Philanthropy’s equivalent of “All Lives Matter”

April 19, 2023 3:56 PM

Non-profit writer/speaker/thinker Vu Le discusses a recent joint statement by philanthropic leaders "protecting pluralism." Vu Le previously and even more previously.
posted by Shepherd (11 comments total)

The philanthropic leader's statement is almost written in the Past Exonerative Tense. It definitely comes from the same place.
posted by lalochezia at 4:12 PM on April 19, 2023 [17 favorites]

This just reinforces my conviction that, if people are rich enough to engage in philanthropy, they should be taxes until that is no longer true. At least governments are theoretically accountable to the people. (Sure, in practice they often aren’t, but philanthropists aren’t even theoretically accountable.)
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:45 PM on April 19, 2023 [29 favorites]

The statement under critique reads to me like an attempt to co-opt the term "pluralism" and wrench it into meaning "what wealthy white people think is best for a wide variety of not wealthy white people." There is no toilet deep enough to flush that notion down.
posted by abucci at 5:39 PM on April 19, 2023 [12 favorites]

I work for a nonprofit now. Thankfully we get almost all of our money from grants.

Philanthropy is built on the idea that rich people should decide who gets help, and how. Most of us can broadly acknowledge that men shouldn't be making decisions about women's lives, white people shouldn't be deciding things for the black community, cis folks shouldn't be deciding what help trans folks need, etc. From disability activism the phrase, "Nothing about us, without us" has come into more common usage, and I think that's a general understanding, that people are stakeholders in their own lives, that this leads to better outcomes.

And yet, with philanthropy, when we talk about major donors, we have to pretend we are just fine with rich people deciding things for poor people. That's why I personally practice mutual aid with stakeholder consultation or direct gifts that reinforce individual autonomy, whereas charity reinforces plutocratic and hegemonic power. Philanthropy is an inefficient patch on a broken system that has been trending for decades toward oligarchy.
posted by Chrysopoeia at 6:46 PM on April 19, 2023 [23 favorites]

on a broken system that has been trending for decades toward is now mostly an oligarchy.
posted by Glinn at 8:54 PM on April 19, 2023 [3 favorites]

“As half of these six co-authors are leaders I know and respect, I am offering my thoughts here, in line with the third principle proposed in the article, which is ‘When we challenge another’s views or activities, we focus on substantive arguments and invite response.’ Thank you for creating this opportunity for dialog, and for accepting my perspective in the constructive spirit in which it is offered.”

Is Vu Le from the Midwest because this here is the most devastating bit of politeness since Edna told Laura that her jello salad looked interesting at the ‘78 Minnetonka Lutheran potluck.
posted by Kattullus at 10:57 PM on April 19, 2023 [19 favorites]

The idea that rich people are better at figuring out what people need or can use than public employees who have degrees and networks and entire careers focussed on their area of expertise is just silly. Philanthropy is pure ego, proven at the very least by that being where selling naming rights came from. Tax cuts feed these indulgences, and raising taxes puts money in the professionals' hands, where rich people don't have power.
posted by rhizome at 11:08 PM on April 19, 2023 [20 favorites]

Thank you, Shepherd. This is a fascinating response, as well as (for different reasons) a fascinating call for ”pluralism.” It seems very much like philanthropic inside baseball stuff, which I suppose is why it doesn’t, as far as I can tell, address the current conditions in which philanthropic giving functions/is required to function.

The rich have been hoarding wealth and self-aggrandizing via charity for millennia, but I think this particular moment is tough. Neoliberalism (and Tea Party-ism, etc. in the U.S.) has cut the legs so badly out from under what we once took as social goods, “philanthropy” has all but replaced steady support from the state, etc. in many places. I am in higher education, and I have had many conversations with people about what it’s like to work at “public” institutions that have seen their state support dwindle to 10% or less of their operating expenses.

I appreciate the arguments Vu Le is making, but it seems to me to be overall wildly utopian by comparison with the state of the world today. I can appreciate a philosophical argument as well as the next person, but philanthropy is not an abstract and must be operationalized. It is cool to see organizations that are starting to push back against philanthropy from noxious sources or with noxious riders—I’m thinking of institutions that have engaged in decommemoration, returned gifts, etc. I’d be curious to know if anyone has examples to share of success stories that embrace an approach like this. In the current budget climate, including the looming “enrollment cliff,” I have a hard time seeing this approach as widely viable, but I would love to be proven wrong.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:18 AM on April 20, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have not yet read TFA but having scanned the thread I feel moved to respond to @Chrysopoeia,

> And yet, with philanthropy, when we talk about major donors, we have to pretend we are just fine with rich people deciding things for poor people. ... Philanthropy is an inefficient patch on a broken system that has been trending for decades toward oligarchy.

Say rather that philanthropy is an attempt by oligarchy to respond when its own membership is aghast at the atrocities that oligarchy is perpetrating, an attempt that tries to soothe the conscience of oligarchs while allowing the atrocities to proceed.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:22 AM on April 20, 2023 [2 favorites]

It feels like this kind of appeal - which I would broadly group with the Harpers' Letter et al, in terms of its aims - has a fairly common underlying theme, to wit:

We like money, and we believe that money will enable us to do cool and good stuff. In order to get money, we might have to tacitly or explicitly endorse things that the people who have a lot of money like and believe, because those are the conditions under which we get given the money.

We have become aware that these are things and people that our peers, or some other group of people, might disapprove of. We don't like or enjoy being criticised for endorsing those things or those people, and we would like to establish a set of rules which means that doesn't happen any more.

All of which makes perfect sense to me - this a very reasonable and understandable thing to want! I think the problem is that it isn't a _realistic_ thing to want. It's reasonable to want people to stop dunking on you. It's not reasonable - or, really, rational - to expect that people will stop dunking on you because you publish an open letter saying "free speech and the exchange of ideas are good. However, we don't think the people who are currently criticising us should do so, because _those_ ideas are illiberal/unhelpfully expressed/ad hominem/seeking to stifle the free exchange of ideas/woke".

So, yeah, the John Templeton foundation spent the first decade of the 2000s heavily funding climate change denial. I don't think that's good! I don't think that the fact that other people were at the same time _not_ funding climate change denial, or funding non-denial climate research, makes that a wash. Stand Together is funded by Charles Koch, and people are going to have feelings about that even if it is now called Stand Together rather than the Koch Network. Again, do I have to assume that this means that Charles Koch has the best intentions? And... do we have to say that about Henry Ford, or indeed about John McCloy, who did a lot of good, I have no doubt, with the Ford Foundation but was also (I think uncontroversially, in the sense that the history is settled) moving funds around through it under the direction of the CIA.

So, yeah. You can't persuade people who don't like you because of what you say or do to like you by telling them that you are going to keep doing it and they should stop complaining, but in a series of progressively more verbose formats (twitter - open letter - Substack - book). It just... doesn't work.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:02 AM on April 20, 2023 [5 favorites]

I think this podcast episode from Hidden Brain gives another perspective to working with wealth: Money 2.0: The Rich and the Rest of Us.
posted by ichimunki at 2:58 PM on April 20, 2023