Philanthropy - Modern Vernacular Uses of The Word

Modern Vernacular Uses of The Word

In 19th century America, the word "philanthropy" and its variants tended to drift in meaning and importance, generally to be associated with "doing good" and—derogatorily—"do-gooders"—e.g., Thoreau, in Walden. In the 20th century American philanthropy matured, with the development of very large private foundations created by titans of industry—Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, et al.—and later in the century with the professionalization of the field led and funded by those great foundations. The sheer size of their endowments directed their attention to addressing the causes and instruments, as distinct from the symptoms and expressions, of social problems and cultural opportunities. The word "philanthropy" came to be associated exclusively with its most conspicuous manifestations, foundations and grant-making. Professional fundraisers almost never used the word, always referring to their individual charity employers rather than to philanthropy in general or as a cultural phenomenon. The increasing dominance of the profession by social scientists or former social science majors tended to focus professional attention on technical and procedural issues rather than substantive values, on means rather than ends, on questions of how rather than why. Many professionals considered the word "philanthropy" to sound unnecessarily pretentious, pompous, pedantic, and in any case meaningless because the Classical view had been lost entirely, with the decline of the humanities and the classics in education.

Then at the turn of the 21st century, the word "philanthropy" began to re-enter the American vernacular. In 1997 a Massachusetts project of foundations, corporations and donors to increase charitable giving through donor education was centered on a Catalogue for Philanthropy. In 1998 leading national grantmakers funded a collaborative project to increase charitable giving through regional programs. Wealth creators in the new high-tech global economy, having amassed great fortunes exceeding even those of the previous century, were turning to second careers in philanthropy at earlier ages, creating even larger foundations. Individual philanthropy began to be chic, attracting celebrities from popular arts. Commercial movies and television adopted the word and idea, and a leading Classically American philanthropic initiative by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the "Giving Pledge", used the word with global publicity.

In scholarship, the 20th century rise to dominance by the social sciences focused attention on academic social theories and ideals—"civil society"—and technical jargon—the "third sector" and "nonprofits". In ARNOVA (the Association for Research on Nonprofit and Voluntary Action), the relevant academic society, scholars with humanistic training and orientation formed a small but growing minority of generally younger members. The emergence of the word "nonprofit" can be tracked by its appearance in increasing numbers of dissertation titles: 1 in 1959, 7 in the '60s, 49 in the '70s, 238 in the '80s and on up. By the early 21st century the word "nonprofit" was generally accepted as synonymous with philanthropy, though practitioners found it disadvantageously negative in fundraising and meaningless to donors. In 2011 its factual relevance was challenged by the Massachusetts Philanthropic Directory (MPD), which found that fewer than 10% of "nonprofits" are philanthropies.