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                   Imprimis, On Line  -- May, 1993
        
        Imprimis, meaning "in the first place," is a free
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             ---------------------------------------------
        
                     "Philanthropy and Citizenship"
                          by Michael S. Joyce
                 President and CEO, Bradley Foundation
        
             ---------------------------------------------
        
                          Volume 22, Number 5
              Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
                                May 1993
        
             ---------------------------------------------
        
        
                       What Is Good Citizenship?
        
        Philanthropy is an essential part of a much larger and
        more encompassing activity, namely, American
        citizenship. Now, when I mention "citizenship," the
        first thing that comes to mind is probably not
        philanthropy or private voluntary activity of any kind,
        but more than likely political activity of some sort--
        particularly voting.
        
             The essence of citizenship--or at least so it
        seems from the hectoring swarms of voter education and
        turn-out drives that descend upon us every election
        year--is to vote faithfully and thoughtfully, after
        acquainting ourselves with all the policy prescriptions
        of the various candidates for office. To be a good
        citizen, in other words, demands that we wade through
        those mind-numbing charts of policy positions regularly
        published each election year, which dutifully set
        Candidate X's 17-point plan for reducing the deficit
        side-by-side with Candidate Y's 21-point plan for doing
        the same.
        
             Citizenship thus understood is necessarily an
        episodic, infrequent, to say nothing of onerous duty.
        Its chief purpose seems to be to turn over to
        supposedly qualified experts the "real" business of
        public life--namely, designing and launching public
        programs of all sorts, which will bestow upon the
        victims of poverty or AIDS or discrimination or some
        other insidious force the tender mercies of
        bureaucrats, policy experts, social therapists and
        others who claim to be uniquely able to cope with such
        problems by virtue of professional training. Once a
        citizen has voted, he is supposed to get out of the way
        and let the experts take over. Small wonder, then, that
        Americans today feel profoundly alienated from the
        realm of public life and that citizenship understood as
        voting holds so little appeal.
        
             Genuine citizenship involves active participation
        in that vast realm of human affairs known as civil
        society. This is a far more expansive field for human
        endeavor than the political sphere, for civil society
        encompasses all the institutions through which we
        express our interests and values, outside of and
        distinct from government. Thus civil society includes
        our activities in the marketplace, including acquiring
        private property, holding a job, and earning a living.
        It includes what we do as loving members of our
        families; as students or concerned parents within our
        schools; as worshipful attendees at our churches; and
        as faithful members of neighborhood associations,
        clubs, and voluntary associations of all sorts. This
        broader understanding of citizenship also encompasses
        the full range of philanthropic activity, including
        committing energy and resources to helping others.
        
        
                Teaching the Lessons, Singing the Songs
        
        Clearly, citizenly activity within civil society occurs
        not episodically or infrequently, as with voting, but
        regularly and constantly, in countless small ways that
        are so much a part of the texture of our everyday lives
        that we are almost unaware of them. Every time we
        attend church, go to a PTA meeting, help a charity
        drive, or perform faithfully and well a task at work,
        we are being decent citizens. In further contrast to
        voting, which supposedly engages chiefly our abstract
        reasoning and objective judgment about candidates and
        policies, citizenship in this larger sense engages the
        full human being. That is, the institutions of civil
        society appeal to and sustain our spirit and heart, as
        much as our mind.
        
             Heart and spirit are nurtured by the songs and
        fairy tales of home, the lessons of Sunday Bible class,
        the instruction at school, the gentle advice and
        perhaps criticism of a neighbor, a mentor, or a friend-
        -all of which enrich us, all of which create bonds and
        obligations, all of which demand that we, in turn,
        teach the lessons and sing the songs to others.
        
