|
A. PREVIOUS ISSUE: "The Largest Wealth Transfer
in History is Still on Track"
After
a year of fielding questions about how the economic
downturn might affect their predictions of a $41 trillion
wealth transfer estimate before 2052, John Havens
and Paul Schervish, reviewed their findings in the
light of this and eight other challenges.
The
principal conclusion of the report published this
January in the "Journal of Gift Planning" is that
the $41 trillion estimate remains valid as a 2% growth
estimate, even in light of recessionary growth, depressed
stock market, longer life spans, and a number of other
factors.
"The
news should come as a great relief to universities
and charities across the country who expanded their
development offices and overhauled their staff in
response to our prediction that $6 trillion would
be bequeathed to charity over the next 50 years,"
said SWRI Director, Paul Schervish.
Read
more about the wealth transfer validity study . .
.
|
| |
Dear Colleagues:
I am pleased to send you the fourth issue of a periodic
update on our research at the Social Welfare
Research Institute on wealth and philanthropy.
This completes the coverage of the New Physics of
Philanthropy, begun in "Wealth and the Commonwealth"
no. 2. In that previous volume we talked about the
material side of the supply side, that is, the fact that
wealth and growth in wealth incline donors toward
greater charitable giving. In this edition we look at the
spiritual side of the new physics of philanthropy, by
which we mean the array of motivations and
methodologies that incline wealth holders to use their
wealth on behalf of the commonwealth. We focus
on a selection of three of
these vectors: hyperagency, the motives of
identification
and association, and the methodologies of discernment
and
donor-centered fundraising. These are forces that
donors, fundraisers, and financial
advisors can work with to improve the quality and
quantity of philanthropy.
We hope "Wealth and the Commonwealth" will help provide some added
meaning and practical benefit for you in your
good work. If you would like to be removed from
our mailing list, please reply to this message
with the word "Remove" in the subject line or
click the "Unsubscribe" link below. As is always
the case, we welcome your feedback.
Paul Schervish, Director, SWRI
|
|
|
|
| B. THIS ISSUE'S FEATURED RESEARCH: "The New Physics of Philanthropy: The Spiritual Side of the Supply Side" | | | After the previous issue on the material side of the
supply side, the question still remains just how to tap
such financial potential in a way that draws on the
inclination of wealth holders to find a path that
combines their care for others with their own pursuit of
happiness. In this article we present our answer to that
remaining question and suggest two implications of our
ideas for fundraising. First, we differentiate between the demand-side and
supply-side approaches for motivating wealth holders to
make charitable contributions. The two approaches
share the common goal of linking a supply of donor
dollars to the demand of recipient needs. In fulfilling
that goal, the demand-side approach not only
emphasizes the demand of needs; it tends to be
demanding in tone as well. In contrast, the supply-side
approach tends to spur the allocation of dollars to
fulfilling needs by drawing on the inclinations of donors
to care about the issues and people with whom they
identify and to desire to effect change in the world
around them. Second, we turn to the first implication of
the supply-side approach, which is to approach donors
as knowledgeable decision makers who are to be
tutored through a process of personal discernment
rather than instructed how much to give and to whom.
Third, we address the second implication of the supply-
side perspective, and consider how even a relatively
encompassing repeal of the estate tax will not
necessarily generate a negative effect on charitable
giving. In the conclusion, we summarize our overall
argument and discuss how it is situated within a larger
material and cultural terrain, namely the dialectics of
wealth and philanthropy in an age of affluence. Download "New Physics of Philanthropy: The Spiritual Side of the Supply Side" (pdf) |
|
| Vector 1: Donors as Hyperagents | | | Hyperagency refers to the enhanced capacity of
wealthy individuals to establish or substantially control
the conditions under which they and others live. For
most individuals, agency is limited to choosing among
and
acting within the constraints of those situations in which
they find themselves. As monarchs of agency, the
wealthy can transcend such constraints and, for good or
for ill, create for themselves a world of their own
design. Whenever we ask wealth holders to identify the most
important attribute of wealth, their answer is invariably
the same: freedom. What is different for wealth
holders
is that they can legitimately be more confident about
actualizing their expectations and aspirations because
they can directly effect the fulfillment of their desires.
