Need Is Up, But Giving Is Down

This is the season for giving. Each year at this time, Americans open their wallets for good causes. Last year, Americans parted with more than $200 billion, with nearly nine out of 10 people writing a check to help someone, somewhere. And almost all that giving occurred between Thanksgiving and the year’s end.

This year, all bets are off. People gave generously to the victims of Sept. 11 (although all that giving combined was less than 1% of the total amount of charity in 2000), but other kinds of giving remain uncertain. Nonprofit organizations around the country are concerned about whether Americans will give less overall this year. Some local groups are already hurting from a decline in contributions at a time when need is up. The Philanthropic Giving Index--a national barometer of generosity--has dropped by more than 8% in the last six months. But I’m still optimistic. A recent Center on Philanthropy study looked at how Americans responded to 13 major crises in the past and found that when national security is shaken, people tend to rally, writing more and bigger checks. Researchers call this a “halo effect.”

I was blessed with money and opportunity. From an early age, I knew that my circumstances demanded I contribute to society. At first, my philanthropy was motivated by guilt, but I don’t think “guilt” is such a bad word--particularly if it results in generosity. My mother, a fixture of Minneapolis philanthropic circles for 50 years, always managed to make people feel as if she’d done them a favor by convincing them to part with their money. And, in a way, she had. Giving, I’m convinced, is as important for the giver as for the recipient.

Year after year, surveys show that the poor give a greater percentage of their income to charity than the rich. We constantly see examples, like the group of inmates in Louisiana making no more than 20 cents an hour who raised $11,000 for the families of victims of the World Trade Center attack. And I can tell you from experience how hard it is to raise money among those who have money. As far as I’m concerned, those people should feel more guilt. Why don’t they follow Andrew Carnegie’s maxim: “He who dies rich dies disgraced.”

For nonprofits raising money this year, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Need is rising at the same time government support for the poor is falling. But it’s also important to recognize that philanthropy is only part of the solution. Charity is only a short-term approach to problems that need long-term, sustained solutions. As Martin Luther King Jr. noted, philanthropy, while commendable, shouldn’t cause us to overlook the economic injustice that makes it necessary.

In the wake of Sept. 11, it is even more clear that charity alone can’t meet the needs of bereaved, jobless, terrorist-slammed New Yorkers. Increasingly over the last three decades as government has bailed on its responsibilities, philanthropy has had to pick up the slack. When a government program is underfunded or eliminated, it falls on private charities or faith-based institutions to clean up the mess.

But philanthropy and the nonprofits philanthropy supports simply don’t have the resources to deal with large-scale projects. Nor is it what philanthropy does well. Smart philanthropy, like smart private enterprise, can tap the best of the American entrepreneurial spirit. It can take risks with its giving that government can’t. It can be bold and innovative, providing seed money to worthy experiments. It can develop and test new programs to deliver services to people who need them. But when these programs become successful, government needs to enlarge them. Philanthropy can think big, but it can’t do big. Yes, of course, the government isn’t always a model of efficiency, but Sept. 11 has demonstrated that over-funded charities can suffer from the same red tape, indignities and inefficiencies that plague government.

In 1976, when I began my adult sojourn in philanthropy, I thought we would have changed the world by now. I’ve learned that changing the world takes many lifetimes. But our failure to make change more rapidly should never mean that we stop giving our all. We must never lose sight of what we have to give, how we can help and what we have to offer of ourselves.

The truth is, most Americans are philanthropists. You don’t have to be a Bill Gates or a George Soros or an Eli Broad. But you do have to earn those wings if you want to be an angel. Open your hearts, open your minds, open your wallets. Philanthropy is the work and joy of every season.

*

Sarah Pillsbury is co-founder of the Liberty Hill Foundation.