Since the Gilded Age, philanthropists have positioned themselves as gracious, charitable forces in society who are experts in identifying and solving our social ails. But the institution of philanthropy has had its critics from day one. What are the origins of modern philanthropy in the US, and how did they lead us to where we are today? What role (if any) does philanthropy have in a democratic society? And if there are real problems with philanthropy, how should we address them? Should we focus our efforts on implementing regulations and reforms of modern philanthropic institutions? Is our goal to tear down the institution of philanthropy writ large, and put in place a (potentially erosive) wealth tax? Or should we rely on rich people to voluntarily spend down their wealth? Colleen and Reem will dig in to explore the past, present, and possible futures of modern philanthropy in the US. 

Want to learn more? Check out these follow-up resources:

• Resource Generation’s Class Privilege Quiz, Giving Pledge, and Class Definitions and Income Brackets

• Resource Generation’s National Partners, Movement for Black Lives and Center for Popular Democracy

• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence

• Decolonizing Wealth by Edgar Villanueva

• Read Laila’s op-ed on the Goldman website

• Find Sophie Dover on Twitter

Philanthropy and Social Movements podcast series by Harvard Kennedy School students

Transcript

Colleen: [00:00:08] Hey, Talk Policy To Me listeners, Colleen and Reem here.

Reem: [00:00:11] Hello, hello.

Colleen: [00:00:12] Okay, so, Reem. Today I want to talk about philanthropy.

Reem: [00:00:17] Ooh. All right. What about?

Colleen: [00:00:20] Okay, so I have to admit that I really had not thought about philanthropy, like, at all until about four years ago. I had never worked in the nonprofit sector or really dealt with fundraising efforts. And, you know, my life just didn't really intersect with philanthropy in any super explicit ways. I was definitely aware of the philanthropic sector as a space where the rich wielded their influence to get their names on fancy buildings or whatever. But then I read Anand Giridharadas's Winners Take All, and I was totally opened up to the ways that the very wealthiest in the U.S. shaped life for all of us and how the institution of philanthropy is a huge lever for them being able to do so. And I'm sure I was a little late to the game here, but alas.

Reem: [00:01:12] I haven't read Winners Take All, but now it's sounding like I should, because it could inform my position on philanthropy, which is, I would say currently based on vibes and feelings more than it is on real information. I think my relationship to philanthropy is one of deep suspicion. I think people whose contributions to their communities or the world consist primarily fundraising and holding benefit lunches and auctions, and 5Ks are deeply suspect.

Colleen: [00:01:35] I am in total agreement. So then for me, this past year, two things happened. First, my partner and I learned that one of his oldest family friends was a member of this network called Resource Generation, which defines itself as a multiracial membership community of young people aged 18 through 35 with wealth and/or class privilege committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power. So I started learning more about this national coalition of young wealth holders were voluntarily redistributing their inheritances as a reaction against both their complicity in the crazy wealth accumulation in the U.S. and many of the critiques of modern philanthropy and its failure to really redistribute resources. And then this semester, I read an op-ed by Goldman student Laila Heid, in which she reflected on her experiences working in philanthropy and made the case for a set of regulatory changes to mitigate many of the failings that she saw in the sector.

Reem: [00:02:38] Resource Generation sounds pretty interesting as an organization. When I first hear its premise, I'm like, oh great, thank you so much charitable heirs to tremendous fortunes. Could you actually just tell your parents to pay their workers and their taxes? But obviously, I can see how in the absence of a holistic wealth distribution strategy implemented through our tax system, something like Resource Generation could potentially be a good thing. And then Laila's approach to philanthropy clearly has way more faith in the existing systems of giving, super different from the Resource Generation approach.

Colleen: [00:03:10] Exactly. So learning about Resource Generation and reading Laila's op-ed around the same time really made me reflect on both the strategies and tactics we embrace when solving, you know, any kind of public policy issue.

Reem: [00:03:26] I also think it's pretty rad to consider that we're discussing this with two young people, which really challenges my view of the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors as places full of retired people who call it like a second wind in their careers. I'm curious how younger generations views on philanthropy might be diverging from past generations perceptions.

Colleen: [00:03:43] Ditto on all counts here. So today we're going to hear from Laila, as well as from Sophie Dover, a member of Resource Generation's Los Angeles chapter. We're going to touch a little bit on the history of philanthropy in the U.S., then talk about some of the most prominent critiques of the institution of modern philanthropy and dive into what the future might look like with young people leading the calls for change.