             Through these countless, subtle, daily
        interactions, our civil institutions give form and
        substance to the everyday qualities and values without
        which life itself would be impossible--honesty,
        perseverance, self-restraint, personal responsibility,
        service to others--by rewarding them when they appear,
        punishing when they don't, and by mercifully and
        willingly sustaining those who may fall behind, in
        spite of good-faith efforts to live by civil society's
        rules. Sound civil institutions insure that those
        cherished values are passed on to the next generation,
        by surrounding the maturing child and young person with
        constant, quiet messages of reaffirmation and
        reinforcement.
        
             Through our vast, complex web of civil
        institutions, in short, we grow and develop into
        complete human beings--learning to suppress our often
        chaotic and destructive impulses; to express our
        connectedness and mutual obligation to each other; to
        reach beyond ourselves to higher aspirations,
        reflecting nobler impulses. Those institutions sustain
        us, but we in turn must sustain them, for without
        unremitting, steadfast citizenly involvement, they are
        doomed to wither and die.
        
        
                     The Collapse of Civil Society
        
        That America was blessed with a robust, vigorous civil
        society was once understood to be vital to its health
        and success. Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in
        America is the classic expression of wonder and
        admiration at the incredible energy generated by the
        vast array of civic institutions spread across the face
        of our young nation. Everywhere he looked in 19th
        century America, he noted that our citizens had formed
        associations, committees, and clubs to tackle one or
        another of the problems facing them in this undeveloped
        wilderness. Through such citizenly activity,
        Tocqueville believed, Americans expressed and sustained
        their civil freedom, accomplished an enormous range of
        tasks, and, most important, developed fully as rooted,
        connected human beings.
        
             Tocqueville's admiration for the liberty-
        sustaining, life-affirming energy of civil society, is,
        of course, by no means shared by our intellectual and
        cultural elites today. Instead of citizenship as a
        vigorous, multi-faceted participation in civil society,
        we are urged to constrict our view of citizenship to
        the lonely, sporadic act of the isolated voter. What to
        Tocqueville appears as a vast, pluralistic upwelling of
        groups expressing boundless civic energy appears to our
        elites to be a wasteful, chaotic, misguided jumble of
        amateurish groups meddling unwelcomed in social policy.
        What to him appears as vigorous, coherent, value-
        affirming civic associations appears to them as
        oppressive, stultifying, retrograde, rights-violating
        social tyrannies.
        
             To our intellectual and cultural elites, the
        virtue of the constricted, "citizen-as voter" notion is
        clear. It quietly and neatly removes public business
        from the messy world of active citizens and civic
        institutions, placing it instead into the neat,
        rational, smoothly humming world of the centralized,
        professionalized bureaucracies, wherein the elites
        themselves prevail. Indeed, it might be said without
        exaggeration that their central project is nothing less
        than the abolition of civil society. The story is told
        most eloquently by sociologist Robert Nisbet in The
        Quest for Community. Modernity, Nisbet argues, assails
        civil society both from below and from above. From
        below, the authority of family, church, neighborhood,
        and school is quietly eroded by the proliferation of
        individual rights of all sorts, especially the right of
        self-expression--that is, expression of self with utter
        disregard, or contempt, for civil society. From above,
        civil institutions are pressured to surrender authority
        and function to the professional elites of the
        centralized, bureaucratic state. Caught in a pincers
        movement between individual rights and the central
        state, Nisbet noted, the intermediate associations of
        civil society struggle and languish.
        
             What has been the result of the modern assault on
        civil society? Look at the vast array of social ills
        bearing down upon us: the explosion of illegitimate
        births and single parenthood, the spread of sexually
        transmitted disease, the dramatic increase of violent
        crime in the streets, the rise of drug abuse, the
        decline of public education, the spread of
        irresponsible behavior in every realm of personal and
        professional conduct. What is the common thread? Very
        simply, the collapse of civil society--the decay of its
        institutions and values, and the loss of control they
        once exerted over human behavior.
        
