" Philanthropy is power, influence and vanity (etc.) on one dimension and compassion, caring and social contribution (etc.) on the other. Attempting to separate it from the complexity of the human psyche is fruitless."
Amen!! And very well said, Tim.
David Cannadine's Mellon: An American Life is superb -- apart from a few cross-cultural (he's a Brit) howlers. He gets Pittsburgh and the Upper Ohio Valley as few outsiders do. Still more remarkably, he understands and presents more sympathetically than I would the Scots-Irish and Scots mentality that dominated that area until very recently. Cannadine's quotations from Mellon's father's memoirs tell more about the reality of 19th century business than most studies of the period.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Organizations and the Natural Environment Discussion [mailto:
ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU] On Behalf Of Timothy Devinney
Sent: Sunday, February 14, 2010 2:23 PM
To:
ONE-L@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Subject: Re: Is Gates a 'true' philanthropist and other stuff
Here is a small article I wrote for one of the local rags on philanthrophy in Australia.
Having interacted with people who gave away (and are still giving away) billions I have to say there are a few things operating. (1) They generally believe that what made them successful in one field will make them successful in the philanthropic fields in which they are going to operated, (2) that the people who have tried in the past were not as "capable" as they are, (3) that the philanthropy must be managed as if left to its own devices it would be squandered by pettiness and ineptness, (4) that it is part of their bigger legacy, and (5) there is a higher purpose they are seeking to achieve personally (and by this I mean nothing at all related to ethics, morality or "do goodness"). Whenever, I give talks about this sort of thing (and CSR) I always say "would you want Walmart running society, or attempting to influence what you do" ... They all say NO! The I point out that Carnegie set up what is now TIAA-CREF, what about Vanderbilt, Stanford, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, the fact that Brown University was endowed with money from slavers and Yale by opium smugglers. ... and the list goes on.
What I have discovered is that all these people are flawed and nearly fatally so (but who of us is not). One of my favorites to talk about in this regard is Andrew Mellon. He was pilloried for his activities as Secretary of the Treasury during the depression (the comparison with Paulson is chilling, even down to Mellon's inability to be coherent when speaking publicly). Yes established the collection that started the National Gallery in Washington (few people know that the NG was his project). He was uniformly hated wherever he went (my Irish, Democratic, union family hated him yet I went to Carnegie Mellon University and my mother worked for Mellon Bank!), with the exception of his stint as Ambassador to London.
The problem with the anonymity argument is that it is extremely difficult to give away very large sums of money w/o someone noticing. Nor would part of the logic of the giving addressed above work in a world in which anonymity prevails. Similarly, notions of morality and ethics have little if anything to do with it. One person I knew (he is now dead) who gave away hundreds of millions over the years to various worthy causes was a serial womenizer, not particularly pleasant to people, and something of a racist. Yet, he had a sense of legacy that drove him against the wishes of his money grubbing family (and literally hundreds of hangers on) who wanted to inherit the loot.
Philanthropy is power, influence and vanity (etc.) on one dimension and compassion, caring and social contribution (etc.) on the other. Attempting to separate it from the complexity of the human psyche is fruitless.
Tim
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