Tomorrow, July 14, Bastille Day, we mark the one-year anniversary of the Crisis Charitable Commitment (CCC). Almost 100 CCC signers stepped up to the plate in 2020 and gave at a higher Charitable Standard to address the multiple social and economic crises highlighted by the COVID pandemic. Through their foundations, donor-advised funds, or individual money, these donors gave more than $550 million to nonprofits in 2020, which included more than $150 million each to racial justice and democracy.
Nevertheless, the threats to people, democracy, and our planet remain grave. Democracy remains threatened by supporters of the Big Lie and the Supreme Court. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities just issued a report that shows 10% of all adults in the country have difficulty getting enough food. Twenty million adults! And what about their children? Twenty percent of renters with children aren’t current on their rent–10 million renters. More than one-third of all children live in households that are experiencing financial hardship. This is happening as the rich continue to get richer.
At the time I launched the CCC effort I thought it was a fairly simple proposition: recognize those rich people and foundations who meet the challenge of responding to the pandemic-related crises by giving more and thereby demonstrate to other wealthy elites that, no, it is not the end of the world to dig into your endowment or net worth. Rather, it is the responsible and reasonable thing to do. CCC has played an important role in this endeavor, but the path to success is not simple. Here are some of the lessons I learned during this first year (of course, knowing me, there are 11).
#1 We now know that even in the face of a pandemic, an overwhelming number of rich people and rich foundations are more interested in hoarding their wealth than responding to a crisis. Many who have responded are reluctant, much to my surprise, to try to influence others to do the same. Nonetheless, it was extremely gratifying to identify 99 wonderful philanthropists who actually walk the talk of redistributing power by philanthropically reducing their own wealth for the betterment of others. You can see their names here.
#2 I should have read Anand Giridharadas’ brilliant Winners Take All before I started the CCC. I would have been much better prepared for the many challenges we faced along the way in trying to combat what he calls “market world,” particularly as the Philanthropic Industrial Complex relentlessly provided cover for billionaire dominance of all aspects of our society, and even for the very existence of billionaires.
#3 While the CCC continues to influence the norms of charitable giving and push for increased levels of voluntary charitable giving, we need legislation like the Emergency Charity Stimulus to require higher payouts by foundations and DAFs. We also need higher taxes on the top 0.1% to reduce excessive wealth and inequality for the common good.
#4 Generally speaking, the public, the press and virtually all politicians have no idea what “rich” is, nor understand the difference between income and wealth. For most people, charitable giving is tied to income, but the rich have, by definition, excessive wealth and should not be constrained to give from the heretofore sacrosanct and untouchable corpus. Moreover, an affluent executive, or lawyer, or small business owner making $500,000 is not in the league of “rich” with incomes five, ten or even 1000 times as much. We give the wealthy a free ride when we conflate the rich with the affluent.
#5 The Philanthropic Press is complicit. It’s well past time that the philanthropic press stop fawning over the nominal giving of the rich and famous and look behind the curtain. Instead of praising the Ford Foundation for committing to pay out more than their customary 5% by borrowing money, they could have called it for what it is–a clever market play. Instead of listing Bezos as Philanthropist of the Year, they might point out that it was merely a pledge, not an actual gift, and that it represented just a pittance of his net worth.
#6 Math is a long-lost art, making it possible for the inconceivable to become acceptable. The top 0.1 percent have $12 trillion(!)–there are simply too many zeroes for people to understand how excessive that is. How else can we explain tolerating one person having $1 billion or $100 billion while their fellow human beings suffer so much poverty, injustices and indignities? And percentages? The whole (CCC) ballgame depends on people understanding the difference between the 1% and the 0.1%, and understanding that for the rich and rich foundations it is the percentage of wealth given that matters, not the amount.
#7 There are three questions every philanthropist should address: where to give, how to give and how much to give. Rich people and rich foundations don’t like to talk about “how much” because it goes to the heart of excessive wealth and power. Which also explains why so little money goes to nonprofits working to reduce inequality. MacKenzie Scott, astronaut-to-be Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, said as she gave away billions it was in the “humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands.” She has certainly raised the bar on billionaire giving, but how much of her money–or any wealthy person’s money–goes to support the handful of organizations fighting such concentration of wealth. Right now there are more than 100 lobbyists fighting against higher taxes on the rich, with less than five working the good side.
#8 Advocates for spending down or spending more are not organized. Although I’ve been involved with philanthropy for fifty years, I didn’t pay much attention (an admission of guilt) to what others were doing in the field until I launched the CCC. Obviously I was not alone given how little is said about the “how much” question.
#9 Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) are a distraction from the real problems of gilded philanthropy. Sure, there are a number of things that should be done to clean up the treatment of DAFs and we’ve highlighted some of these, but DAFs have only one-tenth as much money as private foundations, and private foundations have only one-tenth as much money as the wealthy 0.1%.
#10 If women had greater control over money and private foundations, we’d all be better off. There are many exceptions to the rule, but my experience suggests that women are less interested in hoarding and more interested in responding to the needs of nonprofits.
#11 There’s not enough anger and organized action. If you’ve been reading my bi-weekly letters (this is my 26th!) you should have the sense that I’m outraged. We have extraordinary wealth inequality, voter suppression, racial injustice, climate disasters, all layered on top of the pandemic…and yet most of the rich still don’t respond and we accept this as the status quo rather than taking them to task.
So, on this Bastille Day 2021, let’s examine the lessons we’ve learned and take action to make real the promises and ideals of democracy and shared prosperity. One way you can help is by spreading the word about CCC and also recruit more signers—we even have a social media toolkit to make sharing easy.