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Because Things Go Wrong: Philanthropy as a Response to the Human Problematic

Philanthropy appears in some form in all cultures and civiliza- tions and through all recorded history. It seems there is something about the world, and about humans in this world, that calls philanthropy into being. Philanthropy is a response. But to what? What is it about the world that causes us to respond philanthropically, that makes philanthropy seem to be a reasonable response?

The purpose of this chapter is to begin to establish the larger context for philanthropy, the general condition of the world—what we will call the human problematic—to which philanthropy is a response. We follow the previous chapter’s summary of our broad conception of philanthropy with an exploration of how that conception fits into the larger world and how it relates to some fundamental questions about humans. We believe un- derstanding these issues is essential to understanding why philanthropy ex- ists—why it emerges as a human response to the human condition in the world.

While we will be making some bold claims about elementary features of the human condition and human nature, this chapter is not so much an exercise in presenting universal knowledge as an exercise in conceptual generalization and practical philosophy. Like much of this book, it consid-

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ers fundamental characteristics and causes of voluntary action for the pub- lic good in human societies, but tries not to lose sight of the fact that this philanthropic action is always expressed in ways that are patterned by cul- ture and history. Philanthropy is found everywhere as a response to in- evitabilities of the human condition, yes, but what is defined as an appro- priate or conventional philanthropic response is different in Elizabethan England than in Maoist China.

The Human Problematic

Like it or not, we humans face difficult problems. This means there are questions that humans everywhere and always must attempt to answer. These fundamental problems and questions are the inevitable reality we call the human problematic. The human problematic is defined by two other basic realities: the first is the human condition; the second is human nature. It is this human problematic that sets the context for why philanthropy ex- ists in the world.

Philanthropy exists because of two truths about the human condition: things often go wrong, and things could always be better.

First, things often go wrong. Systems fail. Natural and human, social and political, economic and biological systems fail, and as a consequence hu- mans suffer. As we grow up, we all learn by experience as well as by obser- vation that in many situations individuals and societies are overwhelmed by circumstances either natural or man-made, that we sometimes can’t cope without help. It is through no lack of will or desire or moral fiber that Ethiopians die of starvation. It is through no ethnic flaw or cultural decay that people find themselves swept away by a tsunami. We are all vulnera- ble to suffering, even if some of us are more vulnerable to certain types of suffering than others. Philanthropy is an act of response to this inevitable suffering; we shouldn’t forget there are other possible responses. Also, we shouldn’t forget that sometimes what is going “wrong” is disputed or that the definition of wrong varies across cultures, groups, and times. Whether husbands routinely beating their wives is an example of something going wrong or not depends on when and where and whom you ask, and this will then influence whether philanthropy or any other intervention is called for. In fact, philanthropic action itself—the exercise of the moral imagina- tion—is often part of the process of declaring which “conditions” are de- fined as “problems.” What we do to make things better reveals what we consider to be going wrong.

Second, things could always be better. That is, humans can imagine ways in which life could be more agreeable, comfortable, congenial, pleasant,

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fruitful, productive, profitable, etc. Philanthropy is an expression of this human moral imagination that seeks to improve the quality of life. (In the next chapter, we will see how this belief that things can be made better through philanthropy fits with a philosophy we call “meliorism.”) Of course, “could always be” does not necessarily imply “will always be.” Phi- lanthropy is about trying to make things better, sometimes in the face of dauntingly unfavorable odds.

These two features of the human condition set the stage for humans to respond to problems, and the philanthropic tradition is the history of this re- sponse. In the stream of this tradition usually called “charity,” we respond to suffering and distress and acute need. In the stream of this tradition usu- ally called “philanthropy,” we respond to our awareness of ways we can im- prove the quality of life. Both streams mingle in a shifting current with the political forces of order and the economic forces of the market, all adapt- ing to one another and to the natural course of the river of humanity.

What makes the philanthropic response to the human condition diffi- cult is that the human condition is uncertain. Many of the most funda- mental threats to human well-being are far beyond human control. The media make it possible for us to observe the incredible power and destruc- tiveness of routine natural phenomena like earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and volcanic eruptions. But humans themselves are capable of behavior that tests our most generous definition of the human; we often make the human condition worse. We delude ourselves if we forget that barbarism is usually rationalized as necessary and that this usually leads to acts of even worse barbarism. Most wars, civil and otherwise, contain evidence of this. And, of course, the media now makes it possible for us to observe these acts of barbarism, regardless of where they occur.

Human nature—the other reality contributing to the human problem- atic—sometimes leads us to make things worse. However, it is also human nature, in part, that impels us to respond philanthropically. Yes, it is hard to deny what many people believe, that egoism and self-interest are “just human nature.” But we need not deny this in order to accept that the op- posite quality, altruism, is also “just human nature.” Concern for others is a defining characteristic of humans. We see this illustrated time and again in the philanthropic response to the human condition.

One conclusion to draw from all of this is that life is problematic. Utopia is a useful way of thinking how things might be better; it is not use- ful to expect that things will ever be perfect or even settled. A problematic life in a problematic universe is apparently inevitable. That humans, both individually and in society, are also problematic seems to be another in-

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evitable reality. The combination of those different kinds of problems often leaves us trying to make sense of evil and misfortune—and of good- ness and joy. And we often make sense of these things through our philan- thropic response.

Perhaps it is useful to pause and summarize this argument about the context for philanthropy before going into it more deeply.

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1. Things often go wrong; things could always be better. 2. Philanthropy is one response to those aspects of the human condition,

a response that is essential to our understanding of our human nature. 3. The human condition creates often unpredictable opportunities and

challenges. 4. Human nature responds in often unpredictable ways to alleviate

suffering and to improve the quality of life. 5. The unpredictable quality of the human condition and human nature

constitute the human problematic to which philanthropy responds.

In the sections that follow, we explore more deeply the specific ele- ments of this argument. We discuss the human condition in terms of our life in the natural world and in terms of our “life chances” in the social world, and then we examine what it means to say that concern for others is part of our human nature. Once we have established philanthropy as a human response to the human problematic, though, we will argue that philanthropy is only one possible response. Self-help, mutual aid, and gov- ernment assistance are others. But philanthropy is distinctive and neces- sary.

Life in a Natural World

Humans exist in a physical and material world, in turn a habitat in a larger universe, and throughout that universe external forces impinge on human affairs in often unpredictable ways. From a human perspective, the natural world is an uncertain place, often friendly but also often hostile. From a geophysical perspective, earthquakes are perfectly normal phenomena that result from the movement of tectonic plates; from a human point of view, earthquakes are often catastrophes. Like earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, famines, and plagues are usually seen as “evils” of human existence, some of the consequences of living in a less than perfect world. They cause vast loss of life as well as other, sometimes unbearable

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costs. For example, the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 was com- pletely understandable—though extremely rare—from a scientific point of view, but utterly devastating in terms of human suffering. Beyond the in- calculable cost of perhaps 300,000 or more lives, the economic, environ- mental, and psychic costs of this natural event are staggering. No more dramatic illustration that the human condition is uncertain need ever be presented for us to understand this truth.

Such “failures” of a natural system are opportunities for philanthropic initiative. Some of our best and most honorable philanthropic work is done under the banner of humanitarian assistance when natural systems mal- function. Our worldview is likely to assume that human reactions to nat- ural disaster and human suffering will be roughly the same wherever dis- asters occur. We know that people will suffer, will find themselves beyond their ability to cope, and may call for help from anyone, even people half a world away.

Natural disasters are part of the human condition, part of the physical environment in which we must live. But that physical environment also has a remarkable set of chemical and biological characteristics that make what we call human life possible. Disasters exist alongside the fecundity of the soil, the rainfall that nourishes it, and the sunshine that rescues us from winter, both physically and psychologically. Despite the sometimes over- whelming scale of destruction and loss of life, humans generally seem to accept the human condition and to find the struggle for survival worth- while.

So the human condition involves existence in a world that permits sur- vival, growth, and development, but also a world in which things often go wrong. While Earth sustains human life, it also makes human life difficult. Not everything goes wrong, and things do not always go wrong, but the human condition is one in which many humans find survival difficult, growth inadequate, and development impossible.

