The art of giving: Philanthropy and Charity
Over the years, I’ve wondered how the words “philanthropy” and “charity” squared up against each other. Often, I get them confused as they both share the notions of empathy, generosity and giving. To clear up this issue, I did some digging and here is what I found out from querying friends and researching online.
“Philanthropy” is derived from the Greek words philos meaning love and anthropos meaning mankind. Or, simply put, it means “love for humankind.” According to the dictionary, its primary goal is to prevent and solve social problems. “Charity,” on the other hand, alleviates the suffering caused by the social ills.
As this is a subtle difference, here is how Catherine Zimmer further explains the disparity between the two terms in her insightful article on philanthropy: https://bit.ly/30QcAp1. Giving food to someone who is starving would be an example of charity whereas teaching the person who is hungry to grow his/her own food and become self-sufficient would be philanthropy.
CancerCare’s Executive Director, Patricia Goldsmith, provided her thoughtful take on the two words. “Charity tends be more immediate and emotional and typically tied toward a disaster or some form of relief. Philanthropy, by contrast, tends to be more strategic and focused on building and sustaining.”
A funny friend offered an even more straight forward explanation: charity is usually a small check while philanthropy is a big one!
The historic roots of giving
According to Zimmer, philanthropy has been around for thousands of years. Ancient peoples practiced it for a variety of reasons, some altruistic and some self-serving. For example, the ancient rulers and nobles of Egypt gave to the poor in the hopes of pleasing the gods and thus assuring a happy afterlife. Don’t we do the same thing today? While this concern for human welfare is positive, practicing philanthropy—meaning spending the big bucks—can also be a vehicle for personal prestige, power, and recognition. It can also fast track having the “gods,” or anyone of influence, pay closer attention to the donor.
The Bible, the Torah and the Koran all mention philanthropy. The concept is an integral part of many other religions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as part of Native American culture. In fact, Zimmer makes a strong case for Natives Americans being our country’s first philanthropists. If you remember your history, when the Europeans came to America, the Native Americans met them with food, materials and knowhow. This generosity allowed the new settlers to survive in a challenging, foreign environment.
The impact of religion, past and present, on both charity and philanthropy, is enormous. The practice of giving one-tenth of your income as a gift to God to help others dates to the early Hebrews. It is still a common practice in other religions. For many people, religious ethics are the gateway to both charity and philanthropy. This includes giving money as well as volunteering your time, talent and commitment to social good.
Leaning to give back at church
My first recollection of giving to help others started at a young age. My mother raised my sister and me in the Protestant faith. While our family didn’t have the means to tithe, Sharon and I were taught to give a portion of our meager weekly allowance to the church. As soon as we sat down in our pew on Sunday mornings, we would pull out one of the tiny, white envelops stacked tightly next to the hymnals and drop in our two quarters. Our version of childhood tithing made us feel more grown up. Not only were we helping others less fortunate then we, but we were also making amends to the “gods” for our many childish sins.
My mother was rigorous about her daughters attending bible school and singing in the choir at the main service. Ironically, this pattern was fundamentally the same way our twin god daughters, Zoe and Mei, were raised. Their mother, Connie Maneaty, believed in the importance of learning empathy, kindness and the awareness of others through participating in church.
In Connie’s words: “The children's program at St. James was a big part of this. They attended Sunday School pretty regularly when they were young. From my point of view this was not for religious training, but for the occasion to step back from the hubbub, pressures and routines and to talk about the moral of a story or the lessons to be learned from it.”
Connie’s daughters also volunteered in the soup kitchen on a monthly basis from eight grade through high school. “There was a big job to do, setting up, preparing, serving and cleaning up afterwards for about 90 guests. While I think they enjoyed the ‘doing’ of all of this, they enjoyed more the interactions and conversations they had with the guests.”
Learning lessons of giving at home
Outside of a religious institution, how else does one learn to be philanthropic and charitable? In most instances, you learn from your parents and people within your community. In fact, I learned in my research that charitable donors who learned about giving from their parents are 65 percent more likely to teach their own children to give.
In assessing how her daughters have turned out (now sophomores in college), Connie commented, “And I think they've developed into the people they are today by being around people who naturally exhibit the same attributes (of empathy and kind hearts). It stems from more than grand gestures and instead they have assimilated what they see others do naturally.”
Copyright lawyer Harvey Shapiro told me he first recalls seeing his father donate to his family’s synagogue. The donation was a generous gift, but his father insisted that it be kept anonymous. He had no intentions of having his name inscribed on any wall! To this day, Harvey follows that same concept of donating anonymously to his charities of choice.
Former stockbroker, Karen Olaf, said she learned to be generous with others following her father’s example, just as Harvey did. Whenever her family’s local Catholic Parish needed something, the priest knew he could pick up the phone and call her father, a physician, for help.
Reaching out to others for a helping hand
Karen said she learned how to reach out to others to support her own causes later in life based on her father’s philanthropic nature plus the skill set she learned at the American Stock Exchange. “I have no problem calling up an alumnus to help raise money for Bard, my alma matter. Or ask for a donation for the annual auction I organize at Saint Monica in Manhattan. What’s the worst that can happen? Someone says no?”
My friend and wine writer, Eunice Fried, explained that when her son Jonathon was growing up that she would escort him around their apartment building to collect donations of money, clothing, or signatures to support a variety of different causes. Eunice believed firmly in the importance of teaching her child kindness and the concern for the common good outside of a religious belief system.