Reem: [00:04:08] I'm excited. Let's dive in. This is Talk Policy To Me, and today we're talking philanthropy–past, present and future.

Laila: [00:04:20] My name is Laila Heid, and I am a first year MPP student at the Goldman School, and my background is in philanthropic consulting and nonprofit development. I think it's important to remember that charitable giving is really as old as humanity. But philanthropy, the institutionalization of that giving is a really modern phenomenon that was born in the late 19th century and early 20th century, which we know as the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age was a period of rapid economic growth that intersected with the industrialization of the economy and the American city, and that period was defined by the growth of railroads and industrial advances in farming and mining. But that period was also one of intense inequality. Tycoons like Andrew Carnegie and John de Rockefeller built massive empires, arguably off the backs of the poor, and they amassed these humongous fortunes like the largest fortunes the U.S. had ever seen. And while the wealthy were really comfortable, the bottom 40% of Americans had no wealth whatsoever. And that was the context that led men like Carnegie and Rockefeller to establish these new shipping entities. These entities that they establish would eventually become the modern philanthropic foundation. American political leaders were really worried about the power that these men would amass, and labor leaders found that these potential philanthropic entities would were really repugnant. They were not convinced that these philanthropic entities would serve them. And to be quite frank, initially, it's arguable that they didn't. Carnegie was really famous for establishing a whole bunch of libraries across the United States, which we can now be really grateful for. His workers were working six days a week, super long hours, and like really weren't taking advantage of the libraries and the art centers that he was building up. And so these institutions were intended to redistribute wealth. We're not actually serving the people that had built their fortunes. I think it's also worth noting that early philanthropy was not tax subsidized. They were just a new entity that the government put their stamp of approval on. But they there was no tax benefit. As a backlash against government welfare began in the seventies and eighties, there was a simultaneous increase in approval for philanthropy, and I think one could argue that the philanthropic sector operates in many ways like a free market for good. And as people started to become more concerned with government spending on welfare programs, people also looked more favorably upon charitable giving.

Colleen: [00:07:32] Okay, So I definitely want to unpack this idea of philanthropy as creating a free market for good. The shift toward thinking about offloading welfare measures onto the philanthropic sector obviously coincided here with all of the other privatization efforts taking place within the rise of neoliberalism in the eighties. And so I think it's pretty interesting to think about how philanthropy played a role in enabling austerity agendas.

Reem: [00:07:58] Right. This history totally surprises me because it makes it clear that philanthropy and charitable organizations didn't come to prominence in the U.S. in response to a lack of the welfare state, but their presence enabled the chipping away of whatever welfare state there was. And that story is really coherent when we think about the actors involved. Obviously, in the Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie doesn't want a welfare state. It would mean he has to pay way more taxes and his profit margin would narrow.

Colleen: [00:08:23] Yes, and so it makes a lot of sense to me to view philanthropy as complicit in the erosion of welfare supports in the U.S. And I think Leila was grappling with a lot of this when she worked in the philanthropic sector wanting these huge caches of money to advance social good where it's needed most, while in many ways working against the reality of how the sector is structured and regulated, and also recognizing that those structures emerged from this very specific period in U.S. social and economic history.

Laila: [00:08:56] So I used to consult for philanthropic foundations, and so much of the work was genuinely very exciting to me. I got to partner with organizations that were really strategic and worked really thoughtfully with stakeholders in their community. But at the same time, I began to question what forms of accountability existed for these philanthropic entities. I started to notice that we were we were in the moment where we were seeing a new generation of philanthropists the Gates, the Zuckerberg Chans, the Bezos, who seem to be using their philanthropic organizations to offset some of the harms that they were causing to society without actually addressing those harms in their business practices. And I started to question personally how comfortable I really was with really wealthy people pursuing projects in the name of the public good without consulting the public in any meaningful way. As a public policy student who, like I really believe that the government is one of the best tools to like, create wide scale change. I didn't see that happening. I saw that especially when I was working in nonprofit development where, you know, we as the nonprofit were on the ground working with the people that we were serving, identifying solutions that we thought would be the most constructive to in this case, the farmers that we worked with and our grant makers having very specific visions of what they wanted to see. And if we wanted that money, we would have to tweak our programs in ways that we knew weren't necessarily better, but they were better than nothing.