We should also remember that humans are expected to survive in the most diverse physical circumstances, and the different natural environ- ments in which people live have something to do with their social and cul- tural condition. Generally there is enough stability of environmental con- ditions that most people are able to accommodate to severe environments and live fulfilling lives. Or so we sometimes think, when our empathy is great enough for us to imagine how their lives could be fulfilling under such severe conditions. This raises important questions for philanthropy: Who are we to decide that some people are so miserable in their circum- stances that they need help—our help—to improve their condition or to

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escape from it? Whose definition of what is “going wrong” here should de- termine the actions taken? And, again, what business is it of ours?

There may be a tendency to think of natural disasters as simply “nat- ural,” that is, not mediated by human intervention. But during the famine in Ethiopia in 1984 we became aware of how political and economic action (or inaction) can turn a natural lack of rainfall from a manageable burden into social chaos. And, tragically, most of us watched on television as the delay in human response to Hurricane Katrina multiplied the suffering. The lesson here is that human systems malfunction; all systems do. John Gall even claims that any large system is going to be operating most of the time in “failure mode.”1 In Ethiopia, the political-economic system failed and contributed to famine because of tribal conflict and other problems. Similarly, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the newly indepen- dent republics were faced with a legacy of environmental pollution that was much worse than in Western Europe and in the United States, in part because of decades of governmental neglect and suppression of those few who dared to advocate environmental responsibility in this system. And, of course, humans alone—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not—create disasters that have catastrophic effects akin to natural disasters; they even hijack planes and fly them into crowded buildings.

With those bad examples in mind, we know, too, that although human interventions to reshape or weaken natural forces often fail, they also often succeed. The damage from earthquakes causes immediate suffering but sometimes leads to new building materials and improved architectural and engineering design. The air in Pittsburgh is cleaner, after years of damage to the public health, thanks in part to some citizens who could envision a city with clear skies instead of a city with skies thick with industrial pollu- tion—and because humans developed the technology to remove more of the toxic material before it escaped into the air.

The point is that while humans often can and do make their lives worse than natural conditions alone would impose on them, humans also have the capacity to correct nature, reduce the severity of biological accidents, and eliminate some diseases altogether. Very often, they do this through philanthropy.

In sum, the Earth is a place where humans react to nature in complex ways—political, economic, and moral—sometimes to improve the human condition and sometimes to make it worse. The idea of “progress” assumes that on the whole the human condition has been improved through these human reactions, that the human condition is better now than it was in the past largely because of human interventions. Philanthropic responses to

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the human condition, in particular, often occur under the assumption that people in extreme circumstances, at home or abroad, would be better off with our help, whether they ask for it or not.

Life Chances

The human condition involves more than humans responding to a natural world. It also involves humans dealing with the reality of widely varying “life chances” in the social and economic world. The concept of life chanc- es comes to us from Ralf Dahrendorf, a German-born sociologist whose long and illustrious career included a stint as the head of the London School of Economics and service on the board of the Ford Foundation. Dahrendorf borrowed the idea of life chances from Max Weber, who used the term in his massive Economy and Society as a way to describe someone’s class position.2

Dahrendorf expanded on Weber’s view and claimed that life chances are the social conditions in which individuals realize their potential.3 Life chances is one way to talk about the varying circumstances in which hu- man beings find themselves. The notion of the human condition grows more problematic when we think, for instance, of the contrasting life chances of an eight-year-old girl in Pyongyang in 2005 and her counter- part in Peoria.

Apart from the qualities of the individual, life chances often seem to be the result of a dice game in which others throw the dice. A child born with spina bifida in the United States in the twenty-first century has a good chance of living; born in an earlier time, the child would have died. In ei- ther case, the choice is not the infant’s to make. The life chances of most Americans are materially superior to those of most Rwandans, Kurds, or Haitians. Actuarial tables projecting the life expectancy of a white male born in South Bend, Indiana, in 1926 would reveal a longer life expectancy than if that same person had been born in South Bend fifty or a hundred years earlier. Some people are born into situations in which nutrition will be inadequate while others will be born into circumstances in which good food is never a question; for the latter, the more pressing problem may be whether the parents will be able to afford college tuition. The Physical Quality of Life Index developed by the Overseas Development Council once identified Sri Lanka as the most desirable place in the world to live based on measures of literacy rate, infant mortality, and life expectancy. The irony is that Sri Lanka has also been the site of an endless and mur- derous ethnic civil war.

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Dahrendorf explored two aspects of life chances that influence their significance for us: ligatures and options. Ligatures are the ties that bind us to a place, to a culture, and to people. Options are the choices we are free to make. Ligatures are critically important in helping people to know their place in the scheme of things; membership, as Michael Walzer and others have observed, is an important social value because it meets a profound human need.4 Options are variously available—for example, girls have dif- ferent options than boys as they grow up.

The life chances presented to Mozart included his exploitation by his father, Leopold, and participation in a rich and productive musical culture in eighteenth-century Europe. The ligatures binding Mozart to his father, like the musical conventions of the time, were strong enough to affect his otherwise boundless creativity. Mozart’s life chances also included the lifestyle of the court and the aristocracy, with the problematic assistance of patrons and benefactors. (The problematic of philanthropy as patronage is an important theme in the history of the arts.) An eight-year-old Nigerian boy who was in the secessionist province of Biafra in 1968 may have suf- fered brain damage as a result of severe malnutrition during the blockade of his country; his modern counterparts in Rwanda and Burundi and the Darfur region of Sudan number in the tens of thousands. Their life chanc- es—the social conditions in which they realize their potential—are as re- mote from us in the United States as Mozart’s.

The movement toward modernity may be seen as the world of options being offered more and more to those bound by a world of ligatures. An essential difference between the premodern world and the modern world is that the former was dominated by ligatures and the latter by options.

The point here is that philanthropy is a response to the human reality of life chances, and philanthropy is usually on the side of options. A familiar principle of philanthropy is to help people help themselves. Very often peo- ple want to help themselves by changing their life chances, by improving their options, for example, by escaping prejudice and stereotyping and op- pression in all its forms. Philanthropy is often in the middle of these efforts, usually on the side of options and usually seeking to make things better.

Through the exercise of the moral imagination by some, the life chances of others have been dramatically expanded: women can now aspire to be political leaders; minorities can aspire to higher education; children in wheelchairs can attend whichever school they want. Working conditions for women, children, and the disabled have been improved to resemble the circumstances of healthy adult males (that is, the population with, histori- cally, the best life chances in the workplace).

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The test of the impact of the moral imagination on life chances is often at the margins. The moral imagination has to expand to include those hith- erto excluded, and it has to protect the valid claims of those included orig- inally. In order to enhance the life chances of some individuals, rights read- justments may require a painful reduction of the rights of others.

Taking this analysis further, though, we must acknowledge that, in some cases, philanthropy is about strengthening ligatures rather than ex- panding options. This is true for those repulsive associations we would rather not have to include under the philanthropic umbrella, such as the Ku Klux Klan. KKK members, unfortunately, believe they are engaging in “voluntary action for the public good” by limiting the options of people with certain ligatures such as membership in any race but white. But in other cases, philanthropy is used in a positive way as a means of celebrat- ing ligatures such as one’s racial heritage or hometown. However, when we act philanthropically to celebrate our ties to a people, a place, or a cul- ture—for example, by joining the National Association for the Advance- ment of Colored People or giving money to our hometown library—we are often simultaneously acting to increase options, to improve either our life chances or those of someone who will soon grow up with ligatures sim- ilar to ours.

In sum, we can see that “life is problematic” in another sense: people have different life chances. This, too, is part of the human condition; this, too, is a reality that calls philanthropy into existence. One way we often talk about this part of the human condition is in terms of “fairness” and “justice.” Some people are disadvantaged or suffer in ways that seem un- fair. The popular way of ducking that harsh fact is to repeat the maxim often attributed to John F. Kennedy: “No one said life has to be fair.” The question for us is whether philanthropy would be necessary in a just soci- ety. We will never know. Society is not just, and that is one reason why phi- lanthropy exists.