Learning empathy and acts of generosity at school
Connie sent her daughters to Little Red School, a progressive private school in the Village. She selected this institution because of its emphasis on caring and community involvement and not just academic rigor. “As the school is social justice-oriented, there were many opportunities to volunteer for projects, big and small, including a weekend arts program held at LREI for students from other schools that did not have an arts program.”
Connie continued. “There were also projects in the curriculum that were social justice-oriented. For example, Mei went on one to the Four Corners to look at the need for clean water on the Navajo reservation and the challenges that still exist from uranium mining there in the 1970s.” These are complex, real-life situations and powerful lessons for a high school student to assimilate. It showed, too, that philanthropy isn’t just about giving money. Some of the most rewarding experiences with greatest impact come from volunteer work.
Reasons why people give
Being philanthropic does not always mean giving money. It also means offering your time and talent. I asked event planner Eleanor Sigona, one of the most generous and charitable people I know, how she developed the mindset of taking care of others. “I didn’t learn this from my family. My mother was too busy feeding and caring for her five children, but she was generous of nature. That I inherited from her. It makes me feel good when I donate to others either with my money or my time. “
According to Goldsmith, “Typically people who give to CancerCare are expressing their gratitude for our services or have known someone (family member, friend, coworker) who benefitted from our services. In addition, we are the recipient of bequests that often come as a total surprise to us. One notable example is a call I received from an estate attorney who indicated that CancerCare was a 50% beneficiary of an estate. It turns out that the bequest was made by a woman whose brother received eight sessions of counseling from us in 1989. She wrote us a check in 1990 for $10. The bequest to CancerCare was nearly $490,000.00.”
But is it not always about large sums of money. As Goldsmith explained, “About 18 months ago I received a letter from a 4th grade class in Alabama that was charged with choosing a charity and creatively raising money for that charity. They baked cookies, sold lemonade and had a garage sale. They sent a check for $127. To this day I do not know how they chose CancerCare.”
Paying it forward
Many American corporations are bullish on philanthropy and encourage their employees to also give to their charities of choice. My financial advisor at Bank of America explained their corporate mission is to pick a different category of charity to support over a period of several years. For example, previously it was financial literacy throughout the world. In order to be fair to the many disserving organizations, BA selects a new category periodically for their financial support.
In tandem with this, BA also has a matching grant policy whereby each of their 300,000 employees around the world can select their favorite charity. For every dollar the individual spends, BA will match it up to $5,000 per year.
When I ask my advisor what this meant to him, he replied that he felt fortunate to be working for one of the largest and most successful financial services in the world. This matching grant program allows him to target his giving by selecting an institution or cause personally meaningful to him.
Putting $10,000 per employee back into the community certainly has impact. I know because BA supports my charity of choice, CancerCare, on a regular basis through their matching grant initiative.
When my marketing/communications agency, Cornerstone Communications, was up and running, I instituted a company fundraiser for CancerCare where I’ve been a trustee for many years. This is a non-profit organization which provides social and financial services to people with cancer and their families.
To encourage their participation, my staff was asked to pick the project. CCL employees chose to create a fundraising “Bowling Ball,” a competition between members of the wine and food media. Not only did we, as a company, raise several thousand dollars for CancerCare, but we also elevated our visibility as a good corporate citizen, a position we greatly coveted within our wine industry community.
Putting corporate giving under a microscope
The secular notion of improving society by donating money dates to the time of the American Revolution. It still thrives today in America although its motives have recently been put under the microscope of social criticism. Thanks to social media, more and more people want to know the origin of the money being donated to good causes. The motives behind the donations are also being questioned. For tax deductions or social prestige? Or, merely to be part of an elite board which comes with a variety of advantages?
With this expanded optic of criticism, some cultural institutions, universities, hospitals and other non-profit organizations are fighting for their existence. They are challenged as a large portion of their operating budgets comes from wealthy individuals and corporations.
The New York Times recently ran a provocative article entitled “Wealth Keeps Museums Alive, and Galvanizes Activists, Too.” https://nyti.ms/30EJpVX. It traced the story of how wealthy art patron Warren Kanders—who was the vice chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art—resigned from the board. Massive protests and personal harassment of his family by an emboldened activist movement pushed him to take this decision. The protestors’ claim was that one of Kanders’ companies produced the tear gas recently used on asylum seeking migrants on our southern boarders.
Between a rock and a hard place
This scrutinizing of board members on moral issues is making cultural institutions, in particular, very nervous. With the absence of major public or governmental financial support for the arts, they are forced to rely on wealthy trustees. In the NYT’s article it showed that 40 percent of the board members at top museums in the country had gained their wealth from the financial community. This was followed by real estate, energy/ oil & gas and then media/publishing. If you dig deeply enough, chances are you’ll find questionable activities in each one of the contributing companies.
This is a difficult issue to resolve as without funding, not only cultural institutions, but also medical research, schools, and other socially minded charities will not be able to do their good work for us. It is a dilemma which most likely society will continue to dissect and debate for years to come. The chances of finding an acceptable solution to all parties concerned is highly unlikely. On the other hand, there is no doubt that we have all benefited in multiple ways from the generosity of corporate and private philanthropy. Their paying it forward has made our world a better place. We, too, can contribute. When you do, you’ll find, as Charles Broffman once said, “Philanthropy stirs the soul.”