Giving When It Hurts: Rethinking charity in the midst of an economic crisis

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Tap the new Rockefellers. A host of articles and books have celebrated the new breed of benevolent tycoons such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Ted Turner. Perhaps no one has done so as exhaustively or exuberantly as Matthew Bishop and Michael Green, authors of Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World (Bloomsbury, 2008). They argue that capitalism has been wonderful at creating great wealth, especially lately, and those who have feasted most heartily on this bounty are well positioned to share it, by setting up foundations, funding specific projects, or contributing to other large endowments.

Of course, much of this wealth “creation” has been proven illusory by the global recession, which caused stocks worldwide to lose 42 percent of their value in 2008, reversing all the gains made since 2003. And the Bernard Madoff scandal hasn’t exactly bolstered the case for leaving charity dollars in the hands of the ultrarich: Amid the victims of the $50 billion bilk job were foundation-funded groups such as the Innocence Project, which helps exonerate wrongfully convicted people; the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston; and a host of Jewish charities.

Bishop and Green do deserve some credit, though: They celebrate the work of grassroots web giving tools such as kiva.org, a microfinance site, and globalgiving.com, a giving marketplace, both of which allow folks with more modest incomes to contribute. The two authors also openly grapple with the fact that their grand philanthrocapitalistic vision basically relies on the better natures, and judgment, of a few extraordinarily wealthy individuals.

Give it back to the government. For decades, more and more Americans have bought into the argument that helping people too much leads to dependence, and this pervasive belief is a key driver behind the steady outsourcing of charity to private groups. In The Samaritan’s Dilemma: Should Government Help Your Neighbor? (Nation Books, 2008), Deborah Stone traces the origins of this “help is harmful” dogma to President Ronald Reagan and his trickle-down economic guru, Milton Friedman. It was the fuel that fed the downscaling of welfare and other social service programs even during the Clinton years, along with the steady ballooning of the nonprofit sector.

“Americans love charities almost as much as they hate government,” writes Joel Berg in All You Can Eat: How Hungry Is America? (Seven Stories, 2008), a book that makes the case that local charities simply aren’t up to the task of feeding the nation’s hungry. “Trying to end hunger with food drives is like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon. Because local charities cannot possibly feed 35.5 million people adequately, and because their efforts rarely enable people to become self-reliant, this belief that charity does it better than government only ensures hunger will persist in America.”

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