             But instead of trying to rejuvenate civil society,
        our elites instead call for more government programs--
        more bureaucratic experts and professionals to minister
        to the hurts allegedly inflicted on hapless victims by
        industrialism, racism, sexism, and so on--in the course
        taking away yet more authority from citizens and civil
        institutions. This leads to the vicious cycle described
        years ago by Nathan Glazer in his essay, "The Limits of
        Social Policy." As Glazer noted, the expansion of
        government social policy doesn't solve problems, it
        only makes them worse. Government intervention
        undermines and weakens the authority of the very civil
        institutions that had kept undesirable behavior within
        reasonable limits in the first place. As government
        programs push into a problem area, civil institutions
        weaken further, and the problem is compounded--as is
        the demand from our elites for more government
        programs. This sad, ironic cycle-the prime example of
        the doctrine of "unintended consequences"--is perhaps
        the central paradox of our time.
        
        
                   Taking Control of Our Lives Again
        
        I believe, however, that we are nearing the end of this
        futile cycle. As Irving Kristol reminded us in a recent
        Wall Street Journal op-ed, people are increasingly
        disenchanted with the manifest impotence of government-
        -its utter inability to perform even the most
        rudimentary duties assigned to it, such as securing our
        unmolested passage down our own streets. He points to
        the strong revival of religious sentiment in America as
        evidence that we at long last are beginning to
        appreciate once again the vital role played by civil
        society's religious institutions and values in
        maintaining a decent, orderly society.
        
             Other encouraging signs are to be found in recent
        election returns and surveys of public opinion. Reflect
        for a moment on the signals there: a massive, palpable
        discontent with all major governing institutions; the
        success of term limits and tax-and-spending limits in
        referenda across the nation; above all, the immense
        popularity of calls to return government directly to
        the people. The message, I believe, is clear: Americans
        are sick and tired of being treated as if they are
        incompetent to run their own affairs. They are sick and
        tired of being treated as helpless, pathetic victims of
        social forces that are seemingly beyond their
        understanding or control. They are sick and tired of
        being treated as passive clients by arrogant,
        paternalistic social scientists, therapists,
        professionals, and bureaucrats who claim exclusive
        right to minister to the hurts inflicted by hostile
        social forces. They are sick and tired of supporting
        the bloated, corrupt, centralized bureaucracies into
        which our social therapists are organized to insure
        that power and accountability flow to them, rather than
        to the citizens of the United States.
        
             Americans are clearly willing and eager to take
        control of their daily lives again--to make critical
        life choices for themselves, based on their own common
        sense and folk wisdom--to assume once again the status
        of proud, independent, self-governing citizens intended
        for them by the Founders and denied them by today's
        social service providers and bureaucracies. In short,
        Americans are ready for what might be called "a new
        citizenship," which will liberate and empower them.
        
             This impulse toward a new citizenship is, of
        course, nothing more--or less--than a return to the
        older, far more encompassing notion of citizenship that
        figured so prominently in Tocqueville's teaching. If
        properly channeled and directed, this impulse may in
        fact lead directly to the resuscitation of civil
        society--a regeneration of that vast network of
        vibrant, liberty-sustaining, life-affirming
        institutions that once covered the face of this nation.
        
             What sorts of measures will be required, if we are
        to accomplish this revitalization of civil society?
        
             First, we must be prepared once again to regard
        ourselves as genuinely self-governing citizens, willing
        and able to reassume control of our daily lives and to
        make critical choices for ourselves. We must not allow
        others to dismiss us as helpless victims or passive
        clients.
        
             Second, we must seek to restore the intellectual
        and cultural legitimacy of citizenly common sense as a
        way of understanding and solving problems. This
        suggests an effort to re-establish the dignity of
        traditional folk wisdom and everyday morality, with
        renewed emphasis on teaching and nurturing personal
        character--the customary guideposts of everyday life.
        This will mean taking on intellectually the radical
        skepticism about such "unscientific" approaches
        propagated by professional pseudo-scientists eager to
        preserve their intellectual hegemony.
        
