A Path to Repair: What if Philanthropy Wasn’t About Giving Away Money, but Returning It?
'The Myths of Philanthropy' series curated by Elemental and published by the Center for Effective Philanthropy and Association of Charitable Foundations launched this week where individuals from a cross-section of philanthropy, including Lisa Pilar Cowan, share their analysis and practice insights to examine the ‘myths’ of philanthropy and ways that philanthropy could operate differently. Join us in exploring this timely series. https://cep.org/blog/a-path-to-repair-what-if-philanthropy-wasnt-about-giving-away-money-but-returning-it/
Individualism. Competition. Risk aversion. Short-termism. Scarcity. Presumed expertise. Many of the norms by which philanthropy operates perpetuate the very narratives our sector seeks to change. In this series on the CEP blog, contributors who represent a cross-section of philanthropy examine some of the common ‘myths’ by which philanthropy operates and ask, “what if?”, offering approaches, interventions, and new visions for how philanthropy could operate for a more just world.
When people learn that I work at a grantmaking foundation, they often say: it must be so much fun to give away money. And they are right – sort of. After my foundation makes a grant, our grantee partners often thank us. They send us personalized notes and acknowledge the foundation on their website or in remarks at events. All of this can feel good in the moment, but it also makes me uncomfortable. After all, I’m not giving them my own money. And while I’m glad to play a role in moving money from the foundation to the field, the longer I do this work, the more I wonder about the ethics of how we do it.
Sometimes I imagine a scenario and consider how it might make me feel. That scenario is this: What if a hundred years ago my grandfather’s wallet was stolen as he made his way home after getting paid for a week of hard work. What if the thief then put that money in the bank where it earned compound interest for the next century? And what if this year I got a call from that thief’s granddaughter telling me that I could apply to get some of that money back after writing her a proposal and going to her office for an interview about what I was planning to do with a negligible amount of my grandfather’s money? Would I be grateful if she decided to return that money to me? Would I write her a thank you note or put her name on the building that I purchased with the money?
Stolen Once
This is not an exact parallel to modern philanthropy, but it is pretty close to what happens when the Rockefeller Foundation funds climate work from their oil fortune or the Doris Duke Foundation uses the proceeds of the tobacco that was picked by enslaved people to fund scholarships at historically black colleges and universities. Philanthropy’s wealth does not depend on individual actor’s crimes so much as the structures that made the theft possible in the first place. Much of that initial thieving was done in ways that didn’t look like theft to most people at the time: redlining, exploitative banking and loans, unfair labor standards and working conditions, and environmental degradation.
Many of us who work in foundations are meting out the proceeds of extractive business endeavors, in arbitrary amounts over arbitrary periods of time, to address harms that were created and exacerbated by the unjust systems that enabled those fortunes to be built. This is as true for those who are channeling wealth gained through extraction into philanthropy today as it was for those who created the philanthropic sector in the Industrial Age.
Many of us who are charged with distributing the interest (or less!) on these stockpiles of wealth are trying to create less burdensome practices for how we redistribute this money. We are getting rid of Letters of Intent and making the proposal process easier. We are going to grant applicants’ offices instead of making them come to ours. But as we are trying to shift the power imbalance inherent in these relationships, we are largely silent about where the money has come from, and what our grantee partners’ relationship to it might be. The National Center for Responsive Philanthropy offers a keen analysis of this dynamic in their report, “Cracks in the Foundation.”
Stolen Twice
I don’t think there is any way to ‘fix’ philanthropy when its existence is predicated on an uneven distribution of resources, and it is designed to put a small number of private individuals into the position of making unilateral decisions about what’s in the public interest.
Beyond the original extraction of the amassed wealth, there is the second level of theft that foundations have committed by keeping the money that’s in their control out of the tax stream. By putting their money into a foundation or donor advised fund instead of paying taxes on it, the wealthy steal from the public commons where democratic decisions are made about how to allocate tax money, and instead build power in the areas where they alone choose to fund.
Take Bill Gates, who made his money by developing computer software and selling it for way more than it cost to make. His foundation is setting policy on public health and education. The Koch brothers, through their philanthropic institutions, are developing the legislative agenda for the Republican party. There is no accountability for the monies each has kept out of the tax stream, nor are there any regulations beyond the Internal Revenue Service standards for charitable giving for what they fund.
Returned
I wonder if there is a different story that we could be telling that could lead us to a different system to redistribute these funds. What would it look like if we were deliberate and transparent in talking about how philanthropic dollars were amassed? What if philanthropy operated in a way that looked more like returning than giving?
Rather than thinking of ourselves as strategic gatekeepers, we might think of ourselves as creative stewards who are trying to get stolen money back to its original owners. Doing so might shake our notion of ourselves as generous people, or as do-gooders, but the reward would be greater than what we now experience. Ideally, we are doing our stewarding work out of a duty to return and repair, rather than out of benevolence or generosity.
In reconceptualizing philanthropy as returning not giving, an avalanche of changes could occur: the fiscal responsibility of boards of directors would include tracing the origins of the endowment, and foundation staff would be responsible for seeking out grant recipients and calculating what they are owed. We could upend the often unarticulated but pervasive idea that Andrew Carnegie’s “The Gospel of Wealth” baked into philanthropy since the beginning: that rich people have the solutions to the problems that plague the rest of us.
In rethinking who ‘owns’ the money, we would also need to rethink who works in our foundations and who sits on the boards. I don’t think the granddaughter of the person who stole my grandfather’s wallet should be the one deciding where the wealth that’s accumulated from it should go. Instead, returning the money should be governed by the descendants of those from whom it was taken. In this way of redistributing money, we could spend our time sharing our learning and supporting the individuals and organizations who know what our society truly needs. I’d take that over a thank you note any day of the week.