Mother’s Day Reflections and Who Gets To Be A Philanthropist

As many women in business will do, we start our meetings checking in and catching up. Since we are both entrepreneurs and literally live our work, these conversations are always fruitful recollections of dots connecting and synergies manifesting. We certainly never lack for ideas!

Last week, the rap session included a recap of Mother’s Day and our respective experiences with it. While many of our identities overlap, we come from different cultures and have different experiences with our mothers — one of us is a mother — and these perspectives were woven throughout our conversation.

Together we have a combined 29 years of experience working in the field of philanthropy. We’ve worn virtually every hat: donor, staff, volunteer, board member, fundraiser, consultant, trainer, facilitator, organizer, coach, advisor, and advocate. We’ve advised funders on grants worth a combined total of over $758 million (no really, we did the math). We’ve written strategic plans, created curriculum, chaired board committees, started and run giving circles, managed social change initiatives, fellowships, leadership development programs and nonprofit capacity building efforts. All this to say: we’ve seen, felt, tasted, and breathed many angles of philanthropy — enough to have developed strong opinions, thoughts and feelings around its practice — and it’s culture.

Google defines philanthropy as, “the desire to promote the welfare of others, expressed especially by the generous donation of money to good causes.” As practitioners, donors, students, and critics of the field, we ask: what does it mean, in this moment, to be a philanthropist?

Much is being discussed and celebrated these days in regards to philanthropy. The Zuckerbergs, Gateses, Koch brothers (gag) and various donors who have signed the Giving Pledge are a few examples. David Callahan just came out with The Givers: An Inside Look at the Hidden World of Elite Philanthropists, which, in full disclosure, neither of us has read or honestly even wants to.

Instead, we wonder what it says about society’s values and priorities when we limit our definition of philanthropy to only that which happens after a certain number of zeros? We argue that google’s definition is outdated and in need of a refresh. Or rather, our society is.

Ali’s kids’ school, a lefty independent school in SF with a mission that includes social justice, teaches the kids to ‘be a good friend in the community.’ That could mean picking up a piece of trash, pushing in your chair, or checking-in with a friend who seems upset. Being a “good friend in the community” is essentially about empathy. As a mother of a now 7 and 10 year old, Ali’s children are only just beginning to understand the meaning and significance of Mother’s Day because of its importance to Ali. Their Mothers Day cards and drawings were expression of empathy and giving love.

As the daughter of an immigrant pastor, Ellie watched and helped her mom serve the community all the time, not just on Sundays. Financially donating, fundraising, volunteering her time, connecting people and resources, and leading as an unofficial advisor, counselor, educator, mediator, and organizer were all ways she was observed by her children, congregation, and community, as performing acts of philanthropy, without ever being honored with the title.

These were our Mother’s Day reflections.

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Philanthropists have usurped the idea of philanthropy and stolen its meaning as strictly an act of the financially privileged. As a society, perhaps we are the ones who have assigned inflated meaning and value to the gestures of the powerful and privileged, while failing to recognize the various versions of philanthropy that exist.

The truth is, philanthropy has existed within all types of communities since the beginning of time. The idea of taking care of each other is intrinsic to every indigenous community we can think of. Communal living, provision, long term planning for the future, wealth creation, and honoring ancestors and leaders is not only traditional, but a hallmark of communities of color and indigenous communities around the world.

When did the