Wealth holders are entrepreneurial and venture-
capitalist
hyperagents in philanthropy, producers rather than
simply sustainers of philanthropic enterprises. Wealth
holders not only have the resources for producing
charitable outcomes; the social-psychological disposition
of hyperagency inclines them to do so. Fundraisers who
wish to activate donor hyperagency on behalf of their
cause can do so by inviting wealth holders to
function as creators or architects of the philanthropic
initiatives through which they hope to make a
difference. |
|
| Vector 2: Schools of Identification and Association | | | Identification is the unity of love of neighbor with love
of
self, identifying with
the fate of others. The question for generating
generosity is how to expand those very familiar
sentiments of identification to include those who are
relationally, spatially, and temporally more distant, that
is, to a circle of human beings beyond one's kin, those
who live in wider fields of space and time. In other
words, to extend the sentiments of family-feeling to the
realms of fellow-feeling. The school of identification is association, by which we
mean the constellation of formal and informal
communities of participation in which donors learn about
people in need, and come to identify with them as being
like themselves. Over the course of our research, it has
become increasingly clear that differences in levels of
giving of time and money are due to more than
differences in income, wealth, religion, gender, and
race.
When it comes to philanthropy, differences are less a
matter of financial capital or even moral capital in the
form of some kind of intrinsic faculty of generosity,
rather what matters most is one's abundance of
associational capital in the form of social networks,
invitation, and identification. Many younger donors are
actively seeking opportunities for association, such as
through giving circles and Social Venture Partners.
Through association with other donors they become
acquainted with potential beneficiaries,
with efficient and effective charitable organizations, and
in general, with a wider range of
philanthropic possibilities. |
|
| Vector 3: Discernment and Donor-Centered Fundraising | | | Too often fundraising efforts tend to bully or cajole
donors
into making gifts, enlisting as their allies guilt,
embarrassment, comparison, shame, and imposed
obligation. We refer to this approach as the cajoling or
scolding model. The demand-side approach obtains a
gift, but it doesn't create a giver. Our research on the
motivations for charitable giving
suggests that in order to amplify charitable giving
fundraisers must deal more directly with the
social-psychological vectors that incline donors to
expand their philanthropy. If major gifts are to be garnered from major donors
imbued with hyperagency, it is necessary to treat
donors
to the same respectful decision-making process we
would desire for ourselves. This means helping donors
excavate their biographical history, their contemporary
prospects and purposes, and their anxieties and
aspirations for the future. Far more
attention and time need be devoted to interpreting who
donors are and who they want to be rather than
interjecting who we think they are. The discernment
method of fundraising utilizes a process
of personal discernment where the donor answers the
following questions for himself or herself:
1. "Is there something you want to do with your wealth?
2. That fulfills the needs of others?
3. That you can do more efficiently and more effectively
than the government?
4. And that makes you happy by enabling you to
express
your gratitude, by bringing you satisfaction, and by
actualizing your identification with the fate of others?" Learn More about How to Work with the Vectors of the New Physics (download "The New Physics of Philanthropy: The Spiritual Side of the Supply Side" pdf) |
|
C. MEDIA: More Than Money Journal
interviews Paul
Schervish on the Meaning of a Gospel of Wealth | | |
MoreThanMoney:
You have written elsewhere that, "The leading
cultural and spiritual question of the current
era is how to make wise decisions in an age of
affluence." Is that what you're suggesting--that
people in our society now have so many choices
that wisdom is needed in making them?
Schervish: Aristotle understood that
the goal of life is happiness--you could also
say love, unity with the divine presence, or
a whole range of things, but let's just say
that his term is one working definition of the
goal of life. Happiness is achieved if you can
close the gap between where you and those with
whom you identify and care about are and where
you and they would like to be.
Download Complete Interview: Wealth Transfer in an Age of Affluence (pdf) |
|
|