Too Big, Too Distant, Too far in the Future: The Challenge of Philanthropy at World Scale

Modern philanthropy is nothing if not ambitious. “The Rockefeller Foundation works to improve the well-being of people everywhere.” “For 20 years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been committed to fighting the greatest inequities in the world.”

We may argue about which causes should be priorities but there is only rare disagreement that we need to find solutions that scale. Indeed, one generally accepted justification for organized philanthropy’s claim to legitimacy is that it represents society’s risk capital. The notion is that the social innovations foundations generate as experiments can achieve scale by “graduating” to other means: through the market with microfinance, or through the government with the Head Start program for early childhood education, once philanthropy demonstrated that these innovations worked at more modest scale.

This may be well and fine for organizations like foundations, which account for less than a fifth of giving in the U.S. But what about the rest of us?  Individuals, families, and smaller community foundations operate within parameters that do not readily extend beyond our more constrained personal experiences. And the smaller scale of community remains vital for personal engagement with philanthropy. This is born out through the craft of the fundraiser, whose profession is building a community around a cause and motivating the support it warrants.

Today scale is evident in the data platforms whose user numbers exceed the populations of most countries as they absorb ever more commercial and leisure activity. Every startup seeks to scale – to create an extensive network that makes it the singular preferred solution in its space. There are often significant benefits that come with scale – efficiency, effectiveness, and connectivity in ways that would seem magical to our ancestors.

Yet something is lost at scale. Try to reach a customer service agent at your favorite social media site. Or try to interact with your government without using the language that helps it understand you as an instance of the impersonal categories in which it places every citizen.

You would think that philanthropists would have their hands full by simply trying to navigate the tension between benefiting those closest and most personally precious while also seeking to help those who are in need but distant and unfamiliar. To complicate matters further, into this tension between scaling and caring we are asked to face the issue of time. 

And here, it is essential to remember that philanthropy is a unique institution that traverses the intimate sphere of the family as it progresses to consider all of humanity, currently alive and yet to be born. One dynamic project that has focused on community to build impact for many organizations is the Community Collaboration Initiative fostered by our school’s Muslim Philanthropy Initiative, about which you can read more later in this issue.

Philanthropy can scale across different dimensions: impact, size, distance, and time. But it can also be small, idiosyncratic, and peculiar to specific people and their circumstances. There will be those who cannot or do not want to scale their care beyond a specific community.

Data from the Global Philanthropy Tracker indicate that American civil society now sends more money across borders to support citizens of other countries than does our government. Indeed, philanthropic flows have been growing in importance across donor countries as a group. It is increasingly challenging to have purely local causes that can be isolated from what happens in distant places.

Whether we like it or not, and whether we seek to have an impact at scale, developments at scale affect what we attempt to achieve. We will need both the impersonal technologies that allow us to operate and care at scale and the more intimate communicative and caring work of community as we move forward.

To paraphrase a quip on war attributed to Leon Trotsky, you may not be interested in scale, but scale is interested in you.

Best regards,

Amir Pasic

Eugene R. Tempel Dean

“A Year of Learning highlights the importance of increasing the understanding foundations have about U.S. Muslims and the unique challenges faced by Muslim-led nonprofits,” said Dilnaz Waraich, President of the Waraich Family Fund. “Many donors lack a full appreciation for the positive impact Muslim-led organizations are having on their communities and society. This underappreciation of these organization’s contribution to the social safety net and the potential to do more with proper funding often puts Muslim-led nonprofits at a disadvantage when seeking funding and in providing innovative high-quality programs to the very populations many funders want to reach.”

The Year of Learning project included conversations that focused on learning about Muslim Americans and Muslim-led nonprofit organizations and how philanthropic foundations can meaningfully engage with marginalized and underrepresented groups like Muslim Americans.

The report found that the yearlong project helped raise awareness, create understanding and generate action for change with possible long-term implications. The project helped build relationships between Muslim-led nonprofits and philanthropy. Project activities also increased confidence and knowledge among Muslim-led nonprofits about how they can engage with philanthropic foundations in a meaningful way.

“By bringing together philanthropic foundations and Muslim-led nonprofits, the Year of Learning enabled difficult, honest conversations and closer connections among organizations that knew relatively little about each other, benefitting both types of organizations and the communities they serve,” said Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the school. “The early successes of this project offer potential lessons and insights for how the philanthropic sector can form productive relationships with other marginalized and underrepresented populations.”