Philanthropy is Broken

Let’s Pretend

So, then, let’s say you and I are suddenly wealthy, as in 0.1% level wealthy. Marching forward into the world with our inevitably inflated self-esteems, perhaps we seek, even above all other things, to do good. We wish to give back. And we don’t just want to give back in a ho-hum pedestrian way. We have so much power now. We are clearly exceptional, or at least our circumstances are, and so we must give exceptionally to whet our huge sense of societal obligation.

We become philanthropists. We are deluged with requests. We set up foundations to filter the flood. We tackle ambitious problems in the world, making them our personal missions. We contribute avidly to politicians whose characters and policies we admire.

Eventually we start noticing more and more people raking us through the mud in the news, on our Facebook feeds, and in casual conversation with friends. Still being the emotional and sensitive human beings we are, we wince at accusations from the public and the press of impropriety or sinister intentions. When we are pricked, we bleed, and perhaps we become somewhat more jaded and thick-skinned. We still want to help, but we don’t want to be hurt. We listen less and less to the people to whom we seek to give back, exhausted by the exercise of weeding the serious requests and the kind comments from the unworthy ideas and the cruel insults. We no longer accept applications.

We soldier on, creating the world in our images, trying our damnedest to make it the place we think it ought to be. We feel ourselves losing touch with the needs of the society that we continue to drift upward and away from. We rationalize that we’re doing what we can, better than many others would manage in our same situations. We are not of that rare and sociopathic sort of millionaires and billionaires who truly care nothing for the rest of society. We are the good guys. Yet that feeling builds that we are still amassing more wealth than we can even give away, that on the whole we are still extracting from society. It’s not our fault! It’s the way of the system to reward us more the more we’ve been rewarded.

We begin to tune out from our foundation. It’s their job; best to let them handle it. From time to time, we offer words of encouragement to progressive movements and promise to support the change they are trying to bring. We occasionally write them checks, but we don’t get too engaged. Sometimes members within the movements express disdain at receiving money from the likes of us. We don’t commit to anything too much so as to avoid public scrutiny. We’ve learned that that can be painful. We mostly busy ourselves with those in our circles of peers who understand our very special form of struggle.

From time to time, we take a long hard look in the mirror, and then we write op-eds to reaffirm for ourselves and advertise to the world what our core humanistic and humanitarian beliefs are. We have no problem finding an eager publisher. We never read the public comments.

We have become the gatekeepers of enormous piles of wealth. Despite our good hearts and efforts, we are a drain on society, and it is not our fault.