What do we mean by philanthropy – and is it enough?
Recently, a good friend and fellow lover of the world asked me this question for a book he is putting together about using money as a force for good.
His question to me was: What motivates my philanthropy?
My answer? Love.
At the core of all that I do is my love of the world. That love is also why I am sad, afraid and sometimes even angry. We live in an imperfect world, where so many people do not have access to the basic needs for human flourishing, including food and shelter, but also freedom and belonging. We also live in a time where we are actively warming the planet and destroying our natural environment at a rate that threatens our very existence, and is causing the extinction of dozens of species a week. We can do better than this.
Philanthropy is literally translated as ‘the love of humankind’, and that should be the driving force of all of societies actions (I would add a love of nature to that too). To be a true philanthropist requires more than just giving charity, it is a way of life, a wholehearted action of love in all that we do. For me, the philosophy of philanthropy requires us to share our surplus in the form of charity, but it also calls on us to do business differently, in a way that serves the values and principles we hold dear. That would mean that someone giving charity, who makes his or her money hurting people or the environment, is not yet a philanthropist. That is called marketing.
For us to truly want to heal the world with love, we have to be values driven in all that we do, including our work, our investing and even our general lives. We live in a complex system where so much of what we do inadvertently harms others. The clothes we buy could be causing people on the other side of the world to be enslaved in the making of that garment, the phone we buy could be causing precious habitats to be destroyed in the acquisition of the raw materials. As philanthropists, this must be as relevant to our agenda as where our charity goes, for you cannot break an egg with one hand, and put it back together with the other. We cannot be perfect, and there are always things out of our control, but we must do the best we can to serve our highest values.
Our economy, our society, our world, is an interconnected system, and we need to see it as such. Through that lens, we need to be thinking of our philanthropy as interconnected too, driving our actions in all that we do. In fact, it is the interconnection, the relationships, that makes the world so beautiful. It is how the sun reflects off our atmosphere to create a sunset, how a bird sings to the trees in the morning, how a mother looks at her new-born baby and how our friends hold our hand when we need their support. That is the world I am in love with.
And that is why I do what I do, with all my heart.