We use the term “philanthrosphere” quite a lot in our coverage, and it got me thinking: What exactly does that mean? If it is truly a realm, it lacks the definitive borders of, say, government. Not to mention, the institutions that may have once defined its landscape are getting a lot slipperier.
So is there a meaningful way to talk about a philanthrosphere these days? Or has the practice of philanthropy become so diverse, so wide-ranging, so self-contradictory as to render the phrase meaningless?
Once upon a time, the philanthrosphere could be nailed down much more easily. Go back several decades and you’ll find storied New York-based legacy outfits like Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie at the top of the game in terms of influence and money in the bank. It was a pretty small kingdom, and that’s the way it stayed for a while — holdovers from the old Gilded Age pretty much led the conversation around grantmaking in the United States.
Then, as IP founder David Callahan put it back in 2016, all hell broke loose. A new Gilded Age began to manifest itself, and wave upon wave of uber-rich living donors came on scene with new ideas about philanthropic giving — from titans of the strategic philanthropy era like Bill Gates through the rise of the philanthropic LLC in the 2010s, all the way to apex donors like MacKenzie Scott and others today.
As a rule, these newcomers rarely took their cues from the old establishment. An increasing number haven’t even bothered with foundations. In addition to the LLC, the donor-advised fund is now a vehicle of choice for donors across the wealth spectrum.
That’s not all. Even as today’s elites deploy their philanthropic funding in dizzying and often obfuscatory ways, the old definition of philanthropy as an elite-driven endeavor is itself under attack. Scholars like Lucy Bernholz are expanding the concept of philanthropy beyond rich, old, white people to include a far broader and more inclusive territory, covering everything from giving $50 to your local church or homeless shelter to pet-sitting for a neighbor. Rising donors of color are changing the face of charitable giving. And the 2020s-era resurgence of mutual aid has sought to dissolve many of philanthropy’s boundaries and hierarchies.
With all that in mind, is it even useful to talk about a philanthrosphere anymore? Or by doing so, do we perpetuate the idea that philanthropy is a “higher” form of charity accessible only to those who’ve dedicated their lives to the relentless pursuit of capital?
I’d argue that there are still useful and inclusive ways to talk about a philanthrosphere. One of them — maybe not the only one — centers people rather than organizations and money. In such a conception, the philanthrosphere could include everyone who spends significant time working with or thinking about nonprofit funding — as a donor, recipient, facilitator, intermediary, even as a critic.
This definition is focused on the wide but finite range of people who spend time sustaining and trying to improve the civic sector. It doesn’t necessarily include someone who gives the Sierra Club $100 after going on a hike. That may be a philanthropic act, but it would be a stretch to call that person a part of the philanthrosphere on that basis alone. But this definition also downplays, say, the hedge fund manager who instructs his family office to give a six-figure gift to his alma mater one Saturday and goes back to his golf. (I imagine it also downplays Elon Musk.)
That’s not to say that the above people are not philanthropic. But they’re not necessarily part of what I’d call the philanthrosphere. It stretches far beyond big donors and besuited professionals who work at foundations, but it doesn’t include just anyone who has given away charitable dollars or set them aside.
Such a definition still includes lots of people: a program officer at a mid-sized foundation, the university development staffer who handles that hedge fund manager’s gift, a retiree with a DAF who gives regularly to a bunch of local nonprofits, an employee at an organization that fiscally sponsors collaborative funds, even an anti-poverty advocate who spends a lot of time criticizing Big Philanthropy.
Crucially, it also includes the dedicated donors and staff at small family foundations, community foundations, and other such easy-to-miss grantmakers that make up the quiet majority of organized philanthropy in the U.S.
Within that very broad range of people, I’d argue that there are certain throughlines that make it possible to talk about the philanthrosphere as something coherent but non-monolithic, something that’s more than a bunch of squabbling, self-interested elites. That’s become more apparent over the past six or seven years as the nation faced down a series of traumas and crises, including Donald Trump’s presidency and its aftermath, a pandemic, and the unrest following George Floyd’s murder.
Each time, parts of the philanthrosphere, and sometimes the sector as a whole, responded in ways that indicate at least some shared thinking and mutuality among people who care about nonprofit funding. Even if they disagreed on the actual courses of action, everyone had to engage with these currents and consider their role within them. The ongoing narrative around the superiority of unrestricted support — kickstarted during COVID and further emphasized by MacKenzie Scott — is one such throughline. So is increased effort and intention around racial justice, especially from funders who were previously silent on the matter. Another example could be an uptick in collaborative funding efforts in, say, progressive circles.
With all that in mind, it’s possible to make a case that not only does a philanthrosphere exist; it’s also a lot less heterogeneous, and more prone to groupthink and risk aversion, than it likes to make out.
So where does the truth lie? Hard to say. Even as I write this I can hear people poking holes in this formulation. What about ESG investing? What about social enterprises? What about direct cash transfers? Does C4 funding count? Enough lines have been blurred in the “third sector” that even though we have a sense of a philanthrosphere, it’s as hard to pin down as a precise definition of philanthropy itself.
But these days, as criticism of philanthropy mounts, we need ways to think about what makes this endeavor distinctive and worthwhile. That has to include why it’s more than just an apparatus for the wealthy to lower their tax bills and burnish their reputations. What are we all trying to do here? What is our contribution? Should our organizations even exist? Acknowledging the wide range of people actually doing the work, elite or not so much, could be one way to move toward some answers.