Colleen: [00:11:09] Okay, So again, this brings me back to my own reckoning with the outsized power of philanthropy in determining the direction of our society. A huge contention for me is this idea that philanthropy is inherently antidemocratic and massively paternalistic.

Reem: [00:11:26] People at the top are deciding what's good and what's right for people at the bottom, and they're profiting along the way.

Colleen: [00:11:33] Exactly. So I was curious to hear how Laila teased out what she saw as the potential benefits and harms of philanthropy today as her own awareness of some of the domains flaws grew.

Laila: [00:11:47] At its best. I think philanthropy is uniquely agile and can respond quickly to crises in a way that perhaps the government cannot in reality. I don't know how much we've really seen that. It'll be really interesting to get data on 2020 giving, but during the Great Recession, we actually saw philanthropic giving shrink substantially because philanthropic institutions and wealthy donors who often have their wealth tied up in the stock market, experienced a shrinkage of their own wealth and as a result weren't giving as much. And so at a time when the public really could have benefited from additional resources, that money just wasn't there. So I think there is, you know, potentially the biggest defense of philanthropy. The evidence is a little shaky.

Colleen: [00:12:56] So I asked Laila to just really clearly lay out what she sees as the most salient critiques of modern philanthropy. She gave me three, starting with the notion that it's anti-democratic.

Laila: [00:13:13] There is limited oversight and very little input from the public. And the input from the public is certainly not mandatory, like that is a benefit that we get at the largesse of these big foundations. The second critique I would offer is that philanthropy is plutocratic. Much of modern philanthropy serves to benefit wealthy communities and reinforce existing inequalities. For example, there's research to show that people tend to give- all people tend to give toward causes that support their own community. So if you live in a more diverse community, you're more likely to give to causes that will help redistribute wealth and social services. But if you are living in kind of an enclosed, wealthier community, you're more likely to give to things that mostly wealthy people enjoy, like the arts or private hospitals or higher education or private schools. The second part of that plutocratic point is that the wealthy also disproportionately benefit from the tax deductions offered by the state. If you have $10 million and you make a large gift, the marginal tax benefit that you get is higher than if I made the same gift with my graduate student income. And then the third critique of philanthropy is that it withholds public resources. Some estimates suggest that the public loses $50 billion a year in tax revenue from philanthropic giving. And the assumption inherent in that is that that lost revenue will advance the public good through philanthropic giving that goes to nonprofits that serve the public. But too often, public money is warehoused into trusts and foundations and donor advised funds. There are very loose requirements about how frequently and how much of that money is injected into the nonprofit sector every year.

Reem: [00:15:29] Okay, so with all of this in mind, what does Laila as a policy student see as potential solutions?

Laila: [00:15:37] Philanthropic foundations are only required to spend 5% of their endowments a year. But that money can be spent on board meetings. It can be spent on consulting fees. And to me, that's not the intended purpose. That money is for the public. I think it's time that the general public reframes our understanding. In a sense, we are funding the existence of these organizations. And to me, that means that we should have some some kind of public claim over them with some degree of oversight, and that there should be more transparency. We could revise the minimum payout requirements for private foundations and donor advised funds. I read that last year the endowment, like the total endowment of private foundations in the U.S., topped $1 trillion. And to me, it's crazy that all of that, in my view, public money is sitting stockpiled away instead of housing people and feeding people, especially in this time of crisis. I would also recommend revising the requirements on how that money is spent. That 5% minimum payout that currently exists does not have to go to grantmaking, and it should. I think another potential policy solution could be to lower the deduction rate for gifts to both foundations and DAFs. Currently, if you donate to a donor advised fund, you can deduct up to 60% of your annual gross income and then that money can sit in the DAF for your whole life. There's no requirement that that money goes anywhere If if you do not know what you want to do with that money yet and you just want the tax break, you can put it into the donor advised fund and then not think about it. I think one way to help shift incentives is to reduce the deduction rate that you would get from those kinds of donations, which could either lead to people giving directly to nonprofits. They would face taxes on that full amount of money that they didn't donate in the first place, all of which would help. Money get into the hands of the people who need it most. A potential opportunity to increased transparency and oversight would be to establish some kind of office of charitable giving, something that could examine how well nonprofits and philanthropy are doing at their stated goal of wealth redistribution. Is it working? And if not, how can we get more public oversight and more public voices into that sector?

