- Thanks so much for the opportunity to be here tonight. If I invite you to name a philanthropist, who comes to mind? Take a moment and think about it.- Carnegie?- Thomas Gresham?- Right here, Thomas Gresham.- Carnegie?- Bill Gates?- Bill Gates, perhaps you thought of Bill Gates, or MacKenzie Scott, a new philanthropist, the Prince of Wales, maybe you thought of historical figures, Gresham, John Howard, whose statue is there in St. Paul's, William Wilberforce, Angela Burdett-Coutts, or Gilded Age philanthropists like Scotsman Andrew Carnegie or American John D. Rockefeller. Perhaps your mind turned to more recent events, and the darker side of philanthropy, disgraced philanthropists like the Sackler family, who made their fortune from addictive opioids, Russian oligarchs seeking to curry favor in the West, or recent efforts to remove names of past philanthropists from public spaces upon coming to terms of how fortunes were amassed from the means of colonialism or slavery. Or maybe you envisioned a different kind of philanthropist, how about footballer Marcus Rashford, donating funds while advocating and raising funds for hunger relief in the midst of COVID. Maybe it's young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, or Pakistani advocate for girls' education and Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Or maybe you were thinking of someone a little bit closer to home, maybe it's a neighbor, a family member, or a friend. What counts as philanthropy? And if I've asked you who comes to mind when thinking of a philanthropist, now let me ask you to consider what comes to mind in describing philanthropy. Perhaps you're imagining a grant given to a local charity, or a foundation, or a trust, a corporation's social responsibility budget, or an individual donor's major gift. Others would even include the change dropped into a Salvation Army red kettle or a Jewish child's tzedakah box. Still others might think about an online crowdfunding platform for a local grassroots advocacy organization, or the public-private partnership of a billionaire working with a government to mass produce a COVID-19 vaccine, Dolly Parton did that in the States. Whether described as philanthropy or charity, giving or volunteering, or even generosity and pro-social behavior, these collective practices have long played a key role in our communities, locally, nationally, and globally. But let's be honest, if we ever stopped to consider philanthropy, most of us, in our imaginations, our shorthand is something like, big money given to a good cause. Yet I think this popular conception alone does not do justice to the complexities of philanthropy. It allows us too easily to fall into the trap of either romanticizing or criticizing, either philanthropy that has too often been left unexamined as an unquestioned good, where individuals freely give of their time and money, or an unwelcome result of political and economic systems that empower a few individuals with undue wealth and influence to shape public policy in our collective lives together. So this limited conception also masks the bigger picture of philanthrophy, that I take not to only include treasure, but gifts of time, talent, and testimony. We might consider the impact of volunteering, offering one's expertise or passions to others, as well as raising one's voice in advocating for others. What if money, wile primary, may only be a facet through which we can view this multifaceted concept of philanthrophy? And like a prism, perhaps it's through this combination of the many facets together that we can see something new, shedding new light, even offering us a new field of vision worth exploring. So in this lecture, we'll take a few brief looks at the who, the what, and the how of philanthropy, but I'll take most of our time to focus together on the why. And while there's a large literature attending to the why of why donors give, thinking about donor motivations, for instance, we're not focused so much on the individual, but more on the broader nature of philanthropy, and the role it plays in our public life together. So with that in mind, how should we define philanthropy? There are many definitions from which to choose, from the broadest original Greek love of humanity to the sector-specific monetary gifts to a registered charity or nonprofit organization. But I've always liked something more in between: as scholars Payton and Moody have offered, philanthropy is more voluntary action for the public good. It's short, it's simple, and like most definitions, it probably is not comprehensive enough, but it offers us a good starting point to explore what we are here to talk about together. And if this broad definition is a start, it still provides no simple answer to the question of, does philanthropy do the public good. And while answering that question is not easy, it doesn't mean that people aren't trying. With increasing professionalization of philanthropy, and public policy, and nonprofit organizations, scholars have tended most often to assess tax codes, and funding mechanisms, and evaluation metrics. In measuring the impact of philanthropy on the public good, the question has most often centered on effectiveness, yet perhaps the prior question might be, effective at what? In order to address when philanthropy does the public good, we must first reflect on the moral nature of philanthropy, and the multiple visions of the public good. One common approach when defining philanthropy and debating its purpose, has been categorizing the work within its own distinct sector. In contrast to the public sector, government, the state, or the private sector, market, business, many point to a third sector, philanthropy, charity, nonprofit organizations, civil society. Another prominent definition of philanthropy is private action for public benefit. This definition helps us to focus on the role of private giving and charitable activity, in contrast to the sectors of, first, government and business. So for instance, while the state and philanthropy may share the goal of working for public benefit, they're distinct in the fact that philanthropy is a private action done by an individual or a corporation, as opposed to the public action of the state, and additionally, philanthropy is voluntary, as opposed to the coercive power of the state to make you pay your taxes, for instance. And in contrast, the market, like philanthropy, is made up of private actors, but its ends are not necessarily for the public benefit. Rather, success may be measured by shareholder value or quarterly profits. So perhaps these three sectors, these sector distinctions, tell us something about the nature of philanthropy, private action for public benefit, but I think we will find that