Generosity

Arianna Huffington provides some thoughtful observations about generosity in a posting, linked here,  on the Thinking Peace website.  She reports a debate with Michael Kingsley of Slate about the Slate 60, a charitable contribution rankings list designed to parallel the Forbes 500. 

Her objection--that the people who make the top of the Slate 60 are not often genuinely generous.  Their gifts are to support institutions that are catered by the rich, like symphonies and heavily endowed universities.  Those gifts often carry a quid pro quo, such as memorialization of the donor in huge bronze letters naming a building.   So in her view, those gifts should not be entitled to a full charitable contribution deduction.

Her solution--create a point system that ranks gifts not just by the dollar amount but by the substance of the gifts.  Shame the big givers by pointing out their failure to be genuinely generous. Gifts to programs for the needy (soup kitchens, educational grants to K-12, health care in Africa) count more than gifts to institutions typically supported by the rich.  Anonymous gifts count more than gifts putting the donor's name on a building.   She concludes with this statement:

"Not all generosity is created equal, and so we need to honor those among the generous whose sights extend beyond their own enclaves. Compassion and philanthropy can’t fix America’s problems on their own. But they fill an even smaller portion of the gap between rich and poor when they are directed where they are not urgently needed. " 

It's doubtful whether Huffington's ranking system could be incorporated into the charitable contribution deduction, but it is certainly something to keep in mind whenever someone comes up with the idea of permitting the rich to take into account charitable contributions equal to 100% of their gross income, as in the KETRA bill.  The next time Congress passes such a provision, let's hope the benefit is restricted to donations for charities that direct their aid to the hungry, the homeless and the broken in health.