Two weeks ago, there was an opportunity to take a last glance through the rear-view mirror and see the milestones receding of significance during the past year. This exercise played itself out in popular media in the context of multiple themes. On New Year’s Eve, Charlie Rose did a video retrospective, rolling clips from prior interviews with guests that passed away in 2010, among them Joan Sutherland, Elizabeth Edwards, Ted Sorenson, and Robert Byrd. It was a poignant hour, to be reminded of the significance of those losses, no matter the plane of their relevance, to art, to politics, to human discovery in this most recent of times. Other explorations were less somber, from assessing the 110 things that New Yorkers were talking about in 2010, to the top ten films, news stories, fashion flops, and so on. It was fun, entertaining and thought provoking and does put one in the frame of mind to accept a clean slate ahead and be confident we will have mastery over shaping the story we want to be able to tell this time next year.
In philanthropy, the big stories in 2010 found us still aghast at the tragedy, now grown to biblical proportions, that have Madoff at its core; the surprisingly bold and audacious Giving Pledge campaign launched by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, encouraging the world’s billionaires to pledge half of the wealth to philanthropy; and the unexpected tax windfall that means almost no one will be subject in 2011 to the estate tax (an estimate from the American Bar Association suggests the number is less than one-half of one percent); and with the punch line, that even those few who will pay taxes, the increase in the gift tax exemptions will allow them to pass on tens of millions of dollars tax free.
There will be plenty of time in the coming year to continue to assess the impact of these watershed moments: will we continue to see a downstream effect of Madoff that disappears, still further, philanthropic donors and institutions? Will the long term impact of the Giving Pledge leverage upward, the philanthropy of the super rich, to achieve a scale more proportionate to capacity as in the day of a Carnegie or Rockefeller? Will the time-limited “free pass” inherent in the estate tax protecting the heirs of the country’s wealthiest of families prove to be a disincentive among the high net worth to sustain a commitment to and practice of philanthropy?
The trade journals and blogs that traffic in news of philanthropy are looking down the road ahead, too and making their own predictions. Among the trends forecast is a continued expansion of a broad interest among new and emerging donors in investing in social good, using break-through technologies and promoting innovations that challenge conventional wisdom and the ways of means of how philanthropy is best thought achieved.
Social media have exploded the opportunities to spread ideas, attract constituents who “like” or self identify as “friends” to each other, on the basis of similar values, and that together crowd source the funding to achieve milestones proportionate to a human scale of need, one person at a time, multiplied over and over again. Technology and its application to philanthropic purposes are expected to disrupt and transform philanthropy in the coming years. Some speculate that too much of a good thing can also lead to deadening enthusiasm for giving, leaving the well-intended to decipher too much information and too many options, and thus not likely to give at all.
There are other signs that philanthropy and the charitable sector will continue to restructure in the future year, as both a necessity of the economic recession and in recognition that changes in public policy have vast implications for the organizational infrastructure upon which charities now rest. Old assumptions about tax exemptions, the sanctity of anonymity, the breadth of required disclosures, are just a few of the areas where old assumptions are likely to die and new ones take their place.
My prediction for 2011: In a time of challenge, expect the face and character of philanthropy to change. In a time of scarcity, anticipate philanthropy’s ascendance as a powerful tool of community and social investment. In a time of need, expect abundance to be created out of opportunity. In a time of uncertainty, count upon opportunities to be plentiful. That’s my story and I am sticking to it.