Human Nature

At one point in Plato’s Republic, Socrates interrupts his dialogue with Ade- imantus and his companions to observe:

I think we have neglected one thing in particular. What? We have not yet given a full accounting of human desires, nor have we suffi-

ciently described their nature. We must consider these matters; otherwise, our in- quiry will remain incomplete.5

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Plato is talking about how the tyrannical man evolves from the demo- cratic man, saying we must understand human nature to understand this evolution. But today he might as well be talking about how someone like Mother Teresa evolves. We say she is an exception just as we say the tyrant is an exception (of the opposite kind, of course), but exceptions to what? Perhaps they seem exceptional because they don’t fit our “on the average” notion of human behavior, what we usually have in mind when we use the term human nature. Humans have some traits in common, traits that define humans and bring out their differences from other creatures. Understand- ing philanthropic man requires understanding something of these com- mon human traits.

But how do we decide what these traits are? In a twist on Plato’s ap- proach, James Madison in the Federalist Papers, Number 51, suggests a method for defining human nature when he asks, “What is government it- self but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”6 That is, behind the words in the text of a constitution lie assumptions about what people are like, how they will behave, and what their tendencies and preferences are. Sometimes constitutions are useful as guides to human nature, and sometimes they are not. Read the Soviet Constitution of 1936 for evidence of the latter.

We think what Madison says of the ubiquitous human institution of government can also be said of another such institution, philanthropy. Phi- lanthropy, too, is a pretty good reflection on human nature. The philan- thropic tradition is built on assumptions about human nature, but more important, it reveals some of our shared human traits.

As many philosophers have argued, it is probably foolish to put too much stock in comprehensive notions of human nature. Human nature is increasingly under attack as a concept. Theories of human nature are quite reasonably thought to be inadequate to capture the essential diversity of humanity. And most scholars—us included—prefer to think about human nature as providing basic capacities and the underlying “hardware” that are then conditioned and directed into thought and action through the “soft- ware” of socialization. So the universal “human desires” that Plato identi- fies are always expressed in culturally specific ways that change over time; we might all feel compassion or sadness naturally, but we must learn how to be compassionate or to express our sadness in ways that others in our world will understand and accept.

Human nature is a useful concept because most people believe there are common traits that can be used to define humans—in fact, what these common traits are is something we are taught by our culture. For instance,

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most of us think humans are capable of a range of emotions, but we are also blessed with the capacity to reason and reflect on existence, meaning, and life. Humans are clever and at a decisive comparative advantage in most of their relations with other creatures. However, we should remem- ber the idea from the introductory chapter that a concept is a “multiplic- ity.” Human nature is a multiplicity.

Two thoughts about human nature—at least human nature as most of us conceive it most of the time—are particularly important to understand- ing philanthropy. The first and most important point has already been mentioned: that concern for others is a defining characteristic of humans. The second point is that human nature provides us with a capacity for both good and evil, virtue and vice. (The emphasis on “capacity” here is impor- tant, of course, when we remember the diversity of human variation and differences in the expression or fulfillment of our capacity.)

To be human means to be in some way able to respond to the needs of others, to have the ability to get beyond the self. Human nature includes a capacity to love one’s neighbor, to follow the Golden Rule, to emulate the Good Samaritan. Humans have the capacity to recognize need in the cir- cumstances of others and to reach out to them, even strangers and ene- mies, to offer assistance of some sort. If we learn of someone who seems utterly indifferent to the pain or suffering of others, it is common to speak of him as “inhuman.”

Whether the capacity of concern for others is the result of millions of years of evolution, or the result of ethical evolution across human culture, or perhaps a gift from God, is a disputed question. We know that what we call “altruism” is practiced in some form in cultures around the globe—it is what anthropologists would call a “cultural universal”—even though the specific forms of showing concern for others vary by culture. For thou- sands of years, millions have found happiness and meaning through allevi- ating the suffering of others. Across languages and histories and wars and plagues and triumph and tragedy, there is evidence of human effort to lessen agony and to encourage happiness.7

When we think of concern for others as a fundamental human trait, we are not surprised when it shows up in many aspects of human affairs, in- cluding some aspects of life that are usually thought of only in nonphilan- thropic or even antiphilanthropic terms. For example, the military some- times engages in humanitarian relief efforts; governments admit refugees because “it is the right thing to do”; business enterprises contribute to local schools, etc. Hospitality to strangers, a form of philanthropy more widely honored in the ancient world than in the modern, appears in societies that

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are not notably religious as well as those operating under a strict religious edict to “help others.”

Most of us make a provisional choice and decide that human nature permits altruistic behavior even though most human behavior seems to be guided by self-interest. Sometimes we will recall sophomoric debates about whether there can be anything other than self-interest. Some will even feel they are being particularly clever in exposing someone else’s high-mind- edness as simply another form of egoism: “You only help her because it makes you feel good about yourself.” But sometimes we encounter exam- ples of human behavior that simply cannot be explained as anything but one human helping another out of concern for their well-being. Wesley Autrey, a New York construction worker, was trying to help a college stu- dent at the subway station who was suffering a seizure. The student sud- denly fell down onto the subway tracks, and Autrey jumped to his aid and covered him with his body just before the oncoming train screeched to a halt over them. He later explained, “I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I felt was right.”8

On the whole, we learn from experience that people are capable of wonderful as well as appalling things. That there is abundant evidence of misanthropic kinds of behavior is undeniable, but the presence of evil does not imply the absence of good. This brings us to the second point: human nature endows us with the capacity to behave in ways that are regarded as good as well as ways that are called evil, to exhibit qualities considered virtues as well as vices. If altruism is a humanizing capacity, it competes with our other dehumanizing and inhumane capacities.

In western civilization, we have inherited a useful checklist for thinking about the admirable and despicable qualities that seem to appear in most of us—the seven “theological and cardinal virtues” and the seven “deadly sins.” In the nineteenth century, most educated people, religious or not, would have been able to tick those off. The seven virtues are faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. The seven vices are pride, envy, wrath, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lust. The specific items on the two lists have been debated in the West for a couple of thousand years, but lately they seem to have passed from our cultural heritage; few young people or adults can name more than a couple. (Modern Christians do a little better remembering the Ten Commandments, but not much. As a fa- ther once shouted after his son, “Obey the Ten Commandments! Any two!”) We mock such devices these days, but variations on them are enor- mously popular. Note the success of William Bennett’s The Book of Virtues and Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.9

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Eastern religious traditions and cultures have comparable lists that may have some specific differences but are largely similar in the qualities identified as either good or bad—and the lists are also similar in consid- ering all the qualities as “human.” Hope, justice, envy, avarice—all these characteristics seem to be always within us as humans, struggling to con- trol behavior.

Philanthropy is on the list of virtues under the name of charity, but more broadly, philosophical thinking about virtues and vices can help us understand philanthropy.10 For example, human nature considered as a ten- sion between virtues and vices helps us to understand why we can know the right thing to do and fail to do it. The Greeks called this “weakness of will.” Aristotle discussed the virtues on a scale from excess to deficiency and found true virtue in the middle.11 Others take exception, of course, be- cause the pattern does not work out as neatly as it should: excessive cour- age is what we call true heroism, for example. Finding the right place be- tween generosity and avarice requires the ambiguous virtue of prudence. But prudence can be a barrier when risk is called for. Philanthropic foun- dations are frequently criticized for being unwilling to take risks on new ideas or on people whose social credit ratings are low.

Virtue and vice as traits of human nature help us to understand the problematic quality of philanthropy.12 We can use the assumptions under- lying those lists to anticipate what we will do and what others will do when we come together in some philanthropic enterprise. Pride can stand in the way of charity. Pride can shift the focus from the recipient to the donor, and it can prevent would-be recipients from accepting help from others, because it is difficult to accept a position that implies inferiority. Again, this is all part of the context for the philanthropic response to the human prob- lematic.

The American philosopher Arthur O. Lovejoy, well known and respect- ed in the first half of the twentieth century for his important contribution to the field known as the “history of ideas,” wrote a little book entitled Re- flections on Human Nature.13 Lovejoy studied the writings of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theologians and philosophers looking for their un- derstandings of human nature, and he concluded that the most important factor in human motivation was the need for praise. Often praise is all we have to give in return for the good things that people do. However, as Lovejoy noted, while the need for praise motivates people to higher levels of performance and service, if they seem to need praise too much, we deny it to them. They commit the sin of pride, if you will. Praise, like respect

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and honor, is a gift that must be earned but cannot be commanded or claimed.

