A year ago, a Chronicle of Philanthropy op-ed championing pluralism — written by six ideologically diverse philanthropic leaders — sparked an unusual level of debate. “Together we recognize that philanthropy provides the greatest value when donors enable and encourage pluralism,” they wrote. That defense provoked a contrary view from those who regarded pluralism with ambivalence, even suspicion.
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This split didn’t surprise me. Last fall, I wrote a research report for the Urban Institute that outlined the deep roots of what I call “charitable cause pluralism” — the belief that the wide diversity of causes supported by donors is an inherent good that should be promoted by the norms and institutions associated with giving. For the last half century, charitable cause pluralism dominated how many people thought about philanthropy.
I noted, however, that an opposing viewpoint had emerged in recent decades, one that insists certain causes are more worthy of support than others. Two primary examples of this prescriptive approach to giving, what I term “charitable prescription,” are the effective-altruism movement and efforts to promote racial equity in grant making.
My report highlighted some examples of emerging, if sometimes awkward, accommodations between the two approaches. For instance, even as some effective altruists explicitly focus on funding certain causes over others, they continue to operate within a pluralistic system, arguing that they are simply trying to bring more attention to neglected causes. At the same time, many fierce defenders of pluralism have become comfortable acknowledging that some issues deserve more attention than others.
Since writing that report, I’ve been on the lookout for fresh examples of a productive meeting of pluralistic and prescriptive forces in philanthropy. In January in a Chronicle op-ed, Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman offered an intriguing idea along those lines. It deserves a closer look.
“Yes, and” Philanthropy
Urging more wealthy people to give to areas of “highest need,” Suzman called on them to embrace what he termed “yes, and” philanthropy. As he explained it:
“If donors make a gift to their alma mater, they should pair it with an equally large gift to a program that makes online textbooks free to all college students. Or they could pair a gift to a research institution in a wealthy country with a gift to fund research on infectious diseases that primarily affect poor people in developing countries.”
Through this pairing approach, “yes, and” philanthropy captures something distinctive about the current state of giving norms. Certainly, there’s more public pressure to consider equity when disbursing grants — and more public critique when a major donor neglects to do so. But for all this pushback, the philanthropy field hasn’t really shaken the belief that a donor’s identity and personal attachments are the wellspring of most giving and must be tapped for philanthropy to thrive.
(Disclosure: my work at the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy is supported by the Gates Foundation.)
“Yes, and” philanthropy seeks to synthesize both these strains of thought. At its most compelling, it would harness some of the energies and enthusiasm generated by those personal attachments, which lay at the heart of charitable cause pluralism — but it would do so in the service of charitable prescription.
What might “yes, and” philanthropy look like in practice? Similar past approaches have typically been adopted informally, at the discretion of the donor, and often in response to public pressure. Take, for instance, Michael Bloomberg’s record-breaking $1.8 billion donation to Johns Hopkins University for student financial aid. The 2018 gift received plenty of praise but also criticism for only benefiting those lucky enough to get into an elite institution with an already sizable endowment — padded, in part, by the $1.5 billion previously given by Bloomberg.
Then two years later, Bloomberg announced a $100 million gift to the medical schools of four historically Black colleges and universities. He made no explicit connection between the two gifts — this was not an official pairing — but it seemed likely that he had internalized some of the earlier critique.
“Yes, and” philanthropy could also be applied at the institutional, as opposed to donor, level. Grantee institutions could pair up so that a gift to one would necessarily trigger a gift to the other. One approach to build on might be the research partnerships developed between HBCUs and colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Princeton.
Philanthropic Sommeliers
Institutions fully committed to “yes, and” philanthropy could, potentially, make such pairings a condition of major gifts — those who want to give a million dollars or more to Yale would need to also donate to one of the university’s equity partners. In reality, the pairings would likely only be “recommended” by development offices, who could function like philanthropic sommeliers in matching gift to gift.
Finally, “yes, and” philanthropy could be the result of third-party curation by organizations that broker and verify the pairings. In fact, similar ideas involving what’s known as “donation bundling” already exist, although they’re focused on effective giving, not equity.
Two Harvard researchers, Lucius Caviola and Joshua D. Greene, conducted a series of bundling experiments in which donors were given “the option to split their donations between their personal favorite charity and an expert-recommended highly effective charity.” This led to 76 percent more dollars going to “highly effective” charities. Giving went up even further when match donations were offered at increasing rates as people donated more to a “highly effective” charity.
Caviola and Greene, who set up a website, “Giving Multiplier,” to put these principles into practice, clearly understood how an acknowledgment of charitable cause pluralism could be used to further efforts to prescribe giving to certain causes. “The primary challenge … is to encourage support for more effective causes while recognizing that feelings of personal connection are the primary drivers of altruism,” they wrote. “This approach, unlike simply directing people to more effective charities, aims to work with people’s motivations rather than attempting to displace them.”
Democratizing Giving
In other words, it embraces “yes, and” philanthropy — not just as a strategy for wealthy individuals but also to motivate small-scale giving.
Similarly, a fundraising experiment conducted by ideas42 in partnership with Charity Navigator aimed to motivate those who gave to large well-known organizations through the Charity Navigator platform to extend their generosity to smaller, equity-focused groups. The experiment, which was conducted during the 2023 giving season, sought to determine whether sending follow-up emails recommending similar, but smaller nonprofits — with or without a donation matching incentive — could stimulate further donations.
Although the data have not yet been fully analyzed, initial findings indicate that the experiment increased donor engagement for the recommended nonprofits, with some of the organizations receiving donations through the platform that had not received any through Charity Navigator during the 2022 giving season.
Additional factors to consider are how equity pairings would be constructed, and funds apportioned. A major donation to a wealthy, well-endowed institution sits at the center of multiple inequities — each a potential provocation for a pairing. Inequities, for instance, might be based on geography — within a city, state, country, or between countries and continents. Inequities also exist within and between causes and target populations.
An equity pairing could address any of these, or several of them, and by the same token, could end up ignoring some as well. So a gift to a major New York City research hospital could trigger a “yes, and” gift to another research hospital in the city — perhaps in a different borough — with a smaller endowment. Or it could prompt a gift to a hospital in a poorer region of the state or country, or to a hospital in a developing nation with even fewer resources. Given that medical institutions are particularly favored by mega-donors, perhaps the equity pairing would involve a cause they support less often, whether at the local, state, national or global level.
The nature of those pairings could affect how funds are divided up. In Suzman’s op-ed, he states that the “and” gift should be “equally large” as the initial gift fueled by the donor’s personal attachments. But perhaps it should be larger. A bigger gift would prevent “yes, and” giving from devolving into a token gesture toward equity — and potentially making the charitable landscape more inequitable.
Such challenges point to the limits of “yes, and” philanthropy: It doesn’t address the underlying power dynamics that define much of contemporary philanthropy, and doesn’t really take on giving norms that center donor interests and emotions. For those committed to overturning these norms, “yes, and” philanthropy represents half a loaf.
Which is precisely the point. It’s an accommodation and a compromise between two philanthropic approaches that are often in tension but are likely both here to stay. Given the massive fortunes of the nation’s wealthiest individuals, the deep tug of personal attachments that determine charitable choices, and the desperate needs of countless under-resourced organizations throughout the world, half a loaf can still end up providing a pretty substantial meal.
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