Critiques of philanthropy and the nonprofits it supports have jumped the shark. It’s true that philanthropy, given its significant role in American society, deserves scrutiny and that there has often been too little of it in recent decades. But there has lately been a turn from helpful and thoughtful criticism to off-based generalizations and statements that veer into the absurd.
Even a stirring announcement Sunday at the Morehouse College graduation ceremony by Robert Smith – the billionaire investor who founded Visa Equity Partners – that he would pay off the debt of the graduating class was met with reflexive skepticism in some quarters. Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World was quoted in a New York Times article about the gift worrying that it “can make people believe that billionaires are taking care of our problems and distract us from the ways in which others in finance are working to cause problems.”
Perhaps no philanthropy critic is more ubiquitous today than Giridharadas, whose book rightly skewers those who believe (or maybe just pretend to believe, to serve their narrow purposes?) that business and market-oriented solutions will fix all of our most pressing problems. It also questions those who seem to have confused taking a job at McKinsey with signing up for the Peace Corps.
This view that nonprofit work is fundamentally distinct from business is one many of us who work at nonprofits have shared for decades. We have lamented the way new entrants to philanthropy seek to foist ill-fitting frameworks from the business world onto a very different landscape – almost always leading to disappointing results. We have noted that philanthropy and nonprofits often seek to address the very issues that have defied business or government intervention and that this uniquely challenging work requires its own skills and approaches.
So Giridharadas should be thanked for exposing the shallowness of the elite “business-to-the-rescue!” world of Davos and Aspen Institute hobnobbing – a world he would know better than most since he was once a part of it. But he seems intent on going much further, asserting that “Philanthropy launders bad reputations” and that “elite giving cannot be separated from self-protection.” In an op ed in the New York Times Sunday about the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s (good) decision to stop taking money from the Sackler family, he argues that “philanthropy can also be central to purchasing the immunity needed to profiteer at the expense of the common welfare.”
He goes on: “For far too long, generosity has been allowed to serve as a wingman of injustice; giving back disguises merciless taking; making a difference becomes inseparable from making a killing — sometimes literally.” This has surely been true in some specific both historical and contemporary instances. But as a broad generalization about philanthropic donors, it is inaccurate.
Differentiating Good From Bad
Also inaccurate is Giridharadas’s recent claim on MSNBC that “nonprofits are a very crucial part of how the rigged system gets rigged ... as enablers for plutocrats to continue to harm society.” This is an insult to this country’s vast and diverse nonprofit world, supported in significant part by philanthropy, which employs one in 10 Americans.
The concern that the positive actions of some wealthy people might distract from the bad things other wealthy people do is a little like worrying that an act of good journalism distracts us from instances of bad journalism: that if we praise good reporting, we might forget about fabulists like Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass. We should be able to differentiate – whether among journalists or billionaires. We should be able to recognize both that some are guided by a better moral compass than others – and even that individuals have complex lives in which they have done things we don’t like and things we do.
The Sacklers are, of course, worthy of our irate condemnation for what have been alleged to be criminal efforts by Purdue Pharma to spread the use of OxyContin, contributing to a massive epidemic that has killed hundreds of thousands. There are many questions to be asked about how this could have happened, and they should center on the regulation of pharmaceuticals, not the role of philanthropy.
Benefits to Nonprofits
I don’t doubt that the Sacklers sought to burnish their reputation through their philanthropy. But that is hardly the central issue. It is irresponsible for Giridharadas to reason by anecdote to taint all philanthropy with the sins of a family or of Mark Zuckerberg – another frequent and easy target during Giridharadas’s frequent television appearances.
Worse, it obscures the vital role philanthropy plays in supporting nonprofits working on issues such as drug addiction, family separation at the border, and environmental protection.
I, for one, am glad software entrepreneur Tim Gill and other major philanthropists supported organizations that fought successfully for marriage equality for LGBT people. I am also glad that foundations fought tobacco companies in the 1990s, contributing to a significant decline in teenage smoking rates. I am grateful to the donors across the political spectrum who have sought to overhaul our shameful and broken criminal-justice system. And I am thankful that major donors and foundations have supported ProPublica and its hard-hitting investigative journalism.
In every community, there are nonprofits doing vital work that is supported by donors big and small. I have visited with organizations working to recruit young people out of gang life, with local arts organizations serving as pillar institutions in poor neighborhoods, with those helping the desperately poor meet basic needs. The donors supporting these organizations are, of course, a diverse lot, but most are seeking to make a difference, not to benefit themselves. Yes, some like the feeling of being thanked or acknowledged for their contributions, but if this qualifies as “reputation-laundering,” I’m good with it.
The Need for Philanthropy
We can lament that nonprofits must depend on private giving for work that, in some cases, both Giridharadas and I would probably agree, should be supported by our government. We can point out, rightly, that students like those at Morehouse never should have had to take out loans in the first place, and we can and should work to change that, too.
But, in the meantime, here we are. We have pressing challenges to tackle and a federal government that wants to shift money away from Pell Grants to support NASA. More broadly, the current administration seems not only uninterested in helping the vulnerable in our society but is often outrightly hostile to them. I, too, wish we didn’t need philanthropy and nonprofits to step in, but we do.
Indeed, many of the nonprofit workers I have met over the past nearly two decades are people I would regard as unsung American heroes, doing extremely difficult work in challenging contexts. Far from being a part of a rigged system, they’re un-riggers – helping poor kids get access to the same quality summer programs as more affluent ones, or supporting the formerly incarcerated as they seek jobs. Their work is most definitely not a charade, as the subtitle of Girhardas’s book suggests. In fact, it couldn’t be more real.
We can lament, as critics often do, that the wealthy aren’t taxed more heavily and, again, I agree. But, meantime, here we are with wealthy people who have a desire to give back.
That instinct to give should be encouraged, not derided, as it increasingly is. It has touched most of our lives for the better. And it is widely seen as an important way to make a difference: More Americans give to charity than vote in our presidential elections.
Yes, it’s surely true that there has been too much ineffective philanthropy and there are too many ineffective nonprofits – the same could be said for government and business. It’s also true that some have mis-used or abused giving. Indeed, I have spent nearly two decades trying to constructively criticize philanthropy and push for greater effectiveness and impact.
So of course I believe that critique is healthy and we should engage it. (The organization I lead had Giridharadas as a speaker at our conference earlier this month.) But that doesn’t mean it’s all on target or that one journalist’s interviews with an unrepresentative subset of big donors should form the basis of sweeping generalizations. Our effort to improve philanthropy should be rooted in an accurate and factual appreciation of all it does – not caricature or a focus on outliers.
We should recognize and respect the work of nonprofits, and we should encourage, not deride, the instinct to give back.
Phil Buchanan is president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a columnist for the Chronicle, and author of the just-released “Giving Done Right: Effective Philanthropy and Making Every Dollar Count.”