these sector lines have always been much more blurry, and that definitely is the case today, where the state relying on and contracting with the third sector for many social services, with companies measuring social impact through double or triple-bottom lines, and philanthropy not only making grants, but engaging in public-private partnerships, or focused on impact investments. But focusing on philanthropy as a distinct sector is not the only way for us to make sense of the concept, we might also think of philanthropy more as a set of practices, a complex social institution, not a single organization or set of organizations, but a broader overarching meta-institution that, as management scholar Mairi Maclean and colleagues would note, varies widely in form and substance, depending on variations in historical trajectory, legal systems, socioeconomic structures, policies, ideologies, and cultural values. So in the complexity and diversity of context that Maclean and colleagues note, we might also consider philanthropy as a social institution also more of a tradition as well, not a single tradition, mind you, but multiple traditions that are contested, shaped, and sustained across historical, geographical, political, cultural, and religious traditions themselves. Easy categorization of a concept like philanthropy is impossible, as the lines between public and private, local and global, individual and collective are oftentimes blurred and contested. A more capacious understanding requires not idealizing, but rather illustrating these many philanthropic traditions in their context. Consciously, or often unconsciously, these traditions are layered one upon another to reshape our understandings of philanthropy and the nature of giving and receiving. At the same time, attending to these philanthropic traditions that we inhabit cannot be done without attention to how we make sense of our lives together. Yes, philanthropy attends to what we do, our actions, but it also must attend to the why, the ideas and values that shape our actions. This is philanthropy as moral imagination that we work out together in order to make sense of what doing the public good should or could mean. And so before we set out together to take stock of these multiple philanthropic traditions and trajectories across time, and then come back to take sense of the current landscape, perhaps we should take one moment to reflect on the other concept that I've twinned with philanthropy for this lecture tonight, the public good, and like philanthrophy, it may seem easier to define than it really is. Economists have more of a straightforward definition

technically, public goods are those that are non-excludable, are non-rivalrous, non-excludable meaning that anyone can benefit from the good regardless of whether they've contributed to it, and non-rivalrous meaning one person's use of it doesn't diminish another's, think of national defense, or public libraries, or city parks. Yet the problem with public goods from an economics lens is that public goods are susceptible to the free-rider problem. If I can access the public good without paying for it, why should I? Why buy a ticket when I could ride for free? To extend this argument, economists explain the third sector more generally as necessary as a response to market failures, or failures in the government, to provide the optimum amount of public goods, and so therefore, there's a need for philanthropy or charitable organizations to step in and provide the necessary resources that market or government don't make available. But again, that draws us into what I see as this limited sector-based approach. Like we've already noted, these lines of private and public, as well as for-profit, nonprofit, have always been blurry, and the economic definition of the public good is just one among many. For ages, philosophers, ethicists, religious leaders, politicians, and pragmatic reformers have been debating what is and how best to achieve the public, or common good, and frankly, if philanthropy is a tradition that shapes our moral imaginations, then this is more the question and debate that we might be in interested in tonight. Yet too often, the implication when we attend to the public good in this more expansive way is the assumption that there is some certain, or ideal, or absolute good that we could ascribe to and work toward, but in reality, that's not how it works. As sociologist Craig Calhoun argues, the fact is that the public good is not objectively or externally ascertainable, it's a social and cultural project of the public sphere, it's created in and through the process of our public life together, it doesn't exist in advance of it. So the public good, it's not found, it's rather forged through our lives together. Thinkers from Plato, to Aquinas, to Adam Smith, to Alexis de Tocqueville have worked to make sense of self-interest, and how that aligns with the common good. Plato claims that acting justly would produce happiness, Aquinas agreed, saying that one's own good cannot exist without the common good, Adam Smith famously saw that what was good for the individual was good for the polis, through the work of an invisible hand, and Tocqueville saw the success of American's experiment in voluntary association through self-interest rightly understood. But as sociologist Calhoun, again, would go on to say, our debates about what is good for us are always debates about whom we want to be. The public, or common good is not simply the aggregation of our own imagination, our own interests, nor is it an abstract ideal or a fixed standard to meet, rather, it's constantly contested and debated. And through attending to these debates, not the debates undertaken by philosophers in ivory towers, but rather, in the working out, fighting over, forging together our concepts of the public good in the midst of the public sphere, well that's where we want to focus. So apologies to those of you looking for specific definitions and clear categories, but I want to argue that the benefit of looking at the public good is in looking at the institutions, and the individuals, instruments, identities, power, and practices involved in shaping it. And my argument, following Payton and Moody, is that the traditions of philanthropy can be understood as the social history of our moral imagination, attending to these ideas and actions that have defined our efforts to make this kind of pool together, a better place, through engaging our work and lives together. Philanthropic traditions can serve as one lens through which to work out the multiple meanings of the public good in our lives together. And just one more note before we turn to these philanthropic traditions, first, it might be worth noting the work