Honor Fred Meijer by Giving Like He Did

Below is a guest column I wrote for the Grand Rapids Press.

This story has greater implications for the Grand Rapids area than many of us realize, I think. Refusing to sell not only kept the Meijer corporation here as a major employer and a model family business, but it kept the increasingly successful Fred Meijer here as a major philanthropist and model civic leader.

I am quite certain that Fred and Lena Meijer would still have been wonderfully generous and engaged in our community had he sold back then. But they would very likely not have had the capacity to do so on the scale with which they have. And that decision solidified their strong connection to Grand Rapids in a way that probably inspired their later efforts to give back to the region over the years.

Think of all the things we might not have in our town without Fred’s local giving and leadership. Certainly not the beautifully renovated Grand Rapids Civic Theater, or miles and miles and miles of nature trails. The hospitals and universities (my employer especially) would not have as many impressive buildings and programs they have today. And one of the country’s premier cultural institutions — the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park — might not be the jewel of our city. It might be in Arkansas.

A few years ago, The Chronicle of Philanthropy published a study ranking the most and least generous metropolitan areas in the country. The Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland area was No. 2 overall, behind Salt Lake City, Utah. Many saw this ranking as an artifact of the high level of religious tithing in these areas, and certainly this is the major explanation for Salt Lake City’s giving.

But our region has another feature that rivals religion as a motivator for high levels of giving. We have a tradition of family-owned businesses that grow very successful here, remain active here, and create wealthy families who live and give here. This tradition of local philanthropy is easy to take for granted. But trust me, it is not something you find in other cities, at least to this extent.

Prominent families give consistently and substantially, and locally. They hold each other to this shared expectation of philanthropy, and they coordinate their giving in collaborative ways I’ve not seen so well developed elsewhere.

All those familiar names on buildings and nature trails and essential programs around town are evidence of this distinctive tradition of local family philanthropy, but there is also a lot of generosity that goes on beyond the naming gifts.

We need to remember that our region would be very different without these local commitments by local families. We need to remember that it would be very different without Fred Meijer.

The challenge now is to continue this into the future, as those leaders who established the special culture of philanthropy pass away, or hand over the reigns to the next generation. Like any tradition, ours is only as good as the people and practices that carry it on.

We probably have not seen the last of Fred Meijer’s local philanthropic legacy. But his best legacy might just be that he helped establish a tradition of local generosity and civic leadership that is carried on by future generations.

I think we can all best honor Fred’s legacy here by giving here, like Fred did.

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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Gratitude and Giving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.  This is in part because of tryptophan and midweek football.  But mostly it’s because I love having a holiday specifically designated for giving thanks, for reminding ourselves of the importance of gratitude.

Gratitude is important for many reasons, not the least of which is that gratitude often fuels philanthropy.  As well it should.

Showing thanks is one of those rare virtues that is hailed by cultures and faiths all around the globe and throughout time – some dare say it is a universal moral value.

Gratitude has been considered an essential ingredient in the good society by philosophers from Seneca and Aquinas to Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant (yes, Adam Smith was a philosopher, not an economist).  Cicero, in a famous speech defending his friend Plancius, called gratitude the parent of all other virtues.

Gratefulness for the blessings we receive from God/Allah/YHWH/etc. is also a central teaching across the religious spectrum.  Being thankful for these blessings requires believers to be good stewards of what God provides, and to help those who have not been so blessed.

Mirroring religion in this respect, science has now shown how being grateful is also good for you – emotionally but also physically.  The psychologist Robert Emmons in particular has done extensive experimental work demonstrating how showing gratitude and regularly reflecting on the good things in your life can help you sleep better, lower your blood pressure, make you more optimistic and joyful, help you fight stress and feelings of loneliness, and of course make you more compassionate and generous.

In honor of Thanksgiving, the online magazine Greater Good has a number of recommendations for how to realize these benefits of gratitude, from keeping a “gratitude journal” to writing “gratitude letters.”

