Philanthropy benefits society as a whole
By Howard Manly
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Boston Sunday Herald

George McCully is an interesting man. The former Ivy League professor of Renaissance history is now president of the Catalog for Philanthrophy, an annual guidebook of sorts for those who want to give and those who want to receive.

To McCully, philanthropy is a relatively simple concept - private initiative for the public good focusing on quality of life. It's more than simply the rich giving to the poor for a tax deduction, though some of that is true. Underneath the actual numbers, there is a sense that the world could be a better place, the very noble idea underlying the birth of America.

"What most people know about philanthropy is not good," McCully said. "Most of their information comes from negative media reports. Generally speaking, the only part of philanthropy that is visible is the top 8 percent of public charities. The great majority of nonprofits have a budget of less than $2 million per year and don't have huge development or public relations offices. They are doing quality work but remain invisible to the majority of the public."

Eight years ago, McCully first published the Catalog for Philanthropy to change all of that. It has a list of 650 nonprofits here in Massachusetts that provide all sorts of services that focus on health care, education, the environment. Although much has been made of this state's supposed stinginess, roughly 34 percent of the state's taxpayers donated about $3.3 billion in 2002, according to most recent available statistics. That compares to an estimated $138.3 billion that the nation as a whole contributed to public charities.

Keeping a state-by-state scorecard on what people give is important but misses what McCully believes is a larger story of how philanthropy works. He believes it's a way to cut across that great blue state-red state political divide.

"We're on the verge of a kind of Renaissance," McCully said. "There is a palpable yearning for people to have a return to basic or traditional values. I'm not talking about their views on homosexuality or anything like that. But when donors are looking for a charity to support, they are loooking for one that has the same sort of values that they identify with and their donations thus become a way of acting on their values to improve the quality of life."

McCully is right. Politics and organized religion divide more than they unite. Some charities have made their money by laying a guilt trip on the rich - including rich corporations and banks that need government approvals for their mergers.

But that kind of giving misses the central point.

"This is at the heart of America," McCully said. "Philanthropy is in the national interests because it allows private citizens to help their communities and society."

Philanthropy is nothing new. It's one of the oldest acts, arguably first identified around the time of Aeschylus, back in 565 B.C., when the Greek playwright used the word "philanthropic" to describe the acts of Prometheus and his gifts of fire, a symbol of civilization, and blind hope, as in optimism.

The word philanthropy was first introduced in English in the 1600s, when Sir Francis Bacon defined it in essence as humanness and goodness. As McCully explains, usage of the word was part of the mindset of the American Colonists who came here to save their souls and create a good society. Freedom was clearly an integral part but so was the notion of bringing out the best in each individual and, by extension, society.

Much of that notion has been lost over time as the modern day celebration of Thanksgiving, for instance, has been transformed into a mere harbinger of the holiday shopping bonanza. That's not a completely bad thing; the economy needs its fuel. McCully is not against the day-after rush to shopping malls. Nor does he believe that spending on consumer goods has any real relationship to philanthropy.

What's important to McCully is the idea that philanthropy is a way to build communities.

"We're in a situation today where we have become secular and everything in our lives has become fragmented," McCully said. "We tend to concentrate on things at the exclusion of others. But what we are also seeing through philanthopy is the connection of different fields for the betterment of society. People are starting to connect economics with politics with culture. That kind of synthesis created the first Renaissance and I see that becoming an operative word here in America."

McCully might be on to something. A few years back, Massachusetts and Rhode Island declared the day after Thanksgiving as a day of giving. Five other states now have passed similiar proclamations.

In the scheme of things, those measures may not mean much, but at least they are symbols of a return to one of the nation's most basic of values - giving.