Reflections on the Semester

By: Elijah Tanner, BA 2016 (i.e., next week)

This point in the semester, and in the Philanthropy Lab’s attempt to distribute its $50,000, calls for deep reflection on what I have learned and accomplished so far. It calls for reflection because, like all classes at this time of year, it has reached a point where I have begun to wonder ‘what have I learned?’ There is an added dimension to this question though because in this course I have taken no tests. Is it possible to say I’ve learned anything without having tests to show me what I’ve learned? The obvious answer is yes. There is such a thing as practice, and although there is not a multiple choice answer to describe what it is I learned through the practice of giving away money, I still believe I’m better at it. Nonetheless, there are some ideas and observations concerning this practice that stood out in my mind and left a lasting imprint on the way I understand philanthropy now.

At the start of the year we read about philanthropy, and then we began to practice it. The intent I’m sure was to prepare our minds, and give us a framework to understand what we were about to experience. This was certainly the case. I often repeated the words from our book Understanding Philanthropy about an organization’s mission statement answering the question “Why do we exist?” not “What do we do?” It reminded me that unless the organization is focused on a call that comes from within the community, it is only serving itself or its own ideas about what the community should be. The funny thing is though, and I’m sure Andy knew this going in to it, I soon became aware of the reverse effects as well. Even as the readings helped me to understand what I was doing, the readings themselves made much more sense in light of what we had done.

One line from Understanding Philanthropy that followed me in all of our discussions and interviews was the statement that the “history of philanthropy is the ‘social history of the moral imagination.’”[1] As my group made our decisions and evaluated the philanthropies we worked with, I came to see what this quote meant. I witnessed the organization leaders talk about their mission statements with such intensity and I heard them relate their work to such core beliefs about our shared faith and belief in moral values that I wondered why I wasn’t obligated to volunteer with all of them. What they helped me to see though was this: if philanthropy is a nation’s moral imagination, then it must be essentially creative, because imagination is creative. I do not mean creative in that it is abnormal or entirely novel and never-before-seen, I mean creative in that it creates. Imagination draws from the world around it and combines things that have already been seen or already existed in order to make something that was not previously there. This is the work of philanthropy. Philanthropy does not try to make something entirely novel and inject it into a society; that is imperialism. Philanthropy draws from the world around it and returns those things in an unseen, but entirely familiar way. It gives the community back its own vision and passion and skills and resources. To say that philanthropy is the moral imagination of society is to paint a picture of one portion of the mind drawing from other portions to create something desired.

Another idea that was pervasive in my learning throughout this class was described in Gunderman’s concept of Liberal giving. The idea behind liberal giving is that philanthropy is not about giving well so much as doing good and flourishing because of it. That is, philanthropy is the product of human nature; namely, the desire for the fulfillment that comes from giving. That fulfillment is the result of one becoming more fully human or learning to incorporate the good into one’s life and actions. As I understood it before entering this class, philanthropy is at its core simply generosity and generosity is one of the virtues. As my group attempted to decide on which organizations to move forward with, I began to realize the importance and meaning of this definition of philanthropy because I quickly realized just how difficult our decisions would be. There were so many factors involved in each decision and there were almost no organizations that did not fit into what our group hoped to see. Eventually it dawned on me that there would be no ultimate answer, no simple solution or obvious right choice. There would only be the choice that my (hopefully) well-informed character would make. There would only be the choice that I, Elijah Tanner, with all my emotional attachment to certain individuals and people groups and values, could make. Of course, there are times when easy connections can be made between an organization’s operation and something that my group was looking for or not looking for, but in the difficult decisions it will not come down to some theoretical hair splitting, but to the style of generosity that I have cultivated. So, philanthropy is not just about finding the most technical and efficient ways to maximize the social effects of one’s money, it is about being generous, which means that philanthropy is a practice, and the end goal is doing good, giving well is simply one means to that end.

[1] Robert Payton and Michael Moody, Understanding Philanthropy: Its Meaning and Mission (Indiana University Press, 2008).