Colleen: [00:18:32] What are the challenges to enacting solutions like these? What powers that be must we face and what barriers need to be overcome?

Laila: [00:18:41] Well, I think first off, people generally see philanthropy very positively, like the PR campaign has been very successful. And so I think that that is a big barrier. Second, I think nonprofit organizations would get very nervous about the idea of reducing incentives to give to nonprofits. There are millions and millions of people whose livelihood depends on fundraising. I feel like the nonprofit sector is is massive and also disproportionately employs people who are not in high income brackets. We have built up an entire sector to fill holes that the government isn't filling. And what happens if some of these nonprofit organizations that are supporting the poor crumble and aren't there anymore? Like, who is going to be there to provide those social services if not for the nonprofits? There's definitely fear there. And then I think finally, I mean, as I mentioned, like a lot of the people who have the biggest brand name philanthropies have them because they have a lot of money and therefore a lot of power and a lot of influence. And they are able to keep up a certain image because they can counter the harm that they're doing. Jeff Bezos, for example, has a $10 billion climate pledge but hasn't spoken out much about how he plans for Amazon to address the climate crisis that he is directly contributing to.

Reem: [00:20:24] Okay. So it seems like even beyond the need for a ton more accountability and regulation and policy shifts, there may need to be some hearts and minds changed here, both with the public at large as well as amongst givers themselves.

Colleen: [00:20:38] I totally agree. So I think that's actually a great opportunity for us to hear a little bit from Sophie Dover and dive into the conversation I had with her about her membership in and the work of Resource Generation, which as an organization is pretty focused on inciting these kinds of culture shifts that you're alluding to.

Sophie: [00:21:02] My name is Sophie Dover. I use she/they pronouns and I currently reside in Los Angeles, California. I think the tagline for Resource Generation, if I'm remembering correctly, is it's a multiracial coalition of young people ages 18 through 35 who have access to wealth or class privilege, who are committed to the redistribution of land resources and power. So, you know, a mouthful, an earful, a lot to chew through. But I came to Resource Generation actually only two years ago in Research Generation. Like one of the first things you do is sort of identify where you fall sort of in class in America, which, you know, when I started RG, I was like, what the heck is, you know, what is all of this? Like all these different words for class. And you know, what I've learned through the process is like in America, you know, if we have trouble talking about race, we certainly have a lot of trouble talking about class. So I grew up in a managerial class family. And what that means is a family that perhaps, you know, the generation before was solidly middle class or upper middle class and then had more access to ownership. So my parents are both doctors. My dad owns a private clinic. And so my sister and I grew up comfortably. I think that's a good word for it. And as a mixed race person growing up in a white environment, I think a lot of my sort of soul searching and interest was around my racial identity. So I got really involved in anti-racism work, specifically in public health. But it was really only in graduate school that I realized, like, okay, like I'm doing a lot of study and organizing here at the Kennedy School around race and racial inequity. But I think it's also important to look around, right, and really analyze the class dynamics and the wealth dynamics at an elite institution like Harvard. I was one of like a handful of people of color at the school, which of course, is an issue across elite institutions across the country. But I also, you know, was sort of talking to friends and realizing like there was such stiff competition for so few spots for merit based scholarships at the Kennedy School. And I was like, okay, we're not talking about this, but there's certainly a lot of wealth and class privilege that would allow folks to attend an institution like this. So that's when I really got involved with Research Generation. I attended a meeting, I felt weird, but, you know, like through building community Research Generation does something called praxis, which comes from Palo Prairie's educational model. I was part of a people of color praxis, which I actually found to be really foundational to my understanding of my own background, my family's relationship with money, and to be able to sort of build with other folks who are in that situation, those circumstances into identify the diversity in those experiences. And that's when I started to really think, okay, this is powerful. And there's the ability, as you know, someone who cares so much about organizing to not necessarily hide my class privilege, but utilize it as a tool and actually come out front of it and say, you know, I've inherited this, I've been given this, it's been unearned by me. And in some ways it's upholding the racial wealth gap in this country.

Reem: [00:24:24] Okay. So I think this conversation specifically about class is really interesting and definitely often subordinated to conversations of race or gender, etc..

