Ending philanthropy?

Philanthropy – a term to be decommissioned?

In preparing our upcoming book, we struggled with all the things with which authors tend to struggle: streamlining the narrative, discarding unnecessary material, fighting the urge to do endless revisions and instead trusting the editor’s hunch, etc. This was always going to happen and is part of the process.

One struggle, however, was very unique to publishing a book on philanthropy in 2021. It related to the very essence of our field: how to call the practice of investing money without seeking direct financial profit in order to, roughly, “improve the world?” How to call practitioners who are doing that?

Now, the confused reader must be thinking, “Well, philanthropY and philanthropIST, duh!” And maybe they are right. But in agreeing to use the term we agree to use all the baggage that comes with it. Philanthropy in our time is in a very dire state. The COVID-19 crisis has given it a purpose and a chance to shine, yes, but how likely is this to have a long-term impact on a sector that wasn’t really fundamentally impacted, in terms of its aim and model, either by the Great Recession or (arguably) by the big wars of the 20th century? 

The pointed, if often simplistic, criticism of philanthropy which has appeared in the past few years has depicted a field by design unable to be a collective force for change – for spreading justice, reducing unfair inequality, betting on the right social waves, or dealing with the behemoth of climate change. Changing the world is becoming ever harder, and doing token philanthropy ever easier, and most of us simply don’t have the drive, the knowledge or the discipline to do the latter.

What instead, then?

This isn’t to say that all modern philanthropy is hopeless, far from it. In fact, it is exactly because some aspects of it are exceptional that we feel like a split is in order. To do justice to the new funders, new thinkers, new activist investors banging their heads on a daily basis trying to move the needle, we owe them the favor of not shackling them and bundling them with all the others contributing little to the cause by calling them “philanthropists.” In fact, most investors active within the Altruist League have come to detest the term!

The question is then: what instead? For the past five years we’ve used the term Changemaker from time to time. Indeed, it is featured in the name of the metric which we use to measure the systemic impact or investor portfolios – the Systemic Changemaker Score. The problem with this one is that it has lost its value over the years. The buzzword brigade moves fast, and everyone and their mother is now calling themselves “change makers;” the term is quickly losing relevance.

What of simply Altruist? We are called the Altruist League, after all. This is better. Financial altruist also sounds good, if a bit bland. Both of those do sound a bit lofty – I’m immediately visualizing someone with a pince-nez and wearing a top hat. It is, moreover, very hard to pin down the dictionary meaning of altruism. Even harder to actually decide if one’s motivations are altruistic or not – we could start discussing an individual case now and not be done by the summer. But when you say “altruist” people have a hunch about what you mean, and by using the term consistently we may be able to fine-tune its meaning in the public mind over time. 

That said, like I wrote before, I don’t mind lofty-sounding words at all. Architect and artist come to mind. Why? Because changing the world is dead serious business. It takes the whole of you, and can’t be done partially. To stick with it, you need to have motivation that comes from somewhere outside the practical world, Ernest Becker would say, “from the absolute beyond.” This can be your religious belief, but more frequently nowadays it is your relationship with your life, its end, and its legacy. 

True financial altruism is therefore a creative meditation on immortality. You live on a rock zooming through an unknown Universe – you need to explain to yourself why on earth (no pun intended) you are interested in changing this planet, this society, today, with all the nuisance that comes with it. If you go through that process earnestly then you’ll emerge on the other side with a mission that has a life-and-death significance to you personally; feel free to call yourself whatever you want at that point.

A prediction

From what I’m seeing in our survey results and the circumstantial evidence of my daily communication with practitioners in the field, the rift between altruists and philanthropists will only become bigger in the coming period. I expect the two practices to become opposed, in fact: one challenging the status quo and creating a just society, and the other trying to protect things as they are.

I expect, furthermore, that the exodus from philanthropy as a term will soon be widespread. For some, this will initiate a frantic search for new buzzwords to co-opt and strip of meaning. For others, it will be the end of all nonprofit funding activity, since a detoothed philanthropy will no longer be of any use for their goals. A third group will join the Altruist camp and change things for real.