We praise Mother Teresa not because we ourselves have needed or felt her healing and compassionate touch but because we admire what she did for the poor and dying. In many ways she symbolizes some of the things we value most, even though we don’t—or can’t—emulate her behavior. She cultivated her capacity for virtue and suppressed her capacity for vice. Mother Teresa said that her motivation was not to receive praise but to serve God.14 If she did seek our praise, would we think less of her?

These things are of some consequence in a culture of philanthropy that rarely has financial rewards to offer and is always on the edge of cheapen- ing praise by giving it too readily. History finds ways to offer praise over the centuries to people whose tarnished reputations might have left them in neglected graves. Andrew Carnegie has managed to win a claim on us despite the stories of his acceptance of brutality in conflicts with labor. Much the same has been true of John D. Rockefeller. On the other hand, it seems entirely proper to praise those caring for AIDS victims in Africa, or volunteers at inner-city homeless shelters, as “heroes” or even as “saints.” Sometimes we want to find reasons for praise when they aren’t re- ally there, but other times praise is both needed and deserved. If heroes need praise, we need heroes.

This discussion of human nature as part of the context for philanthropy leads to a simple conclusion: Philanthropy is a means of getting closer to our own humanness and the humanness of others. Philanthropy is a labo- ratory of vice and virtue, a laboratory for the study of human nature at its best—and sometimes at its most disappointing.

Responses to the Human Problematic

Our discussion so far has focused on the nature of the human problematic to which philanthropy is a response. Things often go wrong; things could always be better. And philanthropy is often how we go about making things better—or at least making them less bad. But we still need to con- sider why and when philanthropy is the best response, or at least a pre- ferred or appropriate response.

We shouldn’t forget that philanthropy is only one particular sort of re- sponse. There are other possible responses, including (although we don’t discuss it here) ignoring the problems. To understand what is distinctive about the philanthropic response and what its particular role is, we must

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think about the range of possible responses. In doing so, we will also de- velop a way of thinking about the allocation of responsibility in society more generally.

We start with the following scenario: Imagine that someone for whom you have no formal responsibility comes asking for assistance, with no promise of anything in return. Such a scenario—begging for help, asking for alms—is as old as recorded history. This would plausibly be considered a request for a philanthropic response, according to how we’ve defined philanthropy. In fact, responding charitably to a direct request for assis- tance could be considered the most fundamental, primal act of philan- thropy. But remember that we want to use this scenario to think about the range of possible responses, not merely philanthropy. Assume that your response is up to you, and that if you give something, it will be voluntary, not coerced, and that you will derive no financial benefit from your re- sponse.

If it is helpful, you might make the scenario even more specific. Think of being solicited by one of the panhandlers who are, sadly, present on the streets of most every modern city. Few situations trouble our consciences more directly, especially the consciences of young people, than being asked for help by a panhandler—and this, in itself, should tell us something about human nature. When confronted with such an appeal, how should one re- spond? This familiar confrontation with the panhandler is an experience that each will deal with according to his or her own moral conviction, but our response is also influenced by social norms and expectations, cultural conventions, and even by thoughtful consideration and reasoning using the facts available to us. This makes the scenario a good one to use as a model. It is an opportunity to reflect on how philanthropic choices are made by individuals, but more important for us here, it is a way to think through the much larger question of the role of philanthropy in society.

In such a situation it is reasonable to ask several questions (whether you vocalize them or not) about what type of response to the request is called for, and through this to decide whether to respond philanthropically. These questions can apply whether the philanthropic request comes from the proverbial beggar on the street or from an arts organization, a shelter for battered women, or a liberal arts college raising money for scholar- ships. The questions apply also to the “thinking” of organizations such as foundation boards or nonprofit service providers, as well as to individual reasoning. There are four questions relating to four responses, categorized according to the source of possible assistance and the locus of control: self- help, mutual aid, government assistance, or philanthropy.

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Self-Help

The first and most fundamental question is about self-help: What is the person doing to help himself or herself? There is a deep and stubborn moral conviction that each of us (allowing for obvious exceptions) must ac- cept some responsibility for our own survival and well-being. One of the great virtues of the philanthropic concern for the dignity of the individual is respect for the ability of the individual to help himself or herself. In some circumstances, the person might be totally helpless, in which case this question is irrelevant. Most of us would agree that it is pointless to ask the question of a two-year-old, for example, or to deny assistance to an Alzheimer’s disease victim that we meet on the street because we think they should just be working harder to help themselves. It is when the person ap- pears to be able-bodied that doubts about deception come into play.

The question has to do with the notion of desert: is the person deserv- ing of my help? This is the sort of question people ask of panhandlers who seem to be physically and mentally capable of taking care of themselves. In the nineteenth century, such people were referred to as the “undeserving poor,” people who could work but chose not to, presumably preferring to live on the work of others. There are, of course, also the “deserving poor,” people who seem incapable of coping with, or are overmatched by, their circumstances. It is possible to be deceived by the panhandler; it is possi- ble to deceive oneself by dismissing the panhandler as undeserving.

The question takes on different nuances as the requests rise in value and complexity. To what extent do we expect college students to pay for their education? Should we subsidize graduate education for rocket scien- tists? For neurosurgeons? There is also a strong cautionary note: It may even be harmful to help people who don’t help themselves. Such assistance may encourage dependency. What may be true of individuals may also be true of organizations: organizations sometimes come to rely too heavily on a single patron. They may become too lazy to make an effort to raise money from other sources. If so, they are likely to give away their moral integrity along with their economic independence.

Another way of thinking about the self-help response is to consider whether it is best to intervene, but to intervene with the goal of “helping them help themselves.” Sometimes this is the purpose of other sorts of re- sponses, of course—governments providing training for the unemployed, nonprofit groups offering small “microcredit” loans to poor people oper- ating small businesses, enacting the mission of the classic proverb “Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.”

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But sometimes as John D. Rockefeller once wrote, “The best philanthropy, the help that does the most good and the least harm, . . . is not what is usu- ally called charity. It is, in my judgment, the investment of effort or time or money, carefully considered with relation to the power of employing people at a remunerative wage. . . . If we can help people to help them- selves, then there is a permanent blessed conferred.”15

Rockefeller echoes exactly the teaching of the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides, who ranked eight levels of giving (tzedakah) into a hierarchy from the highest (best) to the lowest form. The lowest form is to give with a heavy heart or a negative attitude (so long as you conceal this, Maimonides said, this is still charity). But the “best” form of charity was, as Rockefeller said, to do something so that people needing help can become self-sufficient, such as giving them a loan or giving them a job in your business.16 Enabling self-help becomes the highest form of philan- thropy. One person who believes this is Muhammad Yunus, the Bang- ladeshi economist who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for his idea of microcredit financing as a strategy to alleviate poverty.17

This point of view, unfortunately, has been lost in the narrow insistence on profit as the justification for pursuing the self-interest of business. It is also lost when we assume that the only way business can help those in need is through the other two sectors—through their taxes or through the rea- sonable expectations we place on them to “give back” through corporate giving or social responsibility programs. Creating jobs to allow for self- help is a way to help as well.

Mutual Aid

The second question, after addressing the question of self-help, is about mutual aid: What are the people who are considered formally responsible for this person doing to help him or her? For individuals this usually means family, close friends, maybe neighbors; for organizations this usually means those parties who are most directly concerned or connected: the alumni and parents of the college, for example, or the residents of the community that might benefit from the organization. But it is generally agreed that be- fore someone approaches a stranger for assistance, they should call on fam- ily, friends, or significant others.

