Today I had the honor of attending the “White House Conference on Next Generation Philanthropy.” It totally got my juices flowing!
Here are some immediate, unedited thoughts and questions, in no particular order:
* Philanthropists (broadly defined) are averse to talking about power. This is NOT just an observation from this conference - its endemic.
* There are a lot more people trying to do good things in the world than I sometimes give the world credit for.
* I’m very thankful to Michael Smith, who I met for the first time today (Director of the Social Innovation Fund at the White House, and fellow Western Massachusetts native!). When I asked a room of 20 people to respond on the fly, “what is a cause of poverty?” he was the last to go, right before me, and said “racism.” When I exclaimed that that had been my answer as well, he prompted me to add in “sexism” instead. #realtalk #rootcauses
* The question of “how much is enough?” is so, completely, totally the crux of all the issues we address in these philanthropy and entrepreneurial spaces. Do we, as a room full of people with wealth, really need to be concerned about getting the best possible financial returns on our investments? When do we have “enough”? What do we expect from ourselves and others on how much to spend on everything from cocktails to hotel rooms to owning homes (or several?) to how much we give away, and how much we keep endowed or saved?
* In any conversation about poverty and economic inequality, you have to face the ethical question “is it ok to live in a society where anyone is living in poverty?” I don’t think so! And I do not agree with any of the arguments like “but if there’s no underclass how will people be incentivized to get ahead? won’t everyone get lazy?” Frankly, I think that’s bullsh*t. But as long as we’re talking about a “middle class” and an “upper class” (like many folks do when we talk about a more equitable distribution of wealth in the US) - it implies a necessary “lower” or “under” class (which I realize does not have to equal “impoverished,” but that’s certainly what it effectively means currently).
* Government budgets are on such a wildly different scale (read: bigger) than most philanthropic or non-profit discussions I'm ever part of.
* Is it possible to have financial profit for an investor making “socially responsible” (or “mission-related” or “impact”) investments without exploiting any people, or the planet, along the way?
Put another way: can I invest in (for example) a company making solar panels, make a financial profit if the company does well, AND be 100% sure that everyone who labored to excavate or manufacture every part of that solar panel, and every resource that was relied on to create it (all the natural and fabricated materials) was paid a living wage / treated well in the workplace / is a sustainable practice for our precarious environment?
* I don’t believe it is possible to grow endlessly. As in - businesses, corporations, endowments, houses - whatever it is! An individual business, or businesses as a general realm, cannot profit endlessly more and more and more….without eating up other things in their path. What’s up with the assumption that The Best Thing is to grow bigger and bigger forever and ever? That is a narrative we need to shift.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Yesterday, i heard someone say to a room full of philanthropists, "Think small. Then replicate." it was a response debunking a question about "how to get to scale," which assumes that bigger is better, and that bigger is essential. the person asking the question voiced his appreciation that "Think small, then replicate" turned his assumption upside down.
ReplyDeleteCurious about this aversion to talk about power. Are we talking about the coercive potential, something unpleasant to examine? To be up front, J.C.S., I struggle with philanthropy per se, as it is part of the same fabric as profit motives and systemic wealth inequality. That said, it does wield power in the conventional sense ($), which ostensibly can result in good. Is this a dialectic philanthropy confronts? And if so, what are the pathways followed to resolve it? regards, BP
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteBP, the aversion to talk about power is exactly as you name - something unpleasant to examine (because, most people who are philanthropically minded know consciously or unconsciously that the disproportionate money/power they possess is wrong when the majority of the world is suffering).
Deletein capitalism, money is power. no matter through "bootstraps" and hard work or through more direct forms of exploitation, big P philanthropy has a disproportionate amount of money (and thus, power). no one can argue with that.
So, in a setting like a dialogue with the Obama White House, where some of the richest people in the country are meant to discuss solving the great issues of our time (such as the panel I moderated called "tackling poverty")....power becomes like an elephant in the room. because we have so much of it!
until those (a minority) with concentrated money/power give up that power to the majority (most of whom are currently entirely dispossessed of it - literally, in the US the top 1% owns as much as the entire bottom 95%) things are not going to change.
check out resource generation's page on social justice philanthropy on how some power-sharing is happening at the decision-making end of things (a space historically reserved behind closed doors for mostly rich white men): http://www.resourcegeneration.org/resources/resource-library/social-change-philanthropy
Too, I agree with you that "philanthropy is part of the same fabric as profit motives and systemic wealth inequality." it's an active conversation in "social justice philanthropy" circles -- how to use philanthropic funding to create new systems wherein massive amounts of concentrated wealth (aka, inequality) are no longer able to be created, and the "common good" is robust enough that everyone has their basic needs met.
have you heard the MLK Jr. quotation on this? "philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the economic injustice that makes philanthropy necessary."
my dream is that within my lifetime, we will live in a just economy such that philanthropy will no longer be needed.