Colleen: [00:24:34] Yeah, and research generation has a very specific way of defining class, which I find fascinating. So, for example, they emphasize that one problem is when upper middle class folks identify as middle class, which contributes to a lot of class confusion that many of us experience. And so they try to emphasize that the way we talk about class is often totally out of whack or really outdated. And at least from my perspective, the consequence of that is we lack an ability to meaningfully identify class privilege as a powerful force to wield in service of social good and progressive politics.

Sophie: [00:25:12] Resource Generation, I would say, is laser focused on class, and there I would say the orientation is really around recruiting and also being pretty explicit around who is in the top 10% of both income and wealth. They actually have a quiz on their website like how do I know if I'm like in the top 10%? Because one thing that is really common and has been interesting for me to unpack and uncover is that within families and within communities of wealthy people, there's oftentimes a lot of privacy and secrecy around wealth. The secrecy, the privacy, the denial, the lack of specificity is so common, I think as you go up in the income bracket. And so it's an interesting intersection. With Resource Generation, because Resource Generation is pushing folks to understand what those numbers are and to have clarity around what those numbers are for the purpose of self.

Colleen: [00:26:12] And just to be clear, while Resource Generation is very focused on issues of class and wealth, they're also very explicit about how both of these things intersect with race. So, for example, they're partnered with the Black Lives Matter movement at the national level and their social justice philanthropy principles focus on giving to progressive social movements led by people of color and indigenous and immigrant communities. And they're focused very specifically on organizing young people between the ages of 18 and 35 with wealth and class privilege to spend down their incomes, inheritances, holdings and capital gains as a means of voluntary wealth redistribution.

Reem: [00:26:53] So this all reads as hyper strategic cultural efforts to shift an entirely new generation of wealth and class holders into a totally new mode of doing and giving.

Colleen: [00:27:04] Right, and Sophie alluded to the fact that Resource Generation, which has been around since the 1990s, didn't always function this way, but has now shifted into this mode of envisioning a new future around wealth redistribution and wielding class privilege in service of grassroots movements led by communities of color.

Sophie: [00:27:26] You know, historically, Research Generation was more of an internal facing sort of support group for mostly white people who had inherited wealth. And I'm glad to know that they've sort of shifted to be more external, facing and accountable to front line communities and like just the world. Right. Because of course, there's a lot of criticism, Oh, like you're wealthy and you want to give away your money. Like, do you want a cookie or a prize? And moving externally and also, like really explicitly stating that, you know, they want to be multiracial and they want to be accountable to front line community. I think that research generation, you know, has been like for the last at least five years and continues to be really movement centered. So I think for folks who either were like there and wanted to figure out how to bring in their class privilege or now are like coming of age in a moment where racial justice is something that like has to be talked about, whether it is lip service or whether it is like truly deeper transformational change. And I think Resource Generation is here to meet the moment and saying, you know, to young people like this is a way to collectively envision a future that is different. We have class privilege, white members have racial privilege, and then there's also wealth to discuss. But I do think what's really powerful about the group is they're meeting people individually, helping people unpack, like, you know, the messages that we've all been socialized with around like hoarding or keeping wealth private and then taking that next step to say like, okay, what do you care about? You know, what organizations do you want to get to know and build relationship with? And then, you know, I think that's where the really powerful work happens. And it's intergenerational, right? Like, say, someone has a family foundation. That family foundation because of tax status, because this is the way I think that folks parcel out their money. Right. In the tax exempt little package. Right. I don't think those things are going to change overnight. But if there is a young family member who comes in and says, I want to be on the board, this is what I care about, organizing family and saying like, you know, how did we inherit this wealth? What harm have we done? These are the things I care about. Can we move more money like this is? You know, it's an organizing model, right? And I think like as Research Generation grows, I think we are considered like fringe far left right by this very moderate, if not conservative body of philanthropy that exists. It is a it's an alternative model. You know, I think there's incredible potential in getting to people when they're young in this context of this intergenerational wealth transfer. In Edgar Villanueva's book, Decolonizing Wealth, he talks about like needing to heal. Right. And, you know, for white folks healing from, you know, all of the sort of pernicious elements of white supremacy culture, which include hoarding money. And then I think for folks of color, thinking about all of the scarcity mindset that we are socialized with for survival. So I think it's a very powerful space for folks in this age range. And I think there's incredible potential.