This second question arises because we know that no one is without “significant others,” in the sense that we are all part of networks of rela- tionships based on mutual aid. Each of us comes into the world in the midst of what the sociologist Georg Simmel called a “web of group-affiliations.”18

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This web makes claims on others on our behalf. The family is the first and most obvious resource, but mutual aid might come from co-workers, neighbors (think of the classic American example of mutual aid: the barn- raising), fraternity brothers and sorority sisters, members of benevolent so- cieties, trade unions, business clubs, and a vast array of other associations that follow what has been called a “norm of reciprocity.”19 This norm, when generalized, means that we can expect assistance from others in these net- works and are also expected to assist others, and if this norm is operating, it helps build trust, which makes society work in many other ways as well.20

The importance of mutual aid is revealed most dramatically when we encounter situations where it doesn’t exist. Many people are homeless be- cause they have been evicted by their own families; others decided that life on the streets is better than life at home. For whatever reason, they don’t have working networks of mutual aid—unless they find a way to partner with others in a similar situation, which we know sometimes happens. When mutual aid fails like this, other responses—from government, from philanthropy—may become the last resort.

Much of self-help and mutual aid have a private interest: we help our- selves in all sorts of ways in which we benefit privately and directly; we as- sociate with family and friends in business and other economic activity. For instance, in some cases, we might well conclude that persons who want to be physicians should pay part of the cost by working and that their families should help if possible. The reason for helping individuals and groups to help themselves goes beyond the benefit to them; if individuals and groups become more capable of helping themselves, the community will benefit. The benefit to the community is what carries assistance from the private domain to the public. For many organizations, self-help and mutual aid are often a matter of ingenuity, working overtime without being paid for it, getting more help from volunteers, even getting clients to help.

Government Assistance

The third question is about government assistance: Is this person asking for help with a need that government should meet? Or is their need one that only government can adequately meet? Some requests reflect needs that far exceed what we might expect of self-help and mutual aid. In some cases it is unreasonable to expect either a panhandler, his relatives, or those of us passing by to solve his problem. These cases are often seen—though hotly debated—as one of the fundamental rationales for government in- terventions.

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Many will argue that each of us has a right to food, shelter, clothing, and other “basic needs,” such as health care, that might be far more ex- pensive than an individual person, family, or philanthropist could be ex- pected to provide. If basic needs are a matter of right, then they are a claim on all of us, and they call for government assistance. In such cases we know we must tax one another to generate the resources that are needed. Alms- giving is supplanted by tax revenues; one gives whether one considers the other deserving or not.

This third question, then, has to do with the responsibility of govern- ment for the public good. And we can see the question arising in the his- tory and debates about government’s responsibility in any major area of public policy. Take the example of public education in the United States. Before the mid-nineteenth century, education of our children—those few who were privileged enough to be educated—was considered the respon- sibility of private institutions, from the family to churches to elite private schools. That is, it was provided through a mix of self-help, mutual aid, and philanthropy. But then, along with industrialization and democratization, the idea spread that children of all classes and circumstances should come together in “public” schools; only the very rich and the very religious would remain outside the new government system. Government assistance in this case was actually based not on economic need but on the need to create and maintain a democratic polity, to ensure the public good by pro- ducing an educated citizenry. Of course, in recent years, we have revisited this question of government’s role, and many reformers are claiming that the public good is better served by returning—via vouchers or other pol- icy tools—some responsibility for education to private (non-profit and even for-profit) educators.

Some problems are just too large, like poverty in America or the spread of AIDS in Africa, to be dealt with through self-help or mutual aid. In other cases, solving a problem requires the unique qualities of government intervention, such as its monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, which might be necessary to protect our lives or our property. And then there are some things that the society needs from individuals that individ- uals can rarely if ever be expected to pay for completely: advanced educa- tion and training in medicine and astrophysics, for example. While many would not hesitate to assert that government assistance is the answer in these cases, and many others would strongly contradict this view, what is certain is that these needs raise fundamental and constantly debated ques- tions in any society: Which things should be paid for not by voluntary gifts, or even private investment, but by taxation? Which things cost so

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much that it is unreasonable to expect individuals or their families to pay for them by their own efforts? For instance, who should pay for the high cost of medical technology? Daycare? Hospices for the terminally ill who have no family or friends? Art museums? Parks? Philosophy?

Finally, at a broader level, government assistance can take on shades of mutual aid, to the extent that we view helping members of our commu- nity—perhaps only taxpaying members, or legal and documented citi- zens—as taking priority over helping nonmembers. In just about every in- stance when the United States is called upon to provide humanitarian assistance, and nearly every time international aid is debated, someone of- fers the argument that instead of sending more money overseas we should spend that money helping Americans in need first. Government certainly has a role in responding to requests for assistance, this argument goes, but not all requests for assistance hold the same weight; the United States gov- ernment is not as responsible for non-Americans as it is for Americans.

Last but Not Least: Philanthropy

After addressing these previous three questions, and especially when we are dissatisfied with the answers we get and when we feel the initial request is still not being dealt with, we come to the fourth question. Should I give? How much assistance can be provided voluntarily, in gifts of service or money, for the benefit of those in need, even if we have no formal respon- sibility for them and if we are not promised anything material in return? When is voluntary action the necessary or best path to achieve the public good?

Sometimes philanthropy makes sense because all else has failed or be- cause other responses will take too long or are incomplete. In some cases self-help and mutual aid are insufficient to meet the needs, and govern- mental resources are either inappropriate or unavailable, and so philan- thropy is the human response we turn to. In other cases philanthropy fills a complete void where the other responses are nonexistent. And in some cases we decide that philanthropy is the best, most appropriate response regardless of whether the other responses are failing or not. Often the an- swers to the previous questions are uncertain, or we have doubts or a lack of information, and we act for fear that otherwise help will fall through the cracks of existing policies or programs. Sometimes we just decide philan- thropy is called for because it seems the right thing to do.

So while philanthropy is sometimes a last resort, at other times it is a complement to other forms of help. Sometimes philanthropy provides the

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Band-Aid immediate assistance, before family or government (or self-help) takes over to provide long-term care; sometimes philanthropy works to eliminate the cause of the injury, letting friends or government offer the Band-Aid. Requests from strangers so often have a kind of immediacy to them that we feel some sort of action is called for now, and so we act phil- anthropically without really knowing the full answers to our other ques- tions. Or perhaps the goad to action is a determination to take a different kind of action: to join with others in a public protest against governmental inaction in the face of homelessness. “I won’t help this person directly, but I’ll set out to help others like him. I’ll work to prevent people like him from falling into conditions like these.”

Deciding How to Respond

The Meaning of How We Respond

These four questions are central to the way we choose to live our lives as individuals and as a society; how we answer them gives shape to our lives. They are the sort of fundamental questions we confront as an inevitable consequence of the human problematic. As individuals, we must figure out how to respond to the requests for assistance that we know will come be- cause we know that things often go wrong. As a society, considering the different kinds of needs to be met, we have to decide how much weight we want to assign to self-help, to mutual aid, to government assistance, and to philanthropy.

The interaction among these four types of responses makes up the agenda of political and social life in a society like the United States. Self- help, mutual aid, government assistance, and philanthropy provide a check- list for thinking about the ways that responsibility is allocated in our so- ciety. Consider health care costs, for example, or debt relief in Africa, or support of the arts, or education reform, or even disaster response. Are families solely responsible for supporting young musicians, or should the government provide scholarships to those children with the most promis- ing talent? Should the United States forgive the debts owed by struggling African nations, or should it focus on encouraging multinational corpora- tions to help these countries nurture their own market economy? If some- one in the United States smokes her entire life and gets lung cancer when she is elderly, should Medicare pay for her treatment even if she (or her children) have the means to pay for it themselves?

In a larger sense, every political or policy discussion of large public is- sues involves a debate over these four possible contributions to the work of

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society, and our political conflicts are often over whether or not to change the mixture of the four responses. These questions form the background of every American presidential election campaign; they shape every party platform. To what extent is each of us responsible for ourselves? To what extent should we be expected to rely on others with whom we share formal responsibility? To what extent must we agree to tax ourselves to deal with our shared problems and needs? To what extent can we rely on voluntary giving and voluntary service? How much will our concern for others affect our answer? How much will we be guided by concern for our own self-in- terest? Should we do more through faith-based nonprofits or private con- tractors and less through government?