             Third, we must reinvigorate and reempower
        traditional, local institutions--families, schools,
        churches, neighborhoods--that provide training in and
        room for the exercise of genuine citizenship, that pass
        on folk wisdom and everyday morality to the next
        generation, and that cultivate and reinforce personal
        character. This will require efforts to reform such
        local institutions, for often today's churches,
        schools, and related "mediating structures" have
        themselves succumbed to the view that Americans are
        mere clients or consumers of therapeutic social
        services.
        
             Fourth, we must encourage the dramatic
        decentralization of power and accountability away from
        the bureaucratic "nanny state" in Washington, back to
        the states, localities, and revitalized "mediating
        structures." We should also strive to reinvest moral
        authority in such structures, rather than in corrupt
        intellectual and cultural elites in education, the
        media, and popular culture, who regard traditional
        mediating structures as benighted purveyors of
        reactionary prejudices.
        
             Finally, we must challenge on all fronts the
        political hegemony of the "helping" and "caring"
        professionals and bureaucrats who have penetrated so
        many aspects of our daily lives, and who profit so
        handsomely from the nanny state. We must dramatize
        their status as entrenched, corrupt special interests,
        more concerned about advancing narrow ideological
        agendas and protecting political prerogatives than
        about serving the public. This will require not only
        traditional approaches like policy research, but more
        innovative approaches as well--for instance, media and
        writing projects that capture the vivid, compelling
        human stories of those who suffer at the hands of
        paternalistic, arrogant bureaucrats and professionals,
        and the equally compelling human stories of those who
        have launched successful grassroots citizen empowerment
        projects.
        
             What are the chances of successfully revitalizing
        civil society through this kind of active citizenship?
        It is easy to be pessimistic. After all, the entire
        weight of modernity seems to be behind the destruction
        of independent civil society. Nevertheless, I am
        hopeful. Tocqueville himself, after all, was not
        unacquainted with the destructive effects that
        modernity would have on civil institutions. Indeed, his
        purpose in writing Democracy in America was precisely
        to warn mankind about the impending storm of modernity
        and to tell us that the old, established institutions
        of civil society were in danger.
        
             In America, however, he witnessed the remarkable
        spectacle of hitherto unrelated individuals--complete
        strangers--coming together to form wholly new forms of
        civil institutions, in the very teeth of the modern
        storm. He understood and appreciated the fact that the
        impulse toward voluntary association and the yearning
        for genuine citizenship within civil society are not so
        easy to destroy.
        
             World events of the past decade only confirm
        Tocqueville's optimism. No movement ever undertook the
        eradication of civil society with more zeal or
        determination than Marxism, that totalitarian
        perversion of modernity. And yet beneath the seemingly
        smoothly humming state bureaucracies of the former
        Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there sprouted once
        again the seeds of civil society--churches, civic
        associations, unions, dissident groups, free presses.
        Even as the resolve of the free world halted Marxism's
        outward thrust, so from within, Marxism began to decay
        and crumble, as the nascent institutions of civil
        society flourished and spread. The liberation of
        Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union soon made it
        apparent that modernity's "final offensive" against
        civil society had failed utterly.
        
             Let us take heart both from these events and from
        Tocqueville's hopeful teachings, as we undertake here
        in the United States the revitalization of civil
        society through the new citizenship. There can be no
        more urgent task, and there can be no higher
        philanthropic project, either for you as concerned
        citizens and volunteers or for me as a foundation
        professional, than the resuscitation of the civic
        sphere, which alone makes genuine philanthropy and
        genuine citizenship possible.
        
             ---------------------------------------------
        
        Michael S. Joyce is president and chief executive
        officer of the Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee. Prior
        to his association with the Bradley Foundation, he was
        executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin
        Foundation in New York, executive director of the
        Goldseker Foundation in Baltimore, and a research
        associate at the Educational Research Council of
        America.
        