that philanthropy does, broadly defined. I've already posited that philanthropy is a living tradition and a fluid set of practices, but for the sake of some boundaries, what is the work that philanthrophy has been set up to do? I imagine that the first role that most of us would come up with is some form of service, meeting immediate and longterm needs through sharing resources. These social services have oftentimes been the backbone of the charitable sector in an argument for why it must exist, alongside government and the market. But a second role may be advocacy, advocating for particular views of the public good has been an important part of philanthropy's work. Think how its functioned as a reform effort towards abolition, or suffrage, basic human rights. Of course, one person's advocacy could be another person's political lobby, and in the US, for instance, in the wake of the Supreme Court case Citizens United, there are debates on the nature of 501(c)(3)s, or 501(c)(4)-types of nonprofit organizations, and the role that they might have for financial campaigns and campaign candidates. Third, philanthrophy serves a cultural role, expressing and preserving cherished values, traditions, identities, and other aspects of culture. Think of the National Trust, the Smithsonian, arts, symphony, cultural artifacts, higher education, like the public lectures of Gresham College. Here, philanthropy can look quite conservative in some ways, literally conserving traditions, but just as we noted with advocacy, the nature of how we tell the stories of past and present have always been up for debate, and even more so in recent years. The cultural role that philanthropy plays again demonstrates the contestations about the nature of the public good and its past, present, and future. Fourth, philanthrophy can play a civic role on building community and promotive civic engagement. The moral imagination of philanthropy is shaped in the crucible of civil society and a public sphere, but it is also a key constitutive part. So today, with a decline in participation with many of these core institutions, continuing to build spaces for dialog and community, and building social capital, is another key question for philanthropy, and bolstering democracy and civic engagement. And fifthly, perhaps philanthropy also plays a vanguard role, serving as a site for innovation, experimentation, and invention. If elected officials are beholden to voters and the market is beholden to shareholders, philanthropy has a different motivation, perhaps it's best suited to look to the longterm, investing in projects that may not make sense to others, but perhaps can envision new ways of meeting needs, addressing our life together, or fighting for a particular vision of the public good. The role that philanthropy plays in our society has always been more than simply making a gift. So as University of Kent scholar of philanthropy Beth Breeze has noted, there's no straightforward objective answer to the question, what is philanthropy, rather, there are multiple changing, competing, subjective opinions on its roles and purpose. And before you get tired of me saying that this evening, because of our difficulty in making sense of philanthropy today, it's well worth our time to pay attention to its history and the traditions which underlie both the consistent themes and developments as it's been embedded throughout our cultural, political, and social context. So if you'll permit, for the next few minutes, let's map a few of those traditions, mostly focused on the West, we could offer an entire additional lecture on the East, for example, that have helped to shape our understandings of philanthrophy and the public good. And it's worth noting here that these traditions, they may be more traditions than historical periods. As one historian, Hugh Cunningham, has noted, it's not as if one tradition is eliminated with the beginning of another, they often exist together, building upon one another reshaping one another, and leading to the multiple philanthropic traditions that we encounter today. So first, I alluded to, when we initially defined philanthropy as the love of humanity, ancient Greece, and the Romans to follow, establishing one particular tradition of philanthropy. The word philanthropy, we think, can be traced back, in its earliest usage, to the 5th century BCE, to the Greek tragedy "Prometheus Bound," where Greek god Prometheus gives the gift of fire to humans and endures the wrath of the gods as a result, and so this gift of fire was the love of humanity. And so, first seen as gifts given to humans by gods, philanthropy then came to be seen as the way rulers would care for their subjects. And then, following from that, philanthropy became more the way that wealthy citizens supported the public good, while establishing and maintaining their own reputations in the process. Giving was patronage, to support buildings, or armies, or public works, and in many ways, it became more about the giver than the gift, or the recipient. But early on, Greek philosopher Aristotle will begin to consider the ethics of philanthropy as a virtue. He attended to finding the middle way, as Aristotle was known to do, about debating how to give, to the right person, in the right amount, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way. And he acknowledged that this is not something anyone can do easily, to find this right path between what he would talk about as wastefulness, and stinginess. So if Greek and Roman patronage was one early model defining philanthropy in the Western tradition, then Abrahamic faith traditions might be another. And while we can't unpack the rich and varied history of each of these traditions here tonight, we might note several common themes. First, Jews, Christians, and Muslims see God first as generous, and the duty and obligation of humanity is to respond to that generosity through giving back to God, and to one another as well. And so, if Greco-Roman philanthrophy was about society, for Jews, generosity was more about community and social solidarity. Community ensured, first, that all Israelites could demand from one another and were entitled with basic levels of wellbeing. But generosity and hospitality would also extend to those outside of the community as well, the stranger or alien, the widow or orphan. For Jews, tzedakah is the religious word for giving, which literally means justice, or righteousness, and has this sense of giving to the poor and those with various needs as a moral obligation in a larger effort to repair the world, tikkun ola. In Islam, the root word is similar, sadaqah is a term for voluntary giving in Islam, the same root, for justice, but there is also zakat, which is a religious duty, one