But we should not think of these four responses as starkly distinct and assume that our answers to the questions just raised must always be placed into one of these four categories. In fact, returning to the points from Rockefeller and Maimonides discussed earlier, we can see how the long history of efforts to “help people help themselves” illustrates how the var- ious responses can become intertwined and can be hard to disentangle. These efforts have philanthropic purposes as well as being about “self- help.” For instance, in nineteenth-century London, young Octavia Hill wanted to create decent housing for the poor.21 Lacking capital, she turned to social philosopher and art critic John Ruskin for help. He loaned her five thousand pounds, but with the requirement that she produce a return of 5 percent if she hoped to persuade others to follow his example. Fol- lowing Ruskin’s advice, Hill made payment of rent a first and unwavering demand upon all her tenants. She also insisted on stern self-discipline; her tenants not only paid their rent on time but they also stayed within her range of acceptable social and moral behavior. Influenced by both Christ- ian Socialism and (from the opposite political pole) the Charity Organisa- tion Society approach, Hill was pragmatic. Commenting on Hill’s man- agement style, Gertrude Himmelfarb observes: “Her aim was not only to provide the decent housing that was a precondition of independence but to promote the habits, abilities, and sensibilities that would sustain that in- dependence. This meant treating the tenants as equals rather than depen- dents, and helping them in the same spirit that one might help one’s friends.”22 Hill’s work is clearly about promoting self-help, but there are also elements of mutual aid involved, and this was all brought about by a voluntary, philanthropic intervention. Hill’s response to need—the need for adequate housing for the poor—reveals how it is often in the mix or in- teraction of responses that we can see fully how society is responding to its problems.

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Altruism and Egoism

Many factors influence how we respond to the proverbial request for as- sistance and how we meet needs and assign responsibility. To start with, we can see that our responses reflect both sides of the recurrent tension in human nature that we identified earlier: the tension between altruism and egoism. Because most of us have some concern about the well-being of others and about the needs of our communities, we answer these questions in terms of our altruistic values. But because we also have needs of our own and a strong sense of fairness—if I work to help myself, others should do the same—we have to recognize that we have egoistic values as well.

Our lives are spent balancing these two human tendencies while trying to address the needs we see. Whether we are asking the self-help question of the panhandler, wondering why we should be singled out for voluntary giving when we already pay taxes to help the homeless, or pondering our felt obligation to be compassionate to all fellow humans in need, our con- cern for others and our concern for ourselves are in play. Both altruism and egoism influence our judgments of how the four responses should be weighted. The rhetoric of weighting ranges from appeals to pity to appeals to greed, from acting on values to acting on calculations of potential ben- efit returns, reflecting the influence of both poles. Every answer contains both.

In addition to the decision of whether to give, we must also decide how and how much to give. As we struggle with these decisions, too, we reveal the tension between egoism and altruism. One philanthropic principle that has been in use since antiquity is that one should give to others for whom one has no formal responsibility only out of surplus. To have a surplus means that one has enough for oneself (and presumably for those for whom one does have formal responsibility). But what is “enough”? When does a gift out of surplus begin to cut close to the quick? Often an assess- ment of one’s own resources leads to the conclusion, “I can help, but not enough; others will have to come along on this one.” Or “I will give you a hundred dollars toward your scholarship, but you’ll have to work for part of the rest, get help from your family, and perhaps get a grant or loan from the college.” In other instances we may decide not to follow this principle and instead to be munificent, to “give until it hurts.” When should a gift be from income and when from savings? When is a commitment of five hours a week too little, and when is it too much? And how should we give? Should we give directly to individuals, so we can see that the help gets to them? Is it acceptable egoism to want the personal connection with those

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we help? Is it more altruistic (and therefore better) to pool our help with that of others by giving to an institution, so that more people can ulti- mately be helped? The point here is that figuring out how to respond— when to act philanthropically and how—requires that we accept the ten- sion between egoism and altruism as a reality and not simply wish that it were not so.

What Is Going On? Where Are We Coming From?

We have to answer the first ethical question, “What is going on?” before deciding whether to act philanthropically, before deciding how to respond to the appeals for help that arise as a consequence of the human problem- atic. For example, we’ve seen people on the street holding signs that said, “Homeless and Dying of AIDS” and “Disabled. Want to Work but Can’t. Please Help.” Each passerby who reads these sorts of signs makes an in- stantaneous assessment of the credibility of the statement. If what is going on is that the young man holding the first sign is in fact homeless and dying, or that the older man holding the second sign is in a wheelchair, an immediate gift of alms might be called for (even if government assistance is also called for). If one concludes this is simply another familiar decep- tion of the kind newcomers to big cities are warned about, the response may be ironic amusement for some, disgust and anger for others, but prob- ably not sympathy and charity.

So one part of deciding how to respond is looking for information on what is going on. Lacking concrete information, we search for subtle clues or hints from which we can draw conclusions or make assumptions. But in addition to this first question, we also decide how to respond based on fac- tors related to a second, complementary question, “Where are we coming from?” Our response is influenced by our own moral convictions (e.g., whether we believe helping strangers is a moral duty), our own perceptual or ideological biases (e.g., should the government ever be involved in help- ing the homeless?), the other cultural conventions and concepts we have learned (e.g., is it normal for people in need to ask for help this way?), and the larger social and economic situation we live in (e.g., whether we live in a “social democracy” where the welfare state is responsible for helping the disabled or those with AIDS, or in a neoliberal capitalist state).

Our response is “embedded” in our social and cultural life in these and other ways, and this embeddedness is crucial to our theory of why philan- thropy is a preferred response and why it takes the form or role it does in any society. This is similar to what Lester Salamon and Helmut Anheier

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term the “social origins” theory of the nonprofit sector. They remind us that the philanthropic tradition and nonprofit sector looks different and plays different roles in different societies. What can explain this variation is that—while what we call philanthropy is a response in all those soci- eties—the path taken by the development of nonprofit activities in any so- ciety is fundamentally influenced by the “cultural, religious, political, and economic realities” of that society.23

A similar set of multiple influences on how we respond can be identi- fied if it is an organization that must decide how to respond or when we think of the choice as a society’s choice about how to allocate responsibil- ity. For instance, think about how moral, cultural, and political changes have affected our changing mixture of responses—individual, community, governmental, and philanthropic responses—to poverty in the United States. The idea that the state should care for the poor is almost as old as western civilization and that individuals and religious institutions should help is an ancient idea. But the critical change came when societies and cul- tures realized that assistance should be regularized and not left to sponta- neous expressions of charity, which led to government assistance taking a more prominent role, although it is a role that is still different in different cultural and national contexts.

Of course, despite the way we’ve been describing this “decision,” we should acknowledge that the way we answer these questions, and the re- sponses we offer, are not always the result of a conscious or rational choice. In fact, our answers to the questions are rarely obvious or even simple. Often we decide that more than one response is called for, or we change the mix of responses over time, or we go forward with the response we want and leave the decision about other responses to other people.

Reasons for a Philanthropic Response

The final step in developing a way of thinking about the role of philan- thropy as a response to the human problematic—and about the larger question of why philanthropy exists—is to summarize the reasons why, in the context of multiple types of responses, a philanthropic response is war- ranted, preferred, or perhaps even required and demanded. It helps con- ceptually to distill these reasons down into three broad categories. Each category relates to a scenario in which some response is needed; in each scenario, the role of philanthropy is considered alongside the others. We identify three categories of reasons:

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Philanthropy Is the Only, or the Only Effective, Response

Sometimes we turn to philanthropy when other responses are either non- existent or not working; we turn to philanthropy because the other re- sponses are nonexistent or not working. We give a panhandler a dollar be- cause we figure that self-help and mutual aid and government assistance are somehow not able to help him meet his basic needs. We volunteer as a literacy tutor because we think that if we don’t help this person learn to read and they can’t help themselves, who will? We donate to public televi- sion because we worry about the decline in government funding for it.

Scholars have long offered this sort of “failure” argument as a way to explain, theoretically, the existence of the nonprofit sector. The third sec- tor exists, the theory goes, because of the inadequacy, defects, or failure of the other two. The marketplace provides for the exercise of individual choice but does not provide all the public goods—e.g., clean air—neces- sary for an operational and healthy society, and it creates costly “external- ities”—e.g., air pollution—that must somehow be dealt with. This sort of “market failure” argument has long been a prominent and popular justifi- cation for government action and public policy intervention. It helps us to answer the tough question: why does government exist?