Reem: [00:30:48] And so in thinking about this volunteer based, culturally oriented work led by the young people of Resource Generation, how does it align with policy efforts like the ones we heard Laila talk about earlier?

Sophie: [00:31:00] I mean, I definitely think in many ways they can be in alignment. But Resource Generation also envisions a totally new way of doing. And I think there are ways in which regulations at the margins of the modern institution of philanthropy might just not cut it from their perspective.

Sophie: [00:31:22] I was speaking with a staff member from Resource Generation National who works on some of the advocacy work, and they mentioned and they thought this encapsulated research generation. Well, our work is to raise the floor, so redistribute those resources so folks are not living in poverty while a very small number are living in wealth, but simultaneously to lower the ceiling. So to actually, you know, generate things like a wealth tax or advocate for donor advised funds like paying out what they've promised with haste or having a philanthropic corpus actually have to give more than 5%, which is actually the that's like what's mandated currently, Right. I think research generation is aligned with all of those things and is pushing for those things as they come up as policy items and is also doing some of that organizing in the in the philanthropic space. RG is part of this conversation. It's just important to contextualize, right? Like, you know, 92% of CEOs of foundations are white. 89% of executives on foundation boards are white, and then 81% of financial service management and 86% of VC investors are white. So if we think about, you know, people investing in people that they know or people in their communities, that automatically means that communities of color and low income folks are left out. You know, like there is a huge representation issue in philanthropy and it brings to bear on communities literal ability to self-determine. RG Is part of that conversation and is trying to change that conversation, you know, by sort of voting with their feet, like we're moving the money, we're not waiting for philanthropies to figure out whether to change what they give from 5% to 6%. We're moving the money.

Colleen: [00:33:12] And finally, I wanted to hear from Sophie on what she sees as the limits of Resource Generation and where its work faces barriers.

Sophie: [00:33:21] Yeah, I'll say two things. I mean, one, I mean, I think an easy and easy one is to say like the limits of people's imagination. But no, I mean, more seriously, I do think that, you know, as members of Resource Generation are pushing for, you know, radical redistribution. Right. There's very real limitations of my family is not with it like really butting up against those personal relationships or society as a whole is invested in a model of philanthropy and money either being, like, preserved for the next generation or in a charitable model or a philanthropic model. I think there's huge investment in this sort of like direct service, charitable model, right? Like giving people job training, giving people food, giving people shelter. And that's not bad. Those are immediate needs, but there's a disproportionate amount of money that's going towards that and not going towards social justice or policy change. So I do think like the sort of attitudes and structures are a barrier for Research Generation. And then I also think it's really important to name that Research Generation as a group for people with class and wealth privilege, right? So entering any space, there's going to be issues of trust. There's going to be blind spots for Research Generation. You know, privilege is privilege. Power is power. And I think that Research Generation chapters in all of their own way are trying to identify what accountability looks like to front line community or communities, I should say, and what does real and trusting relationship look like when membership of RG may not have any relationships in organizing communities or in communities that are, you know, truly vulnerable, right? Like, what if those circles don't overlap and what does trust look like?

Reem: [00:35:21] So we've touched on this more culturally driven approach to shifting philanthropic practices. We've heard about regulations that might help make the industry more fair and transparent. What about more structural changes or things that take place totally outside of philanthropy?

Colleen: [00:35:37] Yep. So I, I think the main thing that neither of these efforts really touch on are policies that, as you say, exist wholly outside of the giving practices of the wealthy and consider how we as a society can rest back responsibility and capacity for wealth redistribution at the level of government. And as inspiring as Resource Generation's vision is, it's still in many ways depends upon the goodwill of the rich. You know, these rich, upper class, mostly white people to voluntarily redistribute their wealth and wield their privilege in support of progressive causes led by people of color. And so I would have been remiss if I didn't at least ask Laila and Sophie about their. Takes on a wealth tax and how we might move forward to a more democratic, potentially centrally led future of wealth redistribution.