             He has also taught history and political science
        at the secondary and college level, and has been an
        advisor to President Reagan and President Bush. He was
        a member of the presidential transition team in 1980,
        has served on two presidential commissions and numerous
        federal panels, commissions, and advisory committees.
        He remains active on the boards of a variety of
        professional, civil, and cultural institutions.
        
        
             ---------------------------------------------
        
                  "Philanthropy and the Free Society"
                         by Kimberly O. Dennis
            Executive Director, The Philanthropy Roundtable
        
             ---------------------------------------------
        
        The non-profit, or "independent sector," is growing at
        a tremendous pace in America. It is becoming an
        increasingly significant part of our public and private
        life. Total giving by individuals, corporations, and
        foundations has risen over 250 percent--from less than
        $10 billion in the mid-1950s to well over $100 billion
        today. Another index of growth is the fact that there
        are now nearly one million non-profit organizations
        operating across the country. And as members of the
        baby boom generation age and inherit from their
        parents, roughly $8 trillion in wealth will pass from
        one generation to the next. This is bound to bring
        another enormous infusion of funds into the independent
        sector.
        
              As the independent sector grows, its relationship
        with the for-profit and the public sector will become
        even more important. But unless we have a philosophical
        perspective about what the proper role of this sector
        generally ought to be, we won't be able to judge
        whether it is performing as it should. It is my
        contention that philanthropy and the independent sector
        are most effective when they promote independence
        rather than dependence, economic growth over
        redistribution, and private initiative as opposed to
        public undertakings. These may not sound like terribly
        profound or controversial ideas, but they are
        considered quite radical by much of the philanthropic
        community. This is because the independent sector is
        still deeply entrenched in the redistributionist,
        interventionist rhetoric that characterized the 1960s
        and 1970s.
        
        
             The Connection Between Capitalism and Charity
        
        The leaders of the independent sector would do well to
        remember that philanthropy does not exist in unfree
        societies. You don't see evidence of private
        philanthropy in Cuba; you never saw it in the Soviet
        Union; in fact, you don't even see much of it in
        Europe, where social services are largely provided by
        the state and where contributions to non-profit
        organizations are typically controlled by political
        parties. It is no coincidence, then, that America, one
        of the freest countries in the world, has by far the
        most active and generous independent sector.
        
             I have met with many reformers who are interested
        in developing independent sectors in their countries.
        Those from formerly communist regimes in Eastern Europe
        and the Soviet Union describe decades of economic and
        social deterioration and the terrible hardships they
        are enduring in the difficult struggle to become free.
        They have seen and read about the way the American
        independent sector responds to people in need, and they
        want to create the same kind of initiatives. Because I
        am the executive director of an organization that seeks
        to enhance the effectiveness of private philanthropy,
        they come to me and ask, "How do we build a charitable,
        non-profit sector that can respond to the desperate
        economic and social needs of our citizens?"
        
             My response is not the one they expect to hear. I
        tell them that the only way to create a prosperous non-
        profit sector is to create a prosperous for-profit
        sector. The money that goes to support hospitals,
        schools, civic organizations, the poor, and the
        disabled does not, as the saying goes, grow on trees.
        It can't be willed into existence by good intentions.
        It is generated by people who are working to produce
        goods and provide services. Until you create wealth,
        you can't give it away. Until you have capitalism, you
        can't have charity.
        
             Of course, the reason formerly communist countries
        haven't had much in the way of a for-profit sector is
        because the means of production have been owned by the
        state. They have been operated, ostensibly, for public
        good rather than private gain, but, as we have seen
        repeatedly throughout history, private gain is what
        makes the public good possible in the first place. In
        societies in which the government assumes
        responsibility for citizens' economic and social
        welfare and regulates the production and distribution
        of goods, there is simply no basis for private
        philanthropy, at least on any organized scale.
        (Charity, like many other "subversive" acts of
        individualism, remains underground.)
        
