Philanthropy With a Twist (of

Philanthropy with a Twist (of either Disingenuousness and/or Reality): Analysis and Comparison of Gaudiani's "Democracy, Capitalism, and Generosity: The Fragile Balance" and "Philanthropy of the 21st Century" by Berresford

Maybe I am so cynical about the American rich today, and those who transparently cozy up to them for reflected glory or personal gain, that I am blind to the shining armor of an elite think tank fellow and ex-college president (married to a Pfizer executive) who colluded with Pfizer, while serving as ritzy Connecticut College's then-President, against New London, Connecticut residents for their private property. Claire Gaudiani (who now instead pens books and articles on philanthropy) resigned her post as Connecticut College President under pressure for financial mismanagement of one of the priciest liberal arts schools anywhere (Basinger, October 27, 2000). But the future author of "Democracy, Capitalism, and Generosity: The Fragile Balance" still secured, before leaving Connecticut College, a big corporate donation for that beacon on a hill - a clear conflict of interest and perhaps (although this is impossible to know for sure) the real reason she is no longer President.

As a next career move Gaudiani wrote of the 'greater good' of American philanthropy. Toward that end, her "Democracy, Capitalism, and Generosity: The Fragile Balance," though glib, does raise some good (if arguably outdated) points about the real and many public benefits from key philanthropic contributions to the American public and American life over time.

What Gaudiani omits is that most of this same philanthropic good, e.g., founding of entities like Provident Hospital; the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University; libraries, schools, museums, etc., happened when America was different from now. For instance, average citizens, rich, poor, or middle class, even in the aftermath of slavery and a civil war, had more sincere hope for the United States as a great nation, growing ever-greater than now. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, on the other hand, plan today to put their combined leftover billions to work Africa, not here. Oprah has built a school there, not here. Movie stars today showily adopt African, not African-American (or any American) orphans.

Philanthropy in America seems to have lost its groove, a key problem for the future that Gaudiani never addresses. But to give some positive credit to her article "Democracy, Capitalism, and Generosity: The Fragile Balance," its central, three-part argument, that philanthropy helped build America and made it strong; that capitalism has helped and helps now to sustain, expand, and strengthen America (and further increase philanthropy by spawning more, greater, and newer wealth); and generosity on the part of individuals and groups alike within America has driven, and drives today, the practice of philanthropy, by corporate giants and everyday citizens alike, is cogent and insightful.

The latter as Gaudiani describes them, are ideal, interrelationships among inherently contradictory entities: democracy, capitalism, and generosity. When they all function agreeably and co-operatively toward the common good, nations flourish and their citizens thrive. But Gaudiani also transparently over-admires and over-praises the wealthy for having made such positive differences in the lives of any of us who ever took a school field trip to a museum or checked out a library book. If the wealthy need their egos massaged in order to get them to give, Gaudiani clearly knows how to do this, but to see ego massage of the wealthy in operation, especially in the guise of imparting needed information on the glories of philanthropy to the rest of us, is (for me, at least) personally revolting. Clearly, in Gaudiani's own dollar sign-admiring view, the Paris Hiltons; Donald Trumps, and (even in death) the resort-hopping; trust fund baby-popping Anna Nicole Smiths of the world, along with other wealthy if more low-key types, are the real coveted readers. One easily senses this author's embedded, perhaps even automatic and instinctive, implicit buttering-up of the rich within her litany of praise, to the rest of us, of all their many past philanthropic good deeds.

A better article; however, and one more objective and that contains (albeit not entirely) various opposing viewpoints to Gaudiani's on philanthropy and the real motivations of the rich for practicing it yesterday and today, is written by an also more credible author with no past professional baggage, Susan Berresford of the Ford Foundation. Berresford's article "Philanthropy of the 21st Century" is both more realistic about how and why, and in what kinds of circumstances and situations philanthropy works and does not work. This article is also far more balanced, positively and negatively, on the subject of past and present philanthropists and the (as Berresford states, frankly) almost always ego-driven motivations behind their apparently altruistic efforts on behalf of society and those less fortunate than themselves.

Unlike Gaudiani's article, also, Berresford's article by comparison straightforwardly mentions typical philanthropists' dominant (and in most cases non-altruistic) reasons for giving their riches, or at least some of their riches, away to strangers. These include, for example, personally beneficial but entirely banal practicalities like the receiving of needed tax write-offs. Loftier motivations than this (when these are occasionally but definitely not typically admitted) include desires to "experience" immortality and/or control beyond the grave. Other less-than-sublime motivations include personal monument-building and (more abstractly) chances to build tangible, lasting legacies while also exercising freedom, based on wealth.