Personally, I think the whole non-profit model is flawed – generally non-profits have to go begging for money from these corporate foundations, and they have to ask their boards (generally populated by rich people) how to run their organizations. As more money is filtered through private non-profits rather than governments, rich people get more powerful and voters are undermined.

On the other hand, there are some very exciting companies out there that combine making the world a better place with making a profit – Working Assets comes to mind. The internet also offers some very innovative opportunities for a new, more democratic kind of philanthropy – sort of the public radio pledge drive/Howard Dean campaign model. Take a look at http://www.kiva.org for an example.

I’m not proposing not to help at all—of course not. But helping people is much more difficult than simply throwing food, money and power plants at them. Such measures mainly help aid organizations and their affiliates.
Build infrastructure, but make them pay fees. Help them to fight corruption, so that their taxes are put to good use. Educate people. Provide troops to put an end to violence, so that the country can start to rebuild itself. They always say “teach a man to fish.”

One critical point to challenge in your courageous article is government’s capacity to spend taxpayers’ funds effectively. That’s questionable when it comes to funding creative, innovative, society-wide initiatives that make a difference. Social entrepreneurs, civil society and NGOs have been rather good at discovering what citizens need, a task not exactly suited to politically controlled government.

Having all their employees happy, environmental and paying more taxes will not help much the AIDS or malaria sufferers, as the world status quo before their existence proved.

I tend to look favourably at their philantropic approach as being a foundation with independent and stable income allows them to approach problems that nobody has approached before. As always, you don’t have a guarantee that they do it well, but government or WHO existed before them and have not been very succesful in promoting malaria research…

And it’s better than spending their disposable income in militias or luxurious life.

What is ignored by this article and people’s comments is the hidden purpose of philanthropy (I say hidden because most people don’t see this). That is, charity’s purpose is to give a human face to unfettered capitalism. The problem, in fact, is in government and not in either philanthropy or the business world. Businesses are doing just what their purpose is: make money. Foundations are doing what their purpose is: do what rich people with a bad conscience want them to.

The only way to solve the issue is to give people the ability to decide on their own development (either through government or some kind of alternative structure.

Finally, although I definitely agree that sustain dependency. The solution is not to ‘teach a man (or woman) to fish’. Not only is that paternalistic, but it contributes to the belief that the free-market is inherently good and only need a little tweaking here and there. Rather, I’d like to think of the work I do with my nonprofit as: ‘creating democratic spaces that enable peer-to-peer learning so that communities – who obviously have been fishing for thousands of years – can not only teach one another how to fish but also figure out the really pressing problem: why have they forgotten how to fish in the first place?’

> Corporations donate a tiny percentage of their profits / receive sizeable tax writeoffs.

You have to pick one here: big or small? A corporations donation to charity will equal the size of their writeoff for doing so. 1% of profits is a small number, $90M and is an equally small number when compared to overall profit. But that same $90M is A LOT of money for a charity. One side can’t be referred to as big at the same time the other side of the equation is referred to as small; numbers don’t work that way.

Also, why assume a tiny percentage of profit? Verizon matches charitable contributions up to $100k annually. Entry-level salary at Verizon is about $35k. If each employee tithes 10%, that’s 3500*242k = $847M; now DOUBLE that because it’s all matched.

Now after being the person at my company who goes around bugging people to donate to the annual charitable contribution campaign, I’ll be the first to say that employees do not donate anywhere near 10% of their income. But they could. I find it neglectful of the author to not even so much as mention an individual’s responsibility in improving the world, but instead demanding that those with more money change their ways.

> But what if Gates and Buffett simply applied their sentiments as philanthropists to their work as CEOs in the first place?

Here’s how it would have turned out: neither of them would be in a position to makes as big of an impact as they are now. The capitalist world favors those who specialize in what they do best. Buffet is very good at investing. Over his lifetime, he has been able to use this skill to amass an incredible sum of money in a relatively short amount of time. He did this by being very shrewd and rejecting living a life of luxury. His intent was never to horde cash for himself or his family, but to amass and disburse to those who need it.

> In the meantime, the United States is losing $40 billion annually on tax write-offs for philanthropy.

One could also argue that the charities themselves are costing the United States billions due to their non-profit status. That would be an equally ridiculous claim.

Corporations are taxed on their profits. Now if corporations were to prioritize employee salaries, welfare, and benefits, those added costs would count as labor cost for the corporations. This would lead to smaller corporate profits (since increased labor cost would be subtracted from revenue) and the United States would STILL be “losing” billions in tax dollars. And where would new money toward employee benefits and welfare be going? Into a 401k that invests in ExxonMobil and other large multinationals that the author seems to hate so? Going to pay the outrageous health care fees that the oh-so-ethical health care industry rakes in? Given the choice between that, Uncle Sam, or charities, I’ll go with the charities to make the best use of my money.

> On our own shores, meanwhile, charitable donations to domestic organizations that grapple with poverty and racism have declined to an all-time low.

Might this have something to do with poverty in the US nearing historic lows?

Also, why the hatred toward non-domestic charities? I send the majority of my charitable donations overseas to places like Senegal, Cambodia, and Peru. I would consider more giving overseas to be a GOOD thing, in hopes that maybe Americans are earning a better world view.

“Also, why the hatred toward non-domestic charities? I send the majority of my charitable donations overseas to places like Senegal, Cambodia, and Peru. I would consider more giving overseas to be a GOOD thing, in hopes that maybe Americans are earning a better world view.”

I also make a substantial portion of my “charity contributions” to foreign aid. In fact, private citizens in the U.S. combined, if my source is correct, give more money to foreign aid than the government. We just need to be mindful to give it to responsible organizations that do not enable the problem they attempt to solve.

The librarys set up by donations, think tanks that benefit mankind as a whole seem to have slipped from your view. Your wide ranging critisms seem to not touch on the creation of centers of knowledge, or for that matter those projects which strive to uplift individuals and groups the world over.