It’s not the only request for help I get as an Irishman living in America. Letters come regularly soliciting donations for this or that good cause, ranging from homeless shelters to museums to public-radio stations. Everywhere one turns, it often seems, somebody needs help. Indeed, the business of fund-raising–whether on the New York subway or at a black-tie event in a swanky Manhattan hotel–is pretty well institutionalized. And so, too, obviously, is the culture of giving.
Wealthy individuals, foundations and corporations in America give some $200 billion a year to do-gooding nonprofit organizations. They fork out much more than rich people in other countries. In Europe, governments collect higher taxes and are expected to take care of most social problems. Here, individuals and institutions fill the void.
Big tax breaks make the giving easier. Write a check for $100 to Save Baby Martians, say, and you can write it off as charity. Gifts are also a good way to avoid estate taxes, though these are currently being phased out–a disaster in the making for philanthropy. Public relations and vanity come into play, too. Big donors on New York’s Upper East Side compete in the social columns to show how they excel not just at accumulating wealth, but also in putting it to good use. Yet at the same time, many wealthy Americans genuinely take to heart their forefathers’ ideas of civic humanism, and the century-old injunction from Andrew Carnegie that great wealth should be used for the common good.
I asked Steve Forbes about this. He’s the publisher who draws up the list of the 400 richest Americans each year. In America, business and philanthropy are two sides of the same coin, he explained. “Commerce means meeting the needs of the people. Philanthropy is the same. We have the most commercial public in the world, and the most philanthropic.”
There are, of course, some superwealthy people on the Forbes list who are notoriously tightfisted. But there are amazing stories of people who did well and give back. George Soros, for one, and Bill Gates. There are also a very few who prefer to give quietly.
Take Chuck Feeney, the New Jersey philanthropist. You might never have heard of him. His name is not on any building. He never appears at charity balls. But he has transferred all his vast wealth, made from duty-free shops, to a foundation worth almost $4 billion. He plans to give it all away in the next 12 years or so and close his foundation down. Feeney lives and dresses frugally, wears a $15 watch and travels in economy class. He is the archetypical ragged-trousered philanthropist. He almost looks like he should be asking for a dime rather than the other way around. When we met in a New York bar, I inquired: “Why are you giving it all away?” He replied: “If I have $10 in my pocket and I do something with it today, it’s already producing $10 worth of good.” That’s better, he reckoned, than doling it out at 5 percent a year.
Perhaps he’s right. Better to give $10 to one homeless person on the subway today than a few dimes here and there over the years. Giving while living, he calls it. It should be the American way.