of the five pillars of Islam, where all Muslims, beyond a basic level of wealth, would give 2.5% of their accumulated wealth each year to a particular set of causes, eight to be specific, most of which are focused on those in poverty or in need of basic resources. And again, these forms of giving have a sense of duty and obligation, not just for the wealthy, but for all, in response to God's own generosity, as well as in order to work specifically for justice, solidarity, and a particular vision of the public good. Christianity would follow in a similar vein. In the early Church, gifts would serve to care for those in a community with need, those with resources would help those without, and in time, Christians would garner the attention of the Romans and their myths because they were also keen to help those outside of their community as well, again, caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger. And a tradition of charity, or even alms-giving, would grow up to define the Christian movement, in contrast to the Roman patronage model. And over time, as Christianity would expand to become the established religion of the Roman Empire and much of the West, it would help to shape a new understanding of the poor. The status of the poor was transformed, actually, as special in the eyes of God. While enduring hardships on Earth, they were set apart to receive special favor in heaven. And in the developing tradition of philanthropy, giving to the poor not only benefited the recipients, but it was also beneficial to the donor as well. Giving alms to the poor, sick, or hungry was like giving to Christ himself. So these Abrahamic understandings of philanthropy, particularly the Christian conceptions of the poor, came to define late antiquity and the middle ages. In Christian Europe, parishes, churches, and monasteries were often the institutions that sought to care for the poor, not the state, and with the reason to hold up the poor as models of Christian life, there was little or no vision of a public good at that time that sought structurally to eliminate poverty, yet there were voices that asked questions about traditions of giving and the public good, and there were also institutional innovations in the middle ages that shaped philanthropy as well. Just one example of a figure at that time was Rabbi Maimonides, a 12th century Jewish philosopher in Spain, and many would say the brightest mind of his day, and he developed what still we refer to Maimonides' Ladder, eight levels, or degrees of giving, or tzedakah, from donating with reluctance and regret, begrudgingly, to donating after one is asked, donating before one is asked, giving through relationships, someone you know in need, giving anonymously, or moving from a gift to working with someone to become self-sustainable and self-sufficient, again, not the giving a man a fish, but teaching him to fish, is that example. Maimonides was not offering a blueprint per se, but more like an ethical on-ramp to reflect upon the nature of giving and doing the public good. And we still use Maimonides' Ladder today. Another innovation that took off at that time in the Muslim world, particularly in the Ottoman Empire, was the waqf, and while Muslims trace the origin of the waqf back to Muhammad himself, it was an innovation in philanthrophy for public good, and it took off in importance particularly in subsequent centuries. In many ways, it was the predecessor to the endowment. Individuals or families would set up funds that would provide, in perpetuity, resources for certain needs, and most often, these were for some public purpose, like supporting a mosque, or a school, bridges, or drinking fountains. There are thousands of waqfs in modern-day Turkey that are set up to care for this public statuary and fountains. At the same time these traditions developed, society itself was undergoing change. The Reformation was blossoming, and understanding the poor as close to Christ was less frequently voiced. New models of charity not only ran through the church, but also included the state, helped to reshape poor relief, and welfare reform, guided by laymen outside the church's purview, even if religious sensibilities continued to define it, began to take off. And so societies sought solutions for poverty, alongside their charitable giving commitments, to earnest work, economic advancement, civilizing efforts, and social control started to take center stage. So again, as medieval models of charity evolved, religion remained, but many would begin to see secular or non-religious institutions defining the work of benevolence, charity, mutual support, and philanthropy. In fact, these were all included in the broad sets of ideas that were taking shape of the a time, and there were a variety of efforts emerging out of the Enlightenment to define the public good One new feature were associations for mutual benefit. With limited public goods available to most of the population, citizens sought out ways to build a civil society of their own. Schools and hospitals developed mutual support models, kind of based on the for-profit joint stock company model, you paid a small amount, you pooled resources with others, and then you could access healthcare when you needed it, or you could pay for a teacher to enable your kids to go to school. The work of mutual aid among everyday citizens came alongside additional effort by community leaders or the elite to embrace benevolence as the beginnings of reform, seeking to restructure these models of charity. So the goal was a general humanitarian ethic to reshape society, and that sometimes came with strong efforts to supervise those that received charity, and required a particular form of moral action in order to continue to receive support, thinking about who was the deserving or the undeserving poor, for example. And so it's worth noting that after late antiquity, and really, after the Greco-Romans, philanthropy was not a term people used. In effect, our efforts to trace this history focusing on philanthropy is a bit anachronistic. Of course, we're pointing to the same type of action and efforts towards promoting the public good, even if the word wasn't used, but that actually began to change with the Enlightenment, as the word reemerged in English and in French. But strikingly, it was used less for giving money and rather more as a focus on reform. And so the first person in England to be labeled as a philanthropist was John Howard, in the 1780s, who toured prisons through Britain and across Europe seeking reform, and then someone like William Wilberforce, campaigning to end slavery in the 1830s, would be seen as a reformer and a philanthropist as well. And so Howard and Wilberforce were examples of how charity, philanthropy, and