        
                The More Government Does, the Less We Do
        
        Even in the United States, the more government does for
        people, the less they do for themselves. And the less
        they do for themselves, the more they need government--
        it is a vicious circle in which one government program
        begets another. Interestingly, during the 1980s,
        private giving in the U.S. increased tremendously.
        There were two primary explanations for this. One was
        the perceived cutback in public welfare during the
        Reagan administration (and I emphasize perceived here,
        because while the rate of growth in spending on welfare
        programs slowed, spending still increased in real
        terms). The theory is that people perceived a slowdown
        in government spending on public welfare, so they
        increased their charitable giving to compensate. If
        this theory is correct--that people gave more because
        they thought government was spending less--then the
        counterpart should be true. People will give less if
        they think government is spending more.
        
              The other explanation for the explosion of
        private giving in the 1980s was that the economy was
        booming, due largely to tax cuts and deregulation. With
        increased prosperity, there was more to give away. If
        this theory is also correct, then it means that the
        more government regulates the economy--the more it
        interferes with the production of wealth--the less
        money there is for private charity.
        
             It is evident in any case that a monolithic
        government is harmful in several related aspects: it
        restricts the private sector from operating freely to
        produce the maximum amount of prosperity for all
        through for-profit activity; it dampens the generation
        of wealth that makes charity possible; and it saps
        individuals of the initiative to take responsibility
        for their own and others' welfare.
        
             We ought to pay particular heed to this last
        consequence, since so much of our heritage is based on
        the importance of voluntary action. The 19th-century
        French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville was
        among the first to note Americans' propensity for
        acting independently to accomplish public business and
        to form free associations for the purpose of enhancing
        civic life. He saw this as one of America's unique and
        defining characteristics.
        
             But, as Richard Corneulle observed in Reclaiming
        the American Dream (1965), after the Great Depression
        and the introduction of the welfare state in the early
        20th century, we began to ignore the independent
        institutions that played such a vital role in meeting
        public needs. And as government assumed more and more
        responsibilities, we began abandoning the private, non-
        profit associations which "once made it possible for us
        to build a humane society and a free society together."
        
             Though the independent sector has grown since
        Corneulle's book was published in 1965, so, too, has
        government. Why have they grown simultaneously? The
        answer, ironically, lies in the fact that rather than
        operating as an alternative to government action, the
        independent sector has become more closely linked with
        it. John D. Rockefeller III, announced in the late
        1970s: "In so many fields of social need, the
        pioneering work of the [independent] sector has
        resulted in government's taking over responsibility for
        extending the services broadly, applying the sanction
        of law where needed, and assuming the major share of
        the financial burden." In other words, the non-profit,
        independent sector has become the breeding ground of
        government programs.
        
             Rockefeller's view of the role of philanthropy has
        become mainstream. Thousands of non-profit
        organizations see their primary objective as the
        expansion of the influence and power of government. The
        NAACP, the Grey Panthers, the Children's Defense Fund,
        the Gay Men's Health Crisis, the Mexican American Legal
        Defense and Education Fund, the Ms. Foundation for
        Women, the National Council of La Raza, the National
        Puerto Rican Coalition, the Native American Rights
        Fund, Operation PUSH, and the Older Women's League are
        just a few examples of special interest groups that are
        supported by philanthropic institutions, and which seek
        to increase public spending. Why spend $100,000 on a
        soup kitchen to feed the hungry when you can spend the
        same amount to produce a study that will influence
        legislators to increase federal spending on food stamps
        for all? Your money is much more highly leveraged when
        it influences the way government allocates public
        resources than when it is spent directly on services
        for the poor.
        
             And why worry about raising private funds to
        support your lobbying efforts when you can tap into the
        public treasury? Non-profit organizations seeking to
        convince Congress to spend more taxpayer money can
        actually get taxpayer money to pay for their efforts.
        One recent estimate is that some 60 percent of all non-
        profit revenues now come from government. This figure
        includes support for hospitals and schools, but it also
        includes support for cause-oriented groups like the
        Environmental Defense Fund and Planned Parenthood,
        which take government money and use it to "educate"
        people about the need for more government support for
        the causes they represent.
        
