A New England renaissance?

New England Journal of Higher Education, The, Fall 1999 by McCully, George

But this is philantbropy, I said. Exactly. What do we know about philanthropy?junk mail, junk telephone calls. annual editorials advising readers to Give but give wisely and stories of prosecutors chasing scoundrels.

Why the disconnect? First, a structural reason: more than 92 percent of charities have budgets below $2 million, and so are virtually invisible to the public. They cannot afford junk mail and telemarketing, and only a few of them can even afford professional fundraisers. The media pay them little attention. Second, a pedagogical reason: you can't teach or promote anything using negative and imprecise vocabulary, which is what we have tried to do in the case of philanthropy. If we describe philanthropy as giving to others in need through "nonprofit" organizations, is it any wonder people don't find it compelling?

Philanthropy Reconsidered

The truth is much more persuasive than that. The word philanthropy (from the Latin and Greek philanthropia: love of humankind, benevolence; combining philos, friendly, kind, and anthropos, human) entered common English usage in the 17th century as a synonym for "humanity" and "beneficence." Philanthropy became a characteristic ideal of the l8th-century Enlightenment and naturally took hold in America where a new nation was being built based on "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life"-the Catalogue's locution, combining the two most conventional definitions used today.

Perhaps because historians of philanthropy have focused on its products as conventionally conceived-primarily social services--they have established that philanthropy flourished in early America, but missed the point of its importance to the nation's development. By focusing instead on the fundamental impulse behind philanthropy-voluntary civic responsibility--we can see it in a new light that not only explains the historic flowering but suggests a more significant future.

When the early settlers in America discovered that here, as nowhere else in the world, people could freely build whatever kind of society they wanted, they felt a tremendous exhilaration and set themselves enthusiastically to work. Voluntary associations for civic purposes endlessly multiplied, as de Tocqueville famously noticed. American philanthropy was a new way of life and an essential component of the developing American character.

In fact, most local problem-solving in America has been philanthropic. The essence of philanthropy may be summed up in the phrase: if something needs doing, do it. This applied to everything from barn-raising to the creation in 1636 of the first American private corporation-Harvard College-to train clergy for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The American Revolution itself was essentially philanthropic. Sam Adams' appeal that "associations and combinations be everywhere set up," Paul Revere's ride, the Minutemen, the Revolutionary Army-all involved volunteers whose activities were funded by private donations. The Declaration of Independence was supremely philanthropic-purporting to do good for all humankind in a cause to which the founding fathers pledged as volunteers "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." The flowering of American literature in New England in the early 19th century-with Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Melville, Poe and Whitman-was philanthropic in the sense that it addressed public issues for the greater good of the nation. All of American religion, private education and secular reform movements-from anti-slavery through environmentalism-have been philanthropic. In short, America's quality of life is owed to philanthropy, which is why the low level of philanthropic giving is a serious public issue.