reform had begun to move outside the realm of the church, but yet often remain tied to a particular religious vision, and that vision was increasingly evangelical Christianity, and that evangelistic fervor sought converts, but it also sought to reform society. The fervor was defined across a Transatlantic network, so the US and Britain would begin to exchange ideas, practices, and people, they would bolster one another to greater action, and oftentimes, perhaps, compete for market share and mission. The US, in turn, was often defined by the sheer number of voluntary organizations. This was noted most famously by French sociologist and political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville, whose journeys through America and his writings in the 1830s, made the argument the voluntary association in a democracy was the training ground for political and civic engagement. It was the social capital that developed from these associations that Tocqueville found most interesting. And he makes the point, as we noted earlier, that one of the roles of philanthropy is not only giving money or resources, but it's also to foster civic engagement. Now, many of these American associations were religious, and worked for reform on issues like education and health, as well as providing social services, but they also led the way in democratizing notions of philanthrophy as the work of the masses, and not just elites. So through these Transatlantic networks, philanthropy also began to take a global perspective, and in the thick of the colonial age, Christian missions from many lands, but particularly the US and UK, sought to take Christianity, commerce, and civilization with them. Funds raised for its work were astronomical, and the questions that began to be raised were whether charity overseas was taking away from meeting local needs at home. This was the critique of a critic like Charles Dickens, and it was oftentimes referred to as telescopic philanthropy, looking abroad but missing those needs right at our feet. The critique clearly remains today. If we look to international relief and development, for instance, such a question continues to define humanitarianism. So by the 1800s, philanthropy came to be seen as a badge of honor, part of the national identity of Britain in the Victorian age. A similar notion may have come to define American philanthropy and civil society as well after the Civil War, in the late 19th century. The focus at this time in working for the public good was really brought on by fighting the social ills of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. The overflowed city led all of the need for philanthropy, and the reputation of Victorian philanthropy was that it had the means and the knowhow to address these issues. There were numerous benefactors and efforts to meet the challenges of the day, but many critics also began to emerge to oppose what looked like new efforts of social control, and making judgments about who was deserving or undeserving. At the same time, these traditional forms of philanthrophy began to see that the needs were greater than the resources that they had at their disposal, and they began to see that these issues were more structural in nature, not simply charity, that they thought of before, and so society could not change without changes to political economies, such as a need to consider wages and working conditions. Some benefactors sought to marry this approach to philanthropy and business. English Quakers and chocolatiers like George Cadbury and Joseph Rowntree sought to create model villages for their employees, with housing, healthcare, education, and pensions. And while sometimes accused as paternalistic, to a certain degree, Cadbury and Rowntree knew their religious convictions led them to better working and living conditions for their employees, they often knew it was good business. Again, examples of what it means to be a socially responsible business is a question that we're asking in layers around philanthropy today. But by at the end of the Great War in 1918, the impulses of Victorian philanthropy had been overtaken by calls for what would become, in Britain, the welfare state, and as already noted, the boundaries around these three sectors, philanthropy, business, government were often blurred, but in the early 20th century, the state became the voice to take center stage in an effort to care for citizens from cradle to grave. Philanthropy, of course, continued, but it served more to fill the gaps than to lead the way in shaping the public good. The story wasn't exactly the same in the US. At the same time, Gilded Age titans like Carnegie and Rockefeller were making huge fortunes, often on the backs of their employees and their ruthless business practices, but then they became philanthropists. Carnegie had a famous essay, "Gospel of Wealth," which helped to define what kind of philanthropist he sought to be, responsibly and dutifully working to administer the return of his wealth that he had garnered through his lifetime. A new age of major philanthropy came to the United States, and it came to define a new entity, the charitable foundation, and in many ways, it was an economic vehicle to prevent wealth from finding its way into the US Treasury, but the sheer magnitude of the leading foundations, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford, most notably, would have a significant role in shaping the public good through their approaches to giving and the topics that they would prioritize. People would follow suit, whether those were government diplomats, or academic researchers, or other philanthropists as well. And while President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal or Lyndon Johnson's Great Society were both attempts at expanding the size and reach of the federal government, the US never really followed Britain's lead in transitioning to a welfare state, and as a result, America also remained more dependent on the charitable sector, nonprofit organizations and philanthropic foundations, as they professionalized into a social sector with social work, public health, and official grant officers, or grant program officers in foundations, developing their own sense of expertise. So for the first time, perhaps, in the early to mid 20th century, philanthropy and charity could begin to be defined as its own sector. Of course, the charitable sector and civil society wasn't always dependent on elite philanthropy, its biggest donors, there are also many trends towards local giving, or mass philanthrophy, with Americans working to fight for tuberculosis, or raising funds in the midst of the world wars, supporting their local United Ways or Jewish federations, or funding their local