             It should be pointed out, however, that government
        money doesn't come without strings. Government, too,
        uses its influence to get what it wants. To qualify for
        federal funding, religious day care centers have
        eliminated religious teaching, schools have adopted
        affirmative action programs, and hospitals have agreed
        to provide certain kinds of mandatory treatment. In
        what has been called the "government philanthropy
        nexus," leverage works both ways.
        
        
                    The True Nature of Philanthropy
        
        In the days of Aristotle and the early Greek
        philosophers, philanthropy didn't exist as we know it
        today. In fact, the closest concept was "beneficence."
        The difference is instructive: In ancient times doing
        good, or helping others, was a personal matter, a
        reflection of one's character. It had nothing to do
        with large foundations that hand out multi-million
        dollar grants or organized charities that seek to help
        thousands of people. Rather, it referred to how you
        behaved toward your fellow neighbors.
        
             In the centuries that followed, the concept of
        beneficence was dropped in favor of "charity," and the
        emphasis shifted from the character of the giver to
        that of the recipient. The objective of being
        charitable was not so much to become a better person
        but to be helpful to others in time of need. Though
        broader in scope and ambition than the classical Greek
        notion of beneficence, charity still implied individual
        acts of kindness and generosity by some individuals on
        behalf of others, and the goal was to make sure that
        each individual had the opportunity to succeed within
        society.
        
             Today, charity, in turn, has been replaced in
        large part by "professional philanthropy." Professional
        philanthropy has less to do with individual redemption
        than with social reconstruction. The goal is not so
        much to help people succeed within society as to remake
        society so that no one is a failure. Instead of a
        humble effort to help people who are less fortunate,
        professional philanthropy has a much more grandiose
        aim, which is to act as a powerful catalyst for
        political, economic, and social change.
        
             Somehow the idea of helping others has evolved
        from a personal exercise of individual virtue to an
        impersonal expression of public concern. Professional
        philanthropy has become less a matter of doing good
        than doing justice, with justice defined as the
        discovery and elimination of the social (as opposed to
        moral) causes of privation. Instead of helping people
        better themselves, professional philanthropy blames
        society for their condition. Instead of helping people
        succeed within the existing system, its aim is to root
        out inequities and promote systemic social change.
        
             In Marvin Olasky's recent book, The Tragedy of
        American Compassion, he gives an especially good
        account of how the emphasis on spiritual and material
        improvement has shifted to support for individuals to
        live any way they choose, without having to bear the
        consequences. Whereas once recipients of charity were
        expected to attend church or perform chores in return
        for the assistance they received, it is now more often
        than not that they are told it is not their fault they
        need help; they are victims of circumstance, and there
        is nothing they can do about it.
        
             Instead of charitable efforts to enhance
        individual opportunity by helping people make the most
        of their talents and resources, we see more and more
        philanthropic initiatives that attempt to reform
        society through policies that redistribute wealth,
        level success, and even equalize self-esteem. Instead
        of expanding liberty by giving people the means to be
        self-sufficient, professional philanthropy tends to
        reward behavior that is inconsistent with such habits
        of virtue as liberty demands, including individual
        initiative, private enterprise, and personal
        responsibility.
        
        
             ---------------------------------------------
        
        Kimberly O. Dennis is the executive director of the
        Philanthropy Roundtable in Indianapolis, a national
        association of grantmakers dedicated to the enhancement
        of private initiative in phlanthropy. The
        Roundtablesponsors meetings for grantmakers around the
        country, issues a quarterly newsletter, and provides
        consulting services for donors on starting,
        restructuring, and maintaining giving programs.
        
             Previously the director of public affairs at the
        Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason
        University, and a director of program development at
        the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, Mrs.
        Dennis has also served as a program officer at the John
        M. Olin Foundation.
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