But while government provides important public goods, it sometimes does not provide adequate public goods. Recall that this “government fail- ure” is a key reason offered by economists for why the otherwise illogical entity of “not-for-profit” organizations would exist. Further, government is limited in how it can meet needs, both by what James Douglas calls the “categorical constraint”—the requirement that everyone be treated the same can lead government to avoid treating anybody—and by what Bur- ton Weisbrod calls the “heterogeneity” of the population—the more di- verse the needs and interests of the people (and, we would add, the more diverse the interpretation of what the “public good” is), the less likely gov- ernment is to step into the fray.24

In the face of this dual failure of the marketplace and of government re- sponses, then, voluntary philanthropic action is needed to fill the void. Phi- lanthropy provides for individual choice like the marketplace and provides

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1. Philanthropy is the only, or the only effective, response. 2. Philanthropy is one response that complements other responses. 3. Philanthropy is the preferred or the most appropriate response.

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public goods like government, but it does so better than these other two responses in conditions of great diversity and in situations when flexibility is key. This theory could be used to explain philanthropic interventions from nonprofit AIDS clinics in poor neighborhoods where the local pub- lic hospital cannot handle the demand, to charter schools in suburbs where parents are dissatisfied with their other choices. But we cannot forget the more stark instances in which philanthropy is simply the “only game in town.”

While most scholarship has used this sort of “dual failure” theory to ex- plain the existence of the nonprofit (the third) sector, or to explain why nonprofit organizations provide some good that other types of organiza- tions might also provide, we would broaden this theory to fit our broader conception of philanthropy and our conception of the three other re- sponses that we have laid out: self-help, mutual aid, and government assis- tance. (In a sense, we offer a “triple failure” theory, although the whole idea of “failure” does not really work here, as explained in the next section.)

We would also go beyond much previous work in applying this expla- nation for why philanthropy exists to the advocacy side of philanthropy as well as to the service side. Philanthropy and the other responses we have been discussing are responding to needs, but we can think of those “needs” as including the need for voice or the need for representation of interests. And philanthropic organizations that advocate for certain populations or for certain ideals and values can be seen as doing so because those popula- tions or values are not, or not effectively, being advocated by other ac- tors—not by the affected or interested parties themselves (self-help), not by their direct networks (mutual aid), and not by the government that is often the target for their advocacy claims.

Philanthropy Is One Response That Complements Other Responses

Our explanation of why philanthropy exists, though, does not require the failure of other responses or other forms of action. In fact, we know that in many (perhaps most) cases, philanthropy exists as a response alongside many other responses in a complex and confusing mix. Life is problematic, and responding effectively (and morally) to the problems of life requires the ability to draw upon all resources of the society—political, economic, personal, familial, philanthropic. This combination of multiple responses is, by most accounts, becoming more common today, particularly as we re- think the roles of the three sectors and develop new cross-sectoral forms of governance.25 More and more, we respond to things that go wrong, and

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craft ways of making things better, using “partnerships” between govern- ment and philanthropy and the market. More and more we are seeing the four responses described above as complementary, rather than simply fighting the ideological battles over, for example, whether self-help or gov- ernment or philanthropy is best.

Take the example of one of the most fundamental needs of any society: taking care of children, particularly those that might be in trouble. Chil- dren are an interesting case because in deciding how to respond to their need, we quickly move beyond calling for self-help. Children can certainly help themselves, but their ability to do this is more limited than almost any other group in the society, and no one blames them (as we blame others) for their inability to help themselves. So, moving beyond self-help, we note that in any society the resources that are available to help children are var- ied and important. The most important, of course, are the family and sometimes close friends. These are the first line of support we expect all children to have, even if many do not or are not well served by their fami- lies or other mutual aid networks. Beyond this, there are plenty of others whose careers are devoted to helping children: the pediatricians and other medical specialists; the teachers and coaches and other school profession- als; social workers and other therapists; counselors, guides, and mentors. A great many of these are employed by government, and they are charged with implementing a widely acknowledged mandate that the government, if it helps no one else, should help this least vulnerable population.

But beyond these sources of support, there are volunteers and profes- sionals in the vast array of philanthropic organizations that have programs designed for children. Hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of peo- ple in the United States alone are engaged as volunteers in trying to help children by working for these philanthropic organizations: Boys Clubs and Girls Clubs, the YMCA and YWCA, Police Athletic Leagues, 4-H clubs, Catholic Youth Organizations, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and others more recently established. It is important to note that these philanthropic orga- nizations do not simply exist to help children in ways that (or because) gov- ernment or families have failed to help, although this is sometimes an im- portant reason why such children’s organizations exist; they also exist because they believe helping children is for the public good, regardless of what other parts of society do. And these philanthropic responses help children in ways that complement the ways these children are helped by other parts of society—e.g., Girls Clubs can serve at-risk girls better when there is a supportive family involved as well. We should also acknowledge that these philanthropic groups are not always effective and might them-

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selves fail in ways that force a government or family response. Many of the organizations mentioned are now said to be less effective with children than they were fifty or sixty years ago. In particular, they seem to be less ef- fective in reaching ethnic and racial groups and the poor in the often dan- gerous neighborhoods where the toughest problems always are. This is further evidence for the need to spread the responsibility around and for various actors in society—familial, governmental, and philanthropic—to work together.

Philanthropy Is the Preferred or the Most Appropriate Response

Because we argue in this book that philanthropy is moral action, that it is voluntary action driven by a vision of the public good, we must be sure to remember this last—really the first—reason for philanthropy. Philan- thropy is often how we prefer to do our good works. We respond philan- thropically many times because philanthropy is deemed, in our culture, as an appropriate way of making things better, an appropriate and normal and expected way of trying to advance the public good. In other cases, we re- spond philanthropically because the situation seems to call specifically for philanthropy instead of other responses.

Much of what we cover in the next chapter will illustrate this reason for why philanthropy exists, as we will be exploring how philanthropy is dis- tinctively moral action and therefore has a melioristic purpose and philan- thropic meaning that make it distinctive. And what we discussed in the pre- vious chapter about the positive roles of philanthropy also demonstrates this notion of philanthropy as the preferred or most appropriate response. Philanthropy is most appropriate when, for example, our action is meant to express or promote religious values and convictions that we want to keep separate from government. Philanthropy is preferred when the goal is to advocate for broad social change or to try out a new idea for achiev- ing change in communities. Remember that philanthropy is in some ways the first sector, that it is the place we prefer to express our vision of the public good or to do our public work regardless of what the other sectors are doing or whether self-help is possible. This fact partly underlies the currently popular recognition of social entrepreneurship as a key role for philanthropy.26

We can also imagine many situations in which a philanthropic response is most appropriate. Sometimes we want or need to make a public state- ment with our generosity (perhaps to leverage the generosity of others). At other times we want to have a personal connection with the people we

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help, even if they are strangers to us at the start. Both of these somewhat opposing situations are more possible through philanthropy than, say, through mutual aid or government assistance. Sometimes we see a need, like the face of a starving child on television, and we feel the need to do something rather than let others take care of it. Sometimes we give phil- anthropically specifically to pay back someone who helped us philan- thropically in the past.27 And sometimes we simply do not have time to think or learn about what other responses might be going on; the situation is an emergency and voluntary intervention is clearly the right thing to do, right now.

Philanthropic action is, in most places and times, culturally prescribed and highly valued for its own sake. But, of course, when philanthropy is ap- propriate versus when government or mutual aid is appropriate is a social choice that is determined in part by cultural traditions, historical develop- ments, and other aspects of our social origins—“where we are coming from.”

We also see this reasoning for why philanthropy is appropriate often in the accounts and understandings that people offer to justify their giving. When, for instance, someone says that helping children learn to read or giving money to their local library is “the right thing to do” or “a way to give back,” they are not merely expressing their motives but also justifying their particular sort of action, their philanthropic action, in terms that make sense to them given what they have learned from their culture. More generally, social and historical patterns often deem philanthropy the most appropriate way to solve certain problems or address certain needs in any given society. It is “what we do.”

The Response to Hurricane Katrina

The fact that things often go wrong is an inevitable part of the human problematic. But sometimes things go very wrong (and for many reasons), and everyone can see clearly just how wrong. These cases, such as the dev- astating crisis in the coastal areas of Louisiana and Mississippi caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, starkly illustrate the points we have been mak- ing. The response to the Katrina crisis illustrates the forces affecting our decisions about how to respond and how absolutely vital philanthropy is as one response among many.

