Charitable Giving Must Serve Public Needs

To the Editor:

I was glad to see the front page of The Chronicle’s September 4 issue giving such high visibility to tough questions about philanthropy and nonprofits that the U.S. Congress is now asking (“Paying It Forward — and Back”). Those of us involved in the nonprofit world for any period of time (including staff members of The Chronicle) know these are very old questions — questions which those who lead our major nonprofit institutions should long ago have taken concrete actions to address. Now, as many have long warned would happen, government actors are taking the matter once again into their own hands.

I am a researcher who has been writing about philanthropy for 25 years, and I have served and continue to serve on the boards of several local and national charitable and nonprofit research organizations. Those of us who as scholars have spent our careers doing hard-nosed critical analysis about what philanthropy actually does, instead of touting an idealized mythology about what it should or might do, have called attention over and over to the facts repeated in this issue of The Chronicle (and other issues over the years).

While I do not think that all or even most of philanthropy should go to the poor or to organizations that serve them, how can anyone who cares either about philanthropy or about the public good possibly justify the long-known and uncontested fact that the great majority of philanthropy goes to the richest of organizations and institutions, often those to which the donor belongs or from which they have received or currently receive benefits?

And how can anyone possible justify tax deductions (taken from what otherwise would be the public treasury) for “charitable gifts” that sit in the vaults of commercial donor-advised funds serving no public benefit whatsoever, or gifts that add and add to already-astronomical endowments whose yearly income addresses no public need?

While donors (both individual and institutional) should always be free to give money to whomever and whatever they wish — yes, it is their money — the public must also be free to not give financial benefits for “charitable giving” unless it genuinely meets some democratically defined public need.

I would have much preferred that this and other pressing issues in the field be addressed by nonprofit leaders themselves instead of by government mandate, but perhaps the time for that has passed and now we must look to our elected officials to do what nonprofit leaders have failed to do.

Susan Ostrander
Professor of Sociology
Tufts University
Medford, Mass.