns and therefore have the incentive of the charitable deduction.
Don’t Overlook Progress
But sometimes, amid all our hand-wringing about what could be better in philanthropy, we forget basic facts about its breadth and growth — and, most important, the good it does. Dramatic decreases in childhood mortality worldwide, environmental and civil-rights advances in the United States, and so many other accomplishments are signs of the contributions of philanthropy all around us. The fact that some of the progress we have made seems now to be imperiled — or that there is too much that hasn’t improved — doesn’t diminish the role of philanthropy.
Quite the opposite.
By all means, let’s consider the tough questions of big givers and their philanthropy that Callahan, Giridharadas, and Reich are posing and that Elizabeth Kolbert explored in a recent New Yorker piece. Giridharadas’s much-discussed book is a particularly welcome takedown of the there-are-no-trade-offs, have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too happy talk of those who believe free-market capitalism solves all.
But let’s not overlook, in this discussion, the distinctly powerful and positive role that both giving and the nonprofit world it supports have played in this country. Nor should we caricature or overly generalize about the so-called donor class.
Philanthropy, with all its flaws and shortcomings, has made our country stronger.
Phil Buchanan is president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a regular columnist for the Chronicle of Philanthropy, and author of the forthcoming book, “Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count,” to be published by Public Affairs/ Hachette Book Group in April. This column draws on passages from that book. The foundations mentioned in this article are clients and or direct grant makers to the center.