Natural events disrupt our lives in dramatic ways, often calling for phil- anthropic action to relieve the suffering that results. But responding to nat- ural disasters like floods or wildfires or hurricanes far exceeds the capacity of philanthropic assistance and exceeds its proper role as well. Families and

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relatives play a role in helping people deal with their loss and rebuild their lives. And it is in such situations of utter devastation that we see perhaps most clearly the necessity of government. So natural disasters—and the human disasters or system failure that sometimes accompany natural dis- asters—demonstrate the need for a full array of responses. Of course, this is also true when the disaster is completely man-made. Think of the crucial role played by all four responses—self-help, mutual aid, government assis- tance, and philanthropy—in the response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

In the case of the Katrina crisis we can see how the massive philan- thropic response—an unprecedented response that outpaced the relief giv- ing that following either the attacks of 9/11 or the Indian Ocean tsunami— fit with other responses such as self-help and government assistance. Philanthropy here was clearly seen as filling a void where other responses failed, but if we look closer we can see how philanthropy was also comple- mented by other responses, and how philanthropy was for many the pre- ferred response regardless of what else was being done.

The failure of the government response to the aftermath of Katrina has been well documented. Seeing this failure portrayed so vividly and horri- bly on television led many people to reach for their checkbooks and some people to pack their bags to go be a volunteer; that is, the failure of other responses was part of the reason why we turned to philanthropy to deal with the obvious need for help. Government officials acknowledged their failure publicly, in fact, making press statements in the midst of the crisis in which they told those in need to seek out the Salvation Army or the Red Cross for help rather than turning to the overwhelmed Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But it was not simply government that failed; self-help and mutual aid failed as well. For many residents of New Orleans, self-help was either not an option because of their infirmities or lack of supplies or because they could not return to their homes to get what they would need to survive on their own. And while mutual aid clearly saved many lives in this crisis, as family members stayed together to help each other, many other people lost their lives while their family and friends sat helplessly on the other side of washed-out bridges and roads, and many people (including children) got separated from their families and had to rely on relief workers to care for them until they could be reunited. These are instances in which philanthropy—symbolized by a lone Salvation Army van that for a few days was the only source of aid to reach some of the most rural Mississippi towns—was the only way to help.

Within the philanthropic community itself, we can note similar dy- namics that blur the lines between types of responses. While the interna-

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tional relief organizations like Red Cross were clearly responding, local or- ganizations like churches and community groups in Louisiana and Missis- sippi did what they could amid the rubble in their own backyards. Local foundations such as the Greater New Orleans Foundation and the Foun- dation for the Mid South helped set up relief funds and coordinate com- munity organizing, even though, in some cases, their own offices had to be temporarily closed. And existing nonprofits in the area were forced to re- examine their missions in light of a changed set of needs in the communi- ties they served. For example, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, an advocacy group that normally focused on toxics issues in communities around the state—many of which were hit by both Hurricanes Katrina and Rita—transformed itself into a relief group providing supplies for home- owners and volunteers who now had to deal with the toxic hazard of re- turning to their homes.

But while these local groups engaged in this sort of mutual aid/phi- lanthropy hybrid, plenty of grantmakers from outside the region backed them up with a more traditional philanthropic response to the crisis—”tra- ditional” here meaning voluntary interventions, sometimes from far away, in the lives of strangers for whom they have no formal responsibility. For instance, the McCormick Tribune Foundation in Chicago—not usually a foundation that gives to local causes in the Gulf Coast region—set up a special relief fund soon after Katrina hit, and pledged to use foundation funds to match all individual donations and to cover all administrative costs so that the issue of “how much of my check is going to help those in need” would not arise.

However, philanthropy was not simply a response to fill the void left by the failure of others. Despite the struggles we noted, there was clearly a lot of self-help and mutual aid going on, especially in areas (and in early stages) where neither FEMA nor that Salvation Army truck had arrived. Family and friends were in some cases both the “first responders” and the only effective response for days at a time. In the first few days, the people stranded in the Superdome and those waiting for help in flattened towns in Mississippi relied on each other for medical care, supplies, and emo- tional support. But the point is that while these sorts of responses were ul- timately inadequate—the task before them was just too great—we can see the government and philanthropic responses as complementary to this self-help and mutual aid.

And this reliance on multiple responses will continue as the efforts to help move from relief to recovery. After the first anniversary of Katrina, much attention turned to what government can and must do, and this is

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appropriate. Neither philanthropy nor individuals and families nor even the marketplace have the capacity or organization required to deal with such a problem when it is on such a scale. Government agencies at many levels (including the military) must help provide emergency aid, but they must also provide long-term help of many kinds, from rebuilding infra- structure to providing tax incentives for businesses to return to decimated places. Ultimately, however, recovery from such a calamity depends not on government but on people getting back to their economic work, helping themselves, cooperating in their networks, competing in the marketplace, and only secondarily depending on government subsidies and continued charitable contributions. Mutual aid and self-help—perhaps microcredit loans would work—are essential to long-term recovery.

But we should not overlook the fact that philanthropy was for many the preferred or most appropriate response to the Katrina disaster. Americans saw the crisis and wanted to “do something,” and in such cases “doing something” meant donating clothing, or volunteering at a crisis switch- board, or donating money online, or traveling to the region to volunteer, or any number of other philanthropic responses. We would have done this even if the government response had been swift and well-coordinated.

Finally, the response to Katrina also illustrates what we have discussed in this chapter about the multiple influences and considerations that affect our decision about how to respond, such as our assessments of “what is going on” and “where we are coming from.” The charitable giving in this crisis was very likely much larger and swifter than others because when we assessed what is going on, we decided such a massive charitable response was needed. Something clearly was going wrong, and the people were clearly in need, so there was no question that philanthropy was called for. But how people responded philanthropically was influenced by factors about who they are and how they could best help. Vietnamese neighbor- hoods in Orange County, California, held fund-raising drives to assist the Vietnamese fishing communities on the Gulf Coast. Veterinarians and an- imal lovers rushed to New Orleans in a highly coordinated effort to rescue abandoned and stranded animals. And corporations donated useful in-kind supplies, from satellite phones, to Web services for victim registries, to temporary relief from car payments.

But despite these patterns, it is heartening to note in the end that the massive philanthropic response to Katrina often came from people who live outside the Deep South and who look very different from those they reached out to help. This should come as no surprise to those who know how philanthropy works.

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Cultural Patterns in a Universal Response

This chapter has outlined certain fundamental features of the human con- dition and human nature that call philanthropy into being, in a sense, as a response to the inevitable human problematic. However, it is helpful at the end to remember a point we made at the start: This seemingly universal re- sponse is always influenced by cultural and historical context. The response might be impelled by human nature, but the expressions of human nature are culturally prescribed. Some “life chances” circumstances should be considered universally unacceptable, but many times what is considered unacceptable and deserving of philanthropic intervention depends on so- cial definitions or disputed claims of different moral imaginations. And as noted, our choices about how to respond, and what role philanthropy will play, are also influenced by “where we are coming from,” which can be seen in the significant variations in the way that different countries con- ceive of the role of the nonprofit sector. This cultural distinctiveness is what led Tocqueville to focus so much attention on the use of associations in public life by Americans. It was not that they did not have such associa- tions in France, but in France citizens turned first to government to meet human needs or to express the general will, while in America, Tocqueville perceived, citizens turned first to voluntary associations. If Hurricane Ka- trina had struck New Zealand instead of New Orleans, there would have been a philanthropic response, of course, but it would have looked a bit different.

The distinctive philanthropic tradition in any culture is the history of this response as it took shape in that culture. America’s tradition is vibrant and prominent, but the Russian people have a philanthropic tradition, too: even during the time of the Soviet Union there were secret voluntary as- sociations to publish samizdat literature. This recognition of distinctive tra- ditions is a point we will explore in the next two chapters as well, as we dis- cuss philanthropy as a difficult moral action that reflects and determines the moral agenda of a society and as the “social history of the moral imag- ination.”

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