Laila: [00:36:36] I think it's a great idea. It's like full stop. I think there's definitely a place for non-profits in the United States more broadly. I mean, I was just thinking about nonprofits. I've benefited from nonprofit theaters that I have taken classes from, scholarships that I've received. I have a hard time imagining the government fully filling in all of those roles. But I do think in terms of the goal of like philanthropy is like original goal was to help with wealth redistribution. To that end, I'm not sure if I can conclusively say that it's been successful. I do think that there is evidence that a wealth tax would be more successful at redistributing wealth than philanthropy has been. I mean, could you imagine a world where, like philanthropy wasn't tax subsidized and it was just this like other thing that people did on their own volition? And some of it you agreed with and some of you some of it you didn't agree with. And then like, it wouldn't be all that different in many ways than like so many of the other organizations that we see out there in the world. But because there's this public benefit that they're getting it, it makes it distinct. I think the public has a right to have some say in how philanthropy is reflecting public values at large.

Sophie: [00:38:08] You know, I think we've talked about is philanthropy democratic. And I'd say like in a word, no. In terms of representation, if that's a metric for democracy, we know that philanthropy is not representative of American society by class and by race and sexuality, right age. And I also think, you know, just in terms of a question of checks and balances, if that's a metric for democracy at the Gates Foundation, the board is Bill, Melinda, and Warren Buffett. And that's it. And they're deciding literally the fate of like entire countries. You know, they have the power to literally sway the political agenda of an entire large city. And so is that, you know, is that fair? You and I offline had talked about Giridharadas and, you know, his his assertion that philanthropy should be abolished and government services could be so much better if people just pay their taxes. Right. And I would take his point a bit further. And there's a a book called or a series of essays called The Revolution Will Not be Funded by INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence. Really unfiltered critique not just of philanthropy, but of like capitalism and capitalist violence. So, you know, I think they they are in my mind, they're like the OGs of the Winners Take All message. I personally think like, okay, if we know that American government has a history of also being misrepresentative and racist. I mean, do we want the wealthy to, like, just pay their taxes and invest back in government? And I would say like, yes, if we can get a representative government that values equity, what would it actually mean to just like give the power back?

Reem: [00:39:53] Sophie gave us such a good reminder here in response to the Anand Giridharadas take, which is that, yes, it would be way better if we could have the government redistribute wealth through wealth taxes. But as things stand right now, the uppermost echelons of government don't actually look much better in terms of representation and true democracy than the nonprofit sector does. Something that I'm left thinking about is if it's fair to critique the nonprofit philanthropic sector as a whole, as if it's monolithic. I think the localism and power distribution that Resource Generation is striving for and its new direction exists in smaller, super local community organizations. I'm thinking of food, not Bombs as a great example, and if you're not familiar, it's this national collective that basically works super locally to recover discarded food from restaurants and supermarkets and prepare enormous vegetarian and vegan feasts on a regular basis for anyone who needs a meal. And they work within communities. They accept donations of money and time and food and provide this really basic need within their communities. This is such a far cry from the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation in terms of its structure, its funding and its impact. It's also really awesome when people decide to respond to a need in their community by sharing their time and resources. So how do we facilitate true community organizations like Food Not Bombs, that exemplify horizontal ism and democracy without creating an opportunity for rich people to shelter their wealth or make the case against the need for a robust welfare system?

Colleen: [00:41:21] Yeah, I completely agree. And I do think Laila touches on this idea as well, albeit in a somewhat different way with her notion of a non tax subsidized system, a philanthropic giving that responds hyper locally to community needs and dreams. And Reem, I also have to say that Sophie's final comment really reminded me of the anarchism episode we just did a couple of weeks back.

Reem: [00:41:43] Totally effective nonprofit and community organizations don't need to have all of the infrastructures and hierarchies that can make them costly and unresponsive. The fundraisers and grant writers and executive directors and internship programs, they literally just need people who love their communities and want to find ways to help their neighbors. And the more practice we have building these flat, hyperlocal systems, the better we get at them, and the less we have to deal with the problems that the nonprofit industrial complex creates.

Colleen: [00:42:12] There is so much to chew on here. So if your interest is piqued, be sure to check out the show notes where we have lots of resources and links to more about much of what we heard today, including Resource Generation's Quiz, do you have class privilege?

Colleen: [00:42:28] Talk Policy To Me is a production of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans.

Reem: [00:42:39] Our executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck.

Colleen: [00:42:43] Editing for this episode by Elena Neale-Sacks.

Reem: [00:42:46] The music you heard today is by Pat Mesiti-Miller and Blue Dot Sessions.

Colleen: [00:42:50] I'm calling Colleen Pulawski.

Reem: [00:42:51] And I'm Reem Rayef.

Colleen: [00:42:53] Catch you next time. Tax the rich.