congregations or their PTAs. And so this, oftentimes, in America, were these two trends, the story in the 20th century is the trajectory of major and mass philanthrophy operating at the same time. But in the 21st century, we continue to see this mix of major and mass philanthrophy in new ways. For most of us looking to make sense of philanthrophy in recent decades, the story has been the rapid rise of new philanthropists. Taking a cue from Carnegie's"Gospel of Wealth," the likes of Bill Gates, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett have established the Giving Pledge, encouraging the mega-rich to give away the greatest portion of their wealth in their lifetimes. And at present, there's about 230 signatories from 28 countries who have signed this Giving Pledge. And their theme is giving while living, but another theme has been the turn towards strategic philanthrophy. Thinking of the role that philanthrophy plays, the focus has lately been on impact, evidence, and measurable change. For instance, the Gates Foundation may seek specifically to eradicate a particular disease, and this has oftentimes been defined by ethicist Peter Singer as the effective altruist movement, and as it's caught on, philanthropists are seeking the most bang for their buck, to put it succinctly. At the same time, other donors, particularly those who perhaps made their fortunes in finance or technology are seeking to blur the line between traditional philanthrophy and business, looking towards impact investing, or venture philanthrophy. For instance, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, when they signed the Giving Pledge, they established the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative not as a foundation, but as an LLC, an instrument that allows for a return in some form on their philanthropic capital. So when we're defining philanthrophy and the public good, these new forms are pushing back at us to ask, what is the nature of a gift? We've finished our journey through the multilayered philanthropic traditions of the past, and that brings us up to the present, so what do we make of the current landscape of giving? It's definitely worth noting, even as our attention more and more focuses on the largest donors and foundations, that the vast majority of giving still comes from average individuals. So Giving USA, which is researched and written by my colleagues at the Indiana University School of Philanthropy, tracks annual giving in the United States, and giving may come from institutions, like foundations or corporations, but 69% comes from individuals, the vast majority. And while some of these individuals are wealthy donors that make major gifts, the bulk of these funds, again, are really from average donors. So in 2020, individuals gave over$324 billion in the US,$324 billion given by individuals. The Gates Foundation has given away only $60 billion across its 20-year history. Across 20 years, the Gates Foundation has given away $60 billion, in the last year, American individuals gave $324 billion. So where do these gifts go? To a variety of sectors. In the United States, religion still makes up the largest percentage, it's mostly religious congregations, with education and human services coming behind. In the UK, the three major areas of receiving gifts are youth and children, health, and animal welfare. But what do these trends mean? One thing that we begin to really see is that there is a bit of a mixed message. First, charitable giving continues to grow, and that's good news, so over time, for as long as we've been tracking it, in total dollars, giving has continued to rise every year, with the exception of just a few blips with major economic recessions, so oftentimes, it's really giving that's following the trends in the stock market, really, and GDP. So if giving continues to grow over time, that's the good news, the bad news is that there seems to be a downward trend in the number of those giving and volunteering. In the States, while overall dollar amounts of charitable giving continue to grow, the percentage of households giving at all continues to shrink. So the headline last year was, for the first time, less than half of American households were giving something, or anything, to a charitable cause, 66% in 2000, down to 49% in the last few years, that's a decline of 17% in less than 2 decades. So again, overall giving grew, but only as fewer donors were giving more. The same trend's basically true in the UK, with participation in households giving falling from 32% in 2000 down to 26% in the last few years. And so on top of that, in the UK, among top earners, the average donations to charity have actually declined, so the same trend is following, in the US and the UK, that civil society is increasingly dependent on a smaller number of donors. And many may see that as a problem, not only as a concern of limited or fewer resources, but really as a diminishing civil society. With our ongoing fears of rising polarization and isolation, could increases in giving, volunteering, and advocacy be really a way for a sense of building social connectedness, citizen engagement, and a healthy democracy? This is a larger example of how issues of philanthropy are tied to ongoing conversations about the nature of the public good and our lives together. And so in some ways, this is a moment that we can define by concern: the current giving landscape money is up, giving continues to grow, participation continues to shrink. But if we defined concern, there are questions that are defining the space of philanthropy and public good right now, when we turn to a critical reflection, and this criticism most often seems to address issues of power, purpose, or practice. So first, power. This is nothing new for philanthrophy, it's been the case throughout history. With the first Gilded Age, philanthropists like Carnegie and Rockefeller, there were ethical criticisms of how fortunes were made, as well as the widening gap between rich and poor. Again, it's worth noting that this may be a concern in present-day times, this has been true throughout history. As wealth inequality has skyrocketed increasingly again in recent years, and as a new generation of major philanthropists have emerged to give in a variety of new ways, criticism has followed to ask if philanthropists have too much power and privilege in shaping public policy, our institutions, our civil society, outside of the democratic process. And if power may always creep to the top in these critical reflections, the second criticism may be one of purpose. Can we, or should we define the purposes of philanthropy? Do museums, galleries, or universities need more funds, when there are people in need of meals, shelter, basic rights