Expressing our gratitude through doing good for others can be done either directly or indirectly.  It is the indirect expressions that we often call "philanthropy."  This is when we say thanks for what we have received by doing something good for other people.  I have written about this practice as “serial reciprocity” – but it is more commonly discussed as “giving back” or “paying it forward.”

I don’t need to explain just how powerful “giving back” is as a motive for philanthropy (I will in a book I’m working on, though…).  “Giving back” is becoming almost synonymous with “giving” in everyday talk about why we are charitable, though it seems especially important as a giving motive for athletes, celebrities, and the wealthy. 

The Giving Back Fund helps celebrities and successful athletes give to disadvantaged communities and become “philanthropic role-models who will inspire others to give back.”  The interesting blog, Black Gives Back, offers inspiring stories of African-American philanthropy.

Paul Schervish and his collaborators have studied the explanations given by wealthy donors for over two decades, and they conclude from this work that

“a virtually universal disposition that we encountered is the propensity that many [donors] summarize by the simple yet heartfelt phrase ‘to give back’” (p. 155).

This gratitude is “generative” and “mobilizing,” leading wealthy donors to give to those less fortunate specifically because of their own good fortune.  In her classic study of “why the wealthy give,” Francie Ostrower also noted the common expression of “giving back” motives.  Wealthy donors viewed grateful giving as a social obligation, not just a personal value.

Warren Buffet provides the most explicit and dramatic recent illustration of this connection of gratitude to giving.  He often says that he won the “ovarian lottery” by being born when and where he was, in a place and time where his particular skills at capital allocation would allow him to build a massive “fortune” ...and that word is meaningful.

Being this fortunate, for Mr. Buffett, has consequences.  As he says in his “Giving Pledge” signing letter:

“The reaction of my family and me to our extraordinary good fortune is not guilt, but rather gratitude. Were we to use more than 1% of my claim checks on ourselves, neither our happiness nor our well-being would be enhanced. In contrast, that remaining 99% can have a huge effect on the health and welfare of others. That reality sets an obvious course for me and my family: Keep all we can conceivably need and distribute the rest to society, for its needs. My pledge starts us down that course.”

In this sentiment, Buffett echoes the story of Albert Schweitzer, who at age 30 abruptly abandoned a comfortable life as a celebrated organist and scholar, and devoted the rest of his life to service.  Schweitzer explained that he did so because he felt he “must give something in return” (p. 84) for the good fortune he had received.  Good fortune obligated him to live a philanthropic life.  He enrolled in medical school and spent the rest of his life providing medical care in his hospital in Africa.

Fundraisers, too, know all about this connection of gratitude to giving.  In their well-known list of the 7 types of major donors, Russ Alan Prince and Karen Maru File identify “The Repayer” as a donor seeking to express gratitude to the sort of institution (often the same one) that they once benefited from themselves.  This includes former patients giving back to a hospital, or of course, alumni giving to their alma mater.

So on this Thanksgiving, let me say that one of the things I am grateful for is Thanksgiving itself.  I’m thankful to be reminded of the importance of gratitude, and especially of showing gratitude through philanthropy.

And I encourage everyone to give thanks by giving.

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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Do Emerging Donor Types Contradict Each Other?

I'm one of those people who will pretty much accept any sort of public speaking engagement I'm offered.  (Maybe I shouldn't say that publicly.. one never knows what kind of nefarious groups are searching for speakers to lure in….)

One benefit of speaking to diverse audiences is that you get asked diverse questions.  And these questions very often help you clarify or expand your own thinking.

This happened recently as I was speaking to a group of grantwriters and development professionals, talking about how donors are changing (and how they are not).  I focused on two kinds of donors that are seen by many as emerging types:  the business-minded "strategic" donor, and the "next gen" donor.  We know a lot about the first kind, and not very much about the second.

I talked about the tendencies and preferences of these two emerging donor types.  These include:

     - The strategic donors want to be proactive and focused in giving.  They reject the classic "spray and pray" approach to grantmaking, and embrace Michael Porter's definition of strategy as "choosing what not to do."  Ideally, they want to develop a theory of change that guides their giving by pointing them toward funding certain solutions (and not others), and they want to remain focused by investing only in those organizations that fit their thoughtfully designed strategy and that achieve proven and measurable results.  They tend to be more top-down, if you will (although this can be a controversial way to describe the strategic donor approach).

