April 14, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Baltimore
Fund raising is “a noble profession,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in a keynote address here to the annual meeting of the Association of Fundraisng Professionals. But, he said, upholding that role for the profession means that fund raisers must do more to fight poverty and injustice rather than reinforcing the status quo.
In South Africa, the Archbishop said, “much of philanthropy is regarded with some kind of ambivalence.”
Often the missionary was the advance person for expansionism and imperialism, he recalled. “When the missionaries came, they had the Bible, we had the land,” he said. Later on, “they had the land, and we had the Bible.”
Most charitable organizations fight against unjust conditions, he said, but plenty of groups also try to make the needy more comfortable with their plight rather than helping them out of it.
“Our world is pockmarked with the disease of inequality and inequity,” the Archbishop said. “That is a recipe for instability and resentment.”
Terrorist attacks in recent years, he said, have illustrated to the world that “that there is no defense system, however expensive and sophisticated, that can be guaranteed to guard against the resentment and anger of those left behind.”
Fund raisers, he said, “have an important calling. Philanthropy is not to get the poor into acceptance of their lot, it is to make them equal partners in setting agendas. Responsible philanthropy is to help change situations of injustice and squalor.”