and justice? This is a question of what does the public good, and it's open for an interesting debate. Or is it this question of local, national, or global issues? How do we best seek the welfare of those in our midst and beyond? Then there are critical reflections on how philanthropy is practiced, our recent context of the pandemic is a great example. If there was, and is such a need for large-scale, immediate support, what is the role of the perpetual foundation? How do grant makers seek to work with local nonprofits and grassroots agencies? How do donors work with charities, government, and business to do this work well together? And so finally, if this moment has been marked by concern and a good deal of criticism, or critical reflection, it's also marked by creativity, and thinking critically about practice, we can also return to the age-old question of what counts as philanthropy. Is there really a decline in the number of individuals and households giving, or are we participating in philanthropy in new and different ways? Many of these forms of giving may be informal, or at least not formally counted. If they're not making a donation to a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in a state or a charitable organization, it's not getting counted as charitable giving or philanthropy. For instance, what about the tradition of mutual aid? We've pointed to these earlier traditions, but what if we see a significant uptick in these practices in recent years, whether it's simply helping one another in a community, or crowdfunding via Kickstarter or GoFundMe to relieve medical debt, support a friend in need, help someone with a business, or simply make an album? Little to none of this registers as philanthropy or formal giving. What about giving circles, where individuals in the same location, or with a shared identity, come together to pool resources, and then, together, out of their own agency, decide together where to invest their giving. Giving funds of local black women, or LGBTQ youth, or indigenous Americans are making their voices heard and making their own gifts and grants to those in need to do what they most care about. Or what about new digital platforms, or brandings, or movements to bolster global giving? If we have Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, the Tuesday after Thanksgiving is now known as Giving Tuesday, and it's touted as a global generosity movement unleashing the power of people and organizations to transform their communities and their world. It's a viral campaign, it's not owned by any particular organization, but it's offered to all nonprofits to encourage everyday givers to make commitments to causes that they care about. And the movement helped to raise over $2 billion in the US just in 2021. So finding the spirit of creativity has also shaped new forms of philanthrophy, often blurring these traditional divides between sectors, as well as through things like impact investment, consumer decisions based on the values of the businesses that they support, or efforts towards giving to new grassroots movements or networks that are not registered as official charities or nonprofits. Giving financially or lending one's voice through advocacy and action make the point we are continuing to critically open up our ideas on how we can reimagine philanthropy in order to set a bigger table for this broader conversation. This bigger table often brings together people across political, religious, or cultural divides, and enables the forming of new partnerships in seeking human flourishing and public good. And that seems to be formational, formational, focusing individuals and communities, not only to move money, but also to meet needs and foster greater generosity in caring for one another. So what is the purpose of philanthropy? Why are we motivated to give? How does philanthropy do the public good? In my mind, those are the right questions for us to engage. In making sense of the philanthropic traditions from which we operate, we are set up to dialog and debate with one another how philanthropy as a part of our moral lives together works to shape how we envision the public good. Thank you.(audience applauds)- Do you think there's an economic reason behind the apparent decline in household giving?- Really thinking about the economic decline, it's definitely true in the States that it was shifts in how we itemize deductions, particularly, the way that's done in the States is that it's really raised the level that most families would take for the standard deduction, and so it's decreased the incentive to itemize one's tax deduction, which, in the States, any gift to a registered charitable entity can be reclaimed in some ways, very similar to the concept of Gift Aid in a different way. So I do think some of those economic policies allow for a move towards giving to the top, because most major donors are financially incentivized to give for tax purposes, and it may be one factor in raising that giving to the major donors, and it less incentivizes giving across the board. So there are a lot of public policy or lobbying efforts to make that deduction to charitable giving universal, whenever one would give, and there were versions of that during the pandemic, and other periods of time, in order to see if that would democratize giving in that way.- You spoke to motivation a little bit at the end of your lecture. Some philanthropists, like Dickens, consciously appeal to the self-interest of potential donors in order to get an effect, but this would seem to put him a bit lower down on the eight-step ladder. Does motivation matter if you get results, like Dickens did?- I think so. Thinking about motivations, I think this is why we need to open up a conversation beyond simply looking at evaluations, and metrics, and where we can make them biggest return on our philanthropic investment, because what we know is that people give for a variety of different reasons, and the main reason that people give, A, is because someone asks, so we have to think about making the need evident, but really, it's giving because of that sense of passion and values, and so there has to be that connection. So while finding the strategic philanthrophy as a trend in our giving world, I think, really, we must really attend to where those relationships are established, where there are passions and values, and that's why things like education, or the arts, and culture, none of that should ever go away, but we need to cultivate donors, or individuals, to think about how they want to make a difference, and so finding where those passions and values might be, and I would say relationally, is a great place to start. So there are going to be, I would say, multiple avenues in that frame.