     - From what we know so far, the next gen donor, at least the Gen Y/Millennials (Gen X is different in this respect), want to be more open-ended and free-form in their giving.  Their ideal is a peer-to-peer, crowdsourced giving campaign in which momentum for good causes and effective solutions builds across trusted friends in a social network, and in which results can be expected to arise out of that collective energy.  They prefer non-institutionalized support for the causes (versus the organizations) that emerge among their diffuse peer networks; they appreciate "networked nonprofits" that allow supporters to shape and direct their own campaigns.  They are most definitely bottom-up.

After talking about both types, one smart young woman raised her hand with a question:  "Aren't those two contradictory?"  She had a point.

Of course, there is nothing to say that strategic donor preferences must be consistent with Gen Y philanthropic tendencies.  But if these are two of the most significant new donor approaches, and if one type sees focused choices by well-informed strategists as they key while the other embraces the unpredictable collective wisdom of trusted peers, then it seems important for us to note this tension and talk about what it might mean as those Gen Y givers become as active as the strategic givers already are.

A few further thoughts as I start to ruminate on this woman's good question:

     - It could be that this isn't as much of a tension or contradiction as we think - or that the Gen Y donors are not really how I've described them (again, we don't know that much about them yet).

     - It could be that we are just one innovation (technological or otherwise) away from combining these two approaches, overcoming their apparent tension, and satisfying both preferences.  It could be that this innovation already exists.

     - It could be that the Gen Y donors will change their preferences as they get older and/or gain more experience with philanthropy (maybe this is just me being old and thinking everybody changes with time).

     - It could be that having such tensions isn't such a bad thing.  Tensions can be productive, for they get us thinking and talking about just what our own philanthropic approach is.  And after all, as Mr. Emerson always says:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do." 

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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The Lessons of Robert L. Payton (1926-2011)

Below is the text of my remarks at his formal memorial service.  A live capture of the event is here (my part starts at 13:30).  Rusty Stahl of EPIP (one of those Jane Addams Fellows) also organized a panel of former students, and the live capture of that is here (skip ahead to 18:30 for the start).

Memorial Remarks, Oct. 1, 2011

It is my role here to speak on behalf of the former students of Mr. Payton – or rather, for those of us who learned from him as students.  I dare not try to speak for everyone who was a student of Mr. Payton, for that would probably include everyone in this room.

Mr. Payton’s former students are relatively small in number, but we are zealous in devotion to his mission.  We are now doing diverse and meaningful work, all across the globe.  That may sound immodest, but I see it as pride in my colleagues and admiration for what Mr. Payton continues to accomplish through us. 

One of us is teaching college in Tunisia, one couldn’t be here today because he’s on a plane to Kenya for work, and one is doing community organizing in the newest country on earth, South Sudan.  Here in the U.S., Payton’s acolytes are doctors and lawyers and professors and fundraisers and grantmakers and businesspeople and stay-at-home moms and dads, and all sorts of others engaged deeply in their communities all around the country. 

I take heart in knowing that Mr. Payton would be proud.  And I also know that he would say this is exactly as he planned it.

Before I go further, though, let me explain why I call him “Mr. Payton.”  I do so because he told me to do so.  On one of the first couple days I started to work for him in 1989, I wrote “Bob” in the “To” field of a memo (we still wrote things by hand in those days).  He sent it back to me with “Bob” crossed out and “Mr. Payton” written in – I still have that piece of paper, actually.  Initially, I thought he did that because he was my boss, but later that day he gave another explanation.  And it is that explanation that has kept me doing as I was told for 22 years now (half my life), even as I have gotten to be old enough to be a “Mr.” myself.

Mr. Payton explained that he wanted me to call him “Mr. Payton” not as a way to establish his authority or induce my reverence.  He didn’t need a title for that, frankly.  Instead, it was because it signified what he wanted our relationship to be – it was to be a mentorship, very deliberately. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that mentorship would change my life.  Again, he would say that he meant it to. 

The same could be said for the dozens of other young people whom he asked to call him Mr. Payton in the years following, and who’s lives were also profoundly changed by their mentor.  And when I say this, I do not just mean that he transformed our professional lives.  Certainly he taught us about philanthropy, often in the uniquely effective way of letting us browse his library until we found a book that incited our passion – either pro or con – and then helping us find the connection to philanthropy that could explain our discovery, and could give us a direction for our passion.  

He taught us these lessons as much by his actions as his words.  We saw how he sought out meaningful connections with others, regardless of their apparent status.  We saw how he revered his wife, loved his family, and was unashamedly smitten by every single child he encountered.  Those of you who were ever with him when he saw a toddler waddling by know what I’m talking about.  He would stop even the most serious conversation with the most important person to marvel at the sight, a huge smile spreading across his face. 

He mentees learned from him in this way as well.

There is a lot of talk in history books (at least old history books) about “great men.”  By any measure Mr. Payton qualifies as a “great man.”  Certainly his formal biographical list of accomplishments shows this.  But I think it was the qualities of the man that do not show up on such a list that provide the most compelling evidence for his greatness. 

One such piece of evidence is that when you talk to people who knew Mr. Payton, they often tell the story in loving detail about the first time they met him.  He was the sort of person who you remembered meeting for the first time. 

My own experience was that, as a college senior, I sought his advice about pursuing a career in philanthropy.  His response was to tell me that I should seriously consider working in the corporate world instead, and he threw in a pithy John D. Rockefeller quote about how the best thing you can give someone is a job.  He was so persuasive that I was seriously considering applying to business school, but luckily he offered me a job before I could do so.

That is an example of the powerful impression a great man makes. 

In his case, the powerful impression came through in his writing as well – his wonderful, lyrical, inspired writing.  Mr. Payton wrote in a journal most every day, especially later in life.  He once said to me that he spent a couple hours every morning “having a conversation with myself” in that writing.  Hearing that, I was reminded of the John F. Kennedy quote from the night he hosted a White House dinner attended by every living American Nobel laureate.  Kennedy said, “There has never been a greater concentration of intellectual power here at the White House, except when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” 

I venture to say there was never a more interesting conversation than the one in which Mr. Payton sat alone writing to himself.

Finally, as many of you remember, Mr. Payton often started his speeches with a bit of advice he pulled from one of his favorite thinkers, William James.  In one of his Talks to Teachers, James said that one should seek to make only one point in a lecture.  Mr. Payton then quoted “Payton’s corollary to James’ Law”:  one should seek to make at least one point in a lecture.

So let me conclude with my one big, serious point.  It is about how we should commemorate him.

When faced with the passing of a loved one, Mr. Payton believed deeply in the rightness of one specific approach to mourning: that we should not mourn our loss, but rather, we should be grateful for what that person gave us while we had them with us.

This encouragement to focus on what we could be thankful for was the first thing Mr. Payton said to me when we first spoke on the phone after the love of his life, his wife of 60 years, passed away.  He would be proud to know that it was also the first thing David said to me when he called to say his father had passed. 

I think his most powerful statement of this message of gratitude in the face of loss, though, come from one example of his wonderful writing.  It’s in an incredible letter, which I know many of you have read, written in Garden City, NY, on November 4, 1982, the day after hearing that his oldest son Joe had died in Rwanda. As visitors to the Joseph and Matthew Payton Library will know, this was the second such unimaginable loss that he and Polly and David had felt – Matthew had died 9 years earlier. 

In the face of such tragedy Mr. Payton wrote not of cosmic injustice or anger or even sadness, but of the joys of Joe’s life and of his awe for Joe’s devotion to good works in difficult places.  That is, he wrote of what he was grateful for, not sad about. 

He wrote:

“Polly and I have learned some things about the meaning of life and the meaning of love and the meaning of family, and if we could somehow share them we would.  We have been blessed by friends and parents and brothers and sisters and children in ways that make us feel very specially privileged…. [Let me pause to remind you that this was the day after he heard the tragic news, and he was using words like “blessed” and “privileged.”]  Joe lived a full and honorable life, and died while passionately engaged in his honorable work… God is great, and merciful, and life goes on.”

Mr. Payton wrote similar things about Matthew and about Mrs. Payton, highlighting what he learned from them, and what he was thankful for.

So I say let’s all learn one final lesson from him, as his students.  Let’s adopt his approach to mourning and let’s remember: 

Mr. Payton lived a "full and honorable life."   

We have been "blessed" and "specially privileged" to have had him influence our lives so profoundly, and we are grateful for that. 

And yes, "life goes on."   In gratitude to him, let us live it in the way he taught us.

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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Appropriate Evaluation

I gave a talk recently at the Indiana Grantmakers Alliance (thanks again, Marie Beason) on the subject, “Can Family Philanthropy be Strategic Philanthropy?”  Not surprisingly, the issue of how smaller foundations – even donor-advised funds or individual family donors – can do more intensive, “strategic” evaluation came up.

More and better evaluation is something many family givers want to do, but something they often don’t pursue because they feel they lack the capacity or know-how for it.

Thinking about this challenge led me to give more form to an idea that had been rattling around in my head for a while.  It’s what I’m going to tentatively label “Appropriate Evaluation” (AE).

I’m not sure if that is the right label, and I'm positive I’m not the right person to work the idea through – colleagues at the Community Research Institute, The Foundation Review, and in the American Evaluation Association are the experts.  But I thought I’d throw the notion out here and see if it gets us anywhere.

AE is an adaptation of “AT,” “Appropriate Technology,” a concept long advocated by proponents of sustainable development to address a long-standing challenge in the developing world.  In short, AT is technology that benefits communities and improves conditions but does not require a lot of capital to adopt, and is effective/efficient without being environmentally damaging.  One of many examples of AT is the solar-powered lamp that can replace kerosene lamps or wood fires in places without reliable electricity.

While I don't want to extend the comparison too far, it seems to me that a similar challenge faces many small foundations and donors – and many of the nonprofits they support too, of course – who lack the staff or financial capacity to do the more intensive evaluations that they want to do.  In both cases the challenge is how to spread something useful more widely, but in a way that is appropriate for the lower capacity context of those places to which we want to spread it.

AE can help small foundations and nonprofits improve their work, in a feasible way, just as AT helps small communities improve their conditions.

The problem that AE can help address is familiar to anyone following the current promotion of more elaborate evaluation and measurement in the philanthropic world.  Many funders and recipients are not capable of instituting randomized control trials, or sophisticated performance benchmarking, monitoring, and tracking systems.  But these funders still want to gather information on their performance that goes beyond anecdotes, and that assesses not just inputs/processes/outputs but also outcomes – if not full net impact, which is even harder to measure.  And they want to do so in ways that are appropriate for their capacity as well as their purpose.

These funders want to measure what they can, while also measuring what matters and what will be useful.  That is the AE challenge in a nutshell.

The good news is that something akin to “appropriateness” is already a pretty standard best practice in the evaluation field.  Evaluators are encouraged to focus on tracking those outcomes that are most aligned with the mission of whatever is being evaluated, not just tracking what can be tracked or whatever emerges as the popular new outcome measurement.  Arguably the most popular approach to evaluation, “Utilization-focused Evaluation” pioneered by Michael Quinn Patton, encourages consideration of the ultimate use of evaluation results even in the early stages of evaluation planning, as a way of focusing on what really matters.

Much of the common wisdom held by evaluation veterans (at least as I hear them talk) points in the direction of appropriateness.  They say, for instance, “define success clearly and then measure for that,” “start with what you already know or measure,” “measure one outcome at a time,” or even “include multiple stakeholders in the evaluation process” which seems a potential way of sharing the cost and staff burden of the work.

Ultimately, it would be great if AE included not just a set of principles for making evaluation workable in all contexts, but also a set of tools and techniques.  A quick search for such tools suggests there are some techniques that might fit in this category, such as “participatory, self-evaluation” in which nonprofits/NGOs gather evaluation data during the course of their work, and share the burden of analyzing that data in a way that can yield more sophisticated measures than any one organization could produce on their own.  I’m sure there are other ideas and resources out there already that could fit under the AE label.

Again, this is a preliminary idea, and one that others will be better equipped to work up (or decide to discard).  But if an idea like Appropriate Evaluation can help family and other small donors do more and better evaluation, then I say it deserves our attention.  What do you think?

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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Remembering That Passion Matters

In a series of recent posts here, here, and here, the always clear-headed Ellen Remmer of The Philanthropic Initiative in Boston explains why passion - a "mix of curiosity, enthusiasm, and conviction" that leads to "sustained engagement with an issue, cause, or organization" - still matters for philanthropy and philanthropists, and why it will always matter.  She reminds us of a truth that most of us can agree on: good giving requires contributions from the heart as well as the head.  

Some lessons/reminders I take from Ellen's essays:

* We know that effective philanthropy takes time and often involves learning from failure.  Ellen reminds us that it is usually a donor's passion that sustains her through the failures so that she can reach the success.  Passion is a secret ingredient in our still evolving recipe for effective and strategic giving.

* We know that the reasons people offer for why they give are diverse.  Ellen reminds us that a donor's passion, too, can come from multiple sources and take many forms.  It can arise from compelling evidence and desire for impact, but also from from frustration or gratitude.  

* We know that donors can become disengaged and can back away from giving.  Ellen explains that the loss of passion can occur for many reasons - for seemingly petty interpersonal reasons or random situational reasons that have little to do with the cause itself, as well as for analytical reasons such as a lack of perceivable impact.  She reminds us that donors may want and use information about causes, solutions, nonprofits, but they can at times be overwhelmed by this information also.

* We know that some donors and philanthropy advocates are distrustful or neglectful of passion, even while agreeing that it is necessary.  Ellen explains how focusing on one’s passion for philanthropy might be “culturally uncomfortable” for people who have been taught to restrain emotion and focus on facts, whose default mode is analytical rather than inspirational.  She also reminds us that there is often a reserve of passion driving even the most rational strategic givers, even if that essential passion is mostly unacknowledged or taken for granted.

Looks like TPI also produced a full report aimed at helping donors discover their passion.  I bet it has some good lessons also.

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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Do Other Rich People Agree with Mr. Buffett?

Warren Buffett has gotten quite a bit of attention for his controversial, unforgettable op-ed piece in the New York Times this week, with the let-me-say-this-clearly-so-there's-no-mistake title, "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich."  I'm going to avoid the politics of the issue, and focus instead on the research question this raises about the opinions of the wealthy, and how the answer to this question would affect philanthropy.

Mr. Buffett writes:

I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.

The first part of this is something that my experience, and research in general I think, would confirm.  It is the last sentence that raises an interesting question that I don't think we know the answer to:

Are the rich really willing to pay more in taxes, either to relieve suffering or simply in the interests of fairness (following Buffett's point that the super-rich pay a lower tax rate than others)?

Certainly there are plenty of examples of high net worth people - even billionaires like Buffett, George Soros, and Bill Gates - who say they are willing to pay more income tax, who argue against dropping the estate tax, and so on.  There is even a group of people calling themselves "Patriotic Millionaires" who have united under the slogan, "Please do the right thing for our country.  Raise our taxes."  And in a recent list of the wealthiest members of Congress, 7 of the top 10 were Democrats - most or all of whom are in favor of some form of higher tax rates for the wealthiest citizens.

Still, there are also many, many examples of merely rich and even "super-rich" citizens - the Koch brothers are the most famous wealthy libertarians at the moment - who are strongly against paying more taxes.  Moreover, high net worth individuals are similar to other segments of the population in their very low level of confidence in government institutions as a whole.

These examples on both sides, then, set up this question as one that surely needs to be answered with more research.  We know more and more about high net worth individuals these days, but we need more work asking how they view taxes, especially in relation to what this means for their corresponding views about philanthropy, and their actual charitable giving behavior.

Make no mistake: there is a clear connection to philanthropy in all this.

For one thing, we know there is a relationship between tax policies and charitable giving in general - e.g., lowering the allowable tax deduction for charitable gifts lowers the amount of giving, although it doesn't keep people from giving something.  Also, there is evidence in the economics literature for some "crowding out" effects: when government subsidies for a cause or organization are higher, the level of philanthropic support tends to be lower (although the evidence also suggests that donors don't really know much about the level of government subsidies to the organizations they support). 

So the actions of government - taxing and spending both - do influence the amount of giving, and wealthy donors can be the most affected.

In addition, we often hear people make the counter-Buffett argument - against higher taxes and against more government involvement in alleviating suffering - as part of an argument for more philanthropy.  Government is not to be trusted, and is inefficient, the argument goes, so it is better to leave the money in the hands of the people to distribute charitably, especially the wealthy who can do the most good.  Francie Ostrower's classic study of wealthy donors reported that this wariness about government, and preference for philanthropy, was common - although she didn't necessarily find that the wealthy disagreed with paying their "fair share" of taxes.

Given all this, it seems very important to philanthropy, as well as to government, to answer this empirical question raised by Buffett's provocative position.

We know that many people hang on Buffett's pronouncements about investments, and imitate what he does.  Do they do the same when he's talking about taxes and giving?

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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Family Philanthropy, Vice Versa

I'm sure most of you by now have heard the tragic - but also uplifting - story of Rachel Beckwith.  Rachel was an extraordinary 9-year old from outside Seattle, who was already an accomplished and inspiring donor before losing her life this summer in a highway accident.  Her story has lead to a remarkable flood of contributions to her donation page at the nonprofit "charity:water" - a page Rachel had set up for her 9th birthday, asking family and friends at the time to donate there in lieu of gifts. 

This reminds us that our standard model of how philanthropy is taught in families does not always apply cleanly.  It can be flipped.  Learning about giving can work in the other direction, from children to parents.

I'm sure Rachel's parents were - and certainly are now (they survived the accident) - generous people who talked to their daughter about the importance of giving back.  But this looks like a case in which the child had taken the definite lead in the family's giving.  The child was the one demonstrating to others, including her parents, what a life dedicated to serving others looked like.

Rachel's family is surely not the only one breaking the mold like this.  At least I hope not.

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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Munificence

I recently heard that the 19-year old pro golfer, Ryo Ishikawa - the so-called "Tiger Woods of Japan" (though he might not want to be called that anymore) - has committed to donating his entire winnings this year, plus about $1200 (100,000 yen) for every birdie he makes, to help victims of the earthquake and tsunami in his homeland. 

Now, this isn't some small act of charity.  Ishikawa made $1.82 million in winnings last year - not counting his endorsements, which will presumably be what he lives on this year.  And that total looks to go up this year. 

I call such extraordinary acts of giving "munificence," to distinguish them from other acts of "beneficence."  I think of munificence as a sort of super-beneficence, beneficence at a level beyond the norm - beneficence on steroids, if you will.  (There doesn't appear to be a word "munivolence" to compare to "benevolence" - to refer to an extraordinary level of good will or disposition to do good.  Munivolence doesn't appear in the OED, though maybe it should.)

The question is, why would Ishikawa commit so much to earthquake relief, when many others of us would probably have given something, but not everything?  What made him "give 'til it hurts" (another way of thinking about munificence)?

This got me thinking about Ishikawa compared to other acts of munificence that have captured our attention. 

There is the famous donor, Zell Kravinsky (photo below), the professor-turned-investor who donated nearly all of a multimillion dollar fortune, and then decided to donate a kidney to a stranger when he learned that African-Americans have a lower chance of receiving needed organs. 

Or consider Hal Taussig, who lives an extremely modest lifestyle and donates the entire profits of his travel company, as well as his own salary, to charity - a total of several million dollars over the past decade. 

Or read the donor stories on the website of the fascinating organization, Bolder Giving.  These are all people who inherited or made considerable wealth, and who have decided to "think big" about their giving, donating in some cases 90% of their wealth, and actively encouraging others to do so. 

Similar stories of giving most of one's wealth to charity can be found among the letters written by billionaires who commit to the well-known Giving Pledge, or by lesser-known less-than-billionaires who make similar pledges, like Kevin Salwen and his family realizing "The Power of Half," or the two Rutgers University philosophy graduate students who decided they were already rich enough by global standards and committed to donating half of all their future income - for life! - to help the poor in developing countries. 

But again, why?  We don't know much about munificence, despite the fact that we are always in awe of it when it happens.  It attracts our attention and praise, but not our analysis.  

One possible answer is that the motives for giving munificently are somehow different than the motives for giving beneficently.  But the examples don't seem to fit this explanation. 

Ishikawa, for instance, says he just feels "fortunate" to be successful, and knows that his success would not be possible without the support of many people, and so he believes "it is my turn to give back."  Giving back (a theme I will return to here a lot) is certainly not an unusual motive for giving.

Kravinsky and the Rutgers grad students defend their level of giving on logical and ethical grounds.  They echo Peter Singer's arguments in his book, The Life You Can Save, that if we consider the vast inequities in wealth across the globe, and the extent of suffering felt by the global have-nots, people lucky enough to live in the developed world actually give significantly less than they are ethically bound to give.  The situation is the same as if we (the global rich) were passing by a drowning person (the global poor) and decided not to sacrifice our dry clothes to save them.  What we call munificence is just regular moral duty to them.

For his part, Taussig says he gives so much for very personal reasons.  Again, not so different from many of us.  He likes the feeling of being unencumbered by money - ok, that is kind of unusual - and believes consumerism is a "social evil" that he is doing his small part to fight.

If it is not the type of motive that is different, maybe it is the degree.  Maybe the munificent among us just feel these common motives for giving much more strongly than the rest of us.  Are they just significantly more benevolent - even munivolent, to use my new word - and this is what causes them to give so much? 

This is a harder question to answer.  And it raises troubling thoughts about what this would say about those of us who have the same philanthropic impulses but who practice "mere" beneficence.  Are we not as deeply committed to doing good?

The munificent people themselves are usually pretty humble. They insist they are not that different from others - except maybe that they see the need and the value of this sort of major commitment to philanthropy a bit more clearly than others. 

Still, these uber-givers also tend to spend a lot of effort trying to convince other people to give much more than they do now.  They seem to be trying to tell us something about ourselves, that we all have it in us to be munificent. 

Or maybe their unusual levels of giving just make them really happy, and they want others to feel this way.  If so, then that seems like a message we should take very seriously.

In any case, I think we need to know more about munificence.  It can help us understand our own philanthropy, and will certainly help our world.

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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"Best" Philanthropists Lists

There is no shortage of lists of "best philanthropists" out there, and these lists almost inevitably cause controversy. 

Well, you are almost inviting a kerfuffle when you claim to rank the best of anything, let alone the best of something so personally and cultural meaningful - and so devoid of obvious standards for ranking better vs. worse - as philanthropy.

I tend to like these lists, though, mainly because I think celebrating philanthropists is a good thing in almost any form, and because I am almost always introduced to someone I am glad to know about.

So I was happy to see this list of "8 Great Philanthropists Every Student Should Study," created by the unlikely source of the "Best Colleges Online" website, which seems to do a lot of lists.  Despite its disappointingly small size, I like this list. 

I like it because:

- It includes both current and historical philanthropists, even if the historical ones are pretty obvious choices.

- It includes "philanthropists" (i.e., Jane Addams) who are known more for their gift of service than their gift of money, which fits my definition of philanthropy.

- It includes some current donors from outside the U.S., which is something I'm seeing more and more recently around the internet, and which can only help us better understand the (often overlooked) cultural dynamics and variations in philanthropy.

- It is a list created for the purpose of educating people (i.e., students) about philanthropy, which is the point, really.

-Michael Moody

Frey Foundation Chair for Family Foundations and Philanthropy

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