SHOWER THOUGHTS — 002
#feelingthoughtfulmightwritemorelater
The more I think about philanthropy, the more I am starting to think it’s become a PR exercise for the filthy rich.
A quick Google search suggests this following qualification of philanthropy and charity. It’s from a lesson plan containing the logos of the New Jersey Department of Education and Rutgers in its header, published back in July 2018.
Philanthropy is more long-term and strategic and often involves making multiple gifts to help people over a number of years. While charity is focused on providing immediate relief to people and is often driven by emotions, philanthropy is focused on helping people and solving their problems over the long-term. One article described the difference between charity and philanthropy this way: Delivering bottled water to a drought-stricken village in East Africa is charity, but philanthropy is building a well. Another way of describing the difference between these two methods of giving is that charity is a hand out to someone in need (e.g., giving them a fish) while philanthropy is a hand up (e.g., enabling them to fish for themselves).
I’m loving the subtlety of the word handout here, as if all respite from hardship is momentary. Funny how it’s also used as a derogatory term for Universal Basic Income or UBI (again, Google’s top search result suggests that it’s a bad idea…you see a pattern too, right?).
In any case, if the above qualification is what we’re going for, then charity is short-term, and philanthropy is more of a long-term “effective” route to be taken when addressing poverty and issues stemming from it. If that was so true, then why has the wealth inequality gap widened in the last couple of years?