- [Questioner] Around the world, is there a strong negative correlation between he size of a welfare state in a country and the level of philanthrophy in that country, i.e. the bigger the welfare state, perhaps the less the levels of philanthrophy are?- Thinking about the nature of the welfare state, for instance, and how we oftentimes think of, the United States has always been, by far, the most philanthropic, or charitable, but that is partly because of the way that we've, speaking as an American, have built a very limited government that requires a lot of giving and charitable giving in order to provide those social services. And so, if the UK might be a middle ground, US on one side, Scandinavia on the other, I think, yes. I think philanthrophy would be too narrow of a language to frame how we care for one another, and so one of the reasons for opening up this conversation of philanthrophy and the public good is thinking broadly about where that giving is done. Someone who might be giving 40% to 50% towards taxation might really think that that is how they are caring for making the public good happen in their society. So there are trends in thinking about, it's not completely a direct correlation between the size of the welfare state and the percentage of givers, because in any country, there are oftentimes those major givers that skew, but yes, it's something to really attend to, thinking of philanthrophy as one piece of that broader question about how we provide for the public good.- Thank you for that tour de force, that hit string of philanthrophy. I wonder if we could come back to the question of declining numbers,'cause that's obviously, as a fundraiser and an academic, I'm particularly concerned about that if it's a longterm trend. I've just finished my PhD, and part of its original contribution is that people, philanthropists acquire the giving habit early in life. It's well known in faith, but not in philanthrophy. 90% cited parents, school, or other community organizations, and the thought there, if this is a longterm trend, it's younger people, we've got a real problem.- That's a great point, and just to comment briefly, I think that's right, and I would really encourage us to think about this next generation. We were talking about a decline in numbers, but we are seeing that, in some ways, in formal philanthrophy or charitable giving, a decline by generational cohort as well. So one question is, is this, younger individuals are less philanthropic, are they engaging in these questions in different ways, so opening up our imagination for what giving and caring for one another looks like, but also really focusing, I would say, on that formational aspect, of how we're passing down these giving traditions to the next generation, and helping to form them, because, oftentimes, when I ask donors why they give, they'll tell a story about their grandparents, or their parents, and how they were formed quite intentionally early on in their lives.- [Questioner] I'd just like to point out the danger of it. We're experiencing this now with the refugee crisis, and the onus has been put upon the public. I'm an ex-BBC producer. I don't think we want a PBS system where all these people have to endlessly give a tiny bit of money, and we hear a list of contributors as long as your arm, and that it takes the onus off the public good, and it gives us a false sense of security and wellbeing. And similarly, when we have the Wellcome Foundation, that is funding science projects based here, but right across America, because it's actually quite difficult in America for certain funding things. So I think that there's a danger of making this some sort of thing that we must aspire to, because, God, this government would love us to do that.- Yes, I love the fact that we can open up these conversations and critically reflect upon it, but also think of the necessity of all these forms of giving and engagement together, I think that's a great point.- Hi there. Bringing things up to date, I just wonder if you'd make a few comments on the new government scheme to offer individuals 350 pounds a month to take in Ukrainian refugees into their homes. I have a difficulty, that they're trying to bribe you to do charitable work. Is philanthrophy actually meeting people, individuals, and talking to them, rather than giving them cash? I would find it very difficult to take an individual into my home. That's it.- I had not heard of this particular scheme, but I do think it raises the question of how sectors work together, or how we're motivated to give or engage, but also, how we think about the work of the public good. Is there a need to bolster civil society by incentivizing people to take someone into their home? That's an interesting question. Is there not enough in the Treasury to do this through government, or other forms of social services? I think we all can look back across history and in cultures to where these are not questions that come up, giving to local family, extended family, the tradition of remittances is oftentimes un-noted philanthrophy, giving back to home country for not just family, but extended family, to villages. And so thinking about the variety of traditions of giving and caring that are not simply rooted in maybe the ones that we can note in these clear sector divides.- [Questioner] Hello, good evening. I come from South America, which, statistically, is the most unequal continent in the world, and you're beginning to see that there is a lot of philanthrophy, but lots of states, such as Venezuela, before its economy collapsed, Bolivia, and to an extent, Brazil, you have quite large welfare states, so to what extent can underdeveloped nations' welfare states replace philanthrophy, or can philanthrophy actually overpower welfare states?- It's a great question, thinking about what is the role of philanthrophy in developing nations, or also in a variety of different welfare states. I think there is a trend towards philanthrophy in a global economy that oftentimes mirrors Western forms of philanthrophy, we're seeing it in China as well, so a philanthropist can, in some sense, curry favor, or be able to operate in a particular setting of shared philanthropists, so I do think it would be a partnership. I do worry that, sometimes, philanthropists can have too much power in opening up dialog in democratic society, but I think it's an important part, and thinking how these sectors work together is something that, I think, I'm going to encourage us to look to and watch for. Thanks for a great question.- Okay, I'm afraid I have to close it there, but I wanted to thank our audience for joining us this evening, both in person and online, and I'd like to ask you to thank the professor one more time.