Friend,
Not often do we meet a person who, having scribbled a $500 donation check, says “yeah, I have no idea why I did that.”
Short of an accident, everyone has a reason for giving money to charity. (I did once accidentally hit 'round up' at the grocery store checkout for St. Jude's Children's Hospital, which will put my 17 cents to good use, no doubt).
Everybody’s got a reason: your kid’s school asked, a certain problem alarms you, your nephew’s going on a mission trip. Reasons for giving can be reactive. They reveal what moved you. However, an intention behind giving is directional; it shows what you're moving toward.
I like how Ariel Simon outlines in this article what he calls the “13 intentions of philanthropy.' Each intention carries its own view of success—the good that happens in the world because of your gift.
For this issue of Giving Thought, I encourage you to review these 13 intentions and figure out which ones lie behind your own giving.
Maybe you want to 'elevate values' or 'give back or memorialize' (a favorite for alma mater donors). Perhaps your intention is humanitarian in nature; you ‘respond to a crisis’ or ‘seek to transform’ by, say, funding breakthroughs in medicine. Sometimes multiple intentions fuel the same gift.
Since success looks different for each intention, recognizing this can help us appreciate the giving other people do, or at the least reconsider what might appear as a failure.
At the risk of sounding relativistic (I promise I'm not; bear with me here), different kinds and modes of giving are good in different ways and we need variety. A diversity of giving interests and motivations strengthens the whole.
The effective altruist movement could stand to realize this. If I had hundreds of millions of dollars to create a new vaccine, but nobody was investing in healthcare infrastructure to distribute it, then my grand and glorious project to eliminate an illness is at a stalemate. Ariel Simon, who expands on this idea more fully, puts it perfectly: “Your success (no matter the intention) almost always depends on work done by people with other motivations and employing very different tactics.”
Excluding outright immoral causes, are some crises more important than others? It depends on your priorities.
One generous donor we serve gives to the Sudan Relief Fund, an organization bringing emergency food to the world's worst humanitarian crisis. In this case, the intention is simple: save a life, even if just for another day. Success for this family isn't ending the Sudanese civil war or creating systems of sustainable food production. The intention is bringing immediate relief to those at the brink of starvation. By the standard of that intention, the gift achieves its purpose admirably.
What about a gift toward the middle school’s dance recital costumes? Well, if the sugar plum fairy’s tutu delights and wows the audience, then yes, by the donor’s intention it is a successful gift.
By an effective altruist’s standards, however, these gifts might fall short. At its best, effective altruism is looking for ways to optimize results for the common good.
As Ariel Simon wisely puts it: "The term ‘effective' is inherently contextual… the best way to judge the effectiveness of an act of service or philanthropy is to ask why it was undertaken in the first place."
Here at AmPhil Giving, we encourage donors to think more deeply about why they give. Sometimes that question is answered with a reason (my friend asked me to donate), sometimes it’s with an intention (I want to help students realize their potential). Often, it’s both.
Check out the 13 intentions of philanthropy and ask yourself: what is my intention for each gift I’ve given, and what does the world look like if my intention comes to pass?
‘Til next time,
Maria
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Maria D'Anselmi
Senior Consultant
AmPhil
