Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Peter Frumkin is professor of social policy and faculty director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy, both at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Strategic Giving and The Essence of Strategic Giving.

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The Essence of Strategic Giving

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

Preface......................................................................vii1. The Idea of Strategic Giving..............................................12. Dimensions of Philanthropic Value.........................................273. Logic Models: Theories of Change, Leverage, and Scale.....................514. Giving Styles.............................................................775. Time Frames...............................................................1056. Institutions and Vehicles.................................................1297. Toward Strategic Giving...................................................157Index........................................................................173

Chapter One

Two words—charity and philanthropy—are often used to describe the act of giving. Each has a special meaning that is grounded in the evolution of giving in the United States. While some have tried to simplify the connection between these two words by positing them to be incompatible or by imposing a historical or developmental order to them, the reality is that both charity and philanthropy have long operated in parallel.

Charity can best be understood as the uncomplicated and unconditional transfer of money or other assistance to those in need with the intent of helping. Though charity includes gifts of time, here I will focus on gifts of money. Charity has a long history, one that is deeply intertwined with many of the world's religions. Within Christianity, faith and charity have long gone hand in hand. In other faiths, charity has also been a central principle, a way of demonstrating caring and commitment. Charity is based on the presumption that no human being should live in misery and suffering, and that those with the ability have an obligation to help.

In modern times, charity has certainly had its critics. One argument against charity warns that by offering a handout rather than a hand up, charity reinforces social hierarchy as well as debases and humiliates the poor by forcing them to receive funds they have not earned. Second, critics say charity focuses only on the temporary alleviation of social problems like poverty. A third worry is that charity lacks professionalism. Even after decades of growth of social work as a profession, critics still worry about the training and capacity of charity workers to fashion informed and sophisticated responses to human suffering. Fourth, critics charge that charities create expectations of further private action, which makes the case for government action less compelling and broad systematic interventions difficult. Still, the urge to help those in desperate straits is strong, and the fact that this help may not get to the root of all social problems hardly means that aid should not be rendered to those in need.

What could be done to remedy some of these real and perceived flaws of charity? A new vision of helping and giving was conjured, one in which charity would be transformed into philanthropy. At the very center of the philanthropic alternative to charity are the principles of self-help and opportunity creation. In fact, these two principles were originally thought to differentiate philanthropy from old-fashioned charity so significantly that many still believe the elaboration of this distinction was the critical historical juncture in the evolution of giving.

Rather than just give the poor small alms on an ongoing basis, philanthropy aspires to do something more lasting and radical. By providing help to those willing to help themselves, many of the early donors believed they were improving on the model of charity by getting to the root causes of poverty and despair. Benjamin Franklin was a great proponent of philanthropy and argued against perpetual charity. His most famous dictum was that a razor could be given to those in need as a tool for self-care, one that would teach them the joys of self-help, free them from the dull and rusted razors of barbers, and give them a sense of satisfaction stemming from the money they saved. Andrew Carnegie felt that a modest lifestyle and philanthropy were duties of the rich. He also believed that philanthropy should never degenerate into mere almsgiving. Instead, serious giving should stimulate people to help themselves. Carnegie summed up his ethos of self-help: "The best means of benefiting the community is to place within its reach the ladders upon which the aspiring can rise." Since then, donors have continued to expand on this idea of intervention. With some simplification, it is possible to isolate at least five important purposes or functions that have emerged over time as philanthropy has sought to define a distinctive place for itself in public life.

One of the most common arguments about the function of philanthropy focuses on the ability of donors to use private funds to create social and political change. The use of private funds allows philanthropy to pursue a change agenda without having to spend large amounts of time mobilizing other sources of support, but also without achieving consensus among those affected. Of course, this power to deploy money in the name of political and social change makes many worry about the accountability of philanthropy.

A second function of philanthropy is to locate and support important social innovations, whether in the forms of research or programmatic breakthroughs. The freedom of choice and the absence of strong accountability mechanisms enable donors to strike out in new and unpredictable directions. Many donors give with the goal of generating new ways to conceptualize and respond to problems, though sometimes the effectiveness of social innovations is contested. Still, by enabling social entrepreneurship, philanthropy has the capacity for profound impact.

A third purpose of philanthropy—to achieve a small measure of equity through the simple redistribution of resources—is pursued by a large number of donors, particularly smaller contributors. Equity or redistributive giving is most often embedded in programs and services designed to provide long-term solutions to the problems facing the needy and often takes a local form, where caring is expressed for those in the community who are less well-off and where the concept of equity is more manageable. The equity-seeking, redistributive function of charitable giving is thus the least controversial of philanthropy functions.

A fourth rationale for philanthropy is the pure and unapologetic affirmation of pluralism as a civic value. The fact that hundreds of billions of dollars are applied each year to public purposes by disparate groups of individuals and private institutions, rather than by government, holds forth the possibility that pluralism as a value is affirmed. Giving allows a multiplicity of ideas and programs to exist in the public domain, rather than a limited number of "preferred" solutions. The argument that philanthropy affirms pluralism strikes some as both inefficient and undemocratic, in that private parties are acting in competing fashions rather than through a single, democratically selected course of action. Given the overlay of private interests on public needs that occurs when gifts are made, these shortcomings may not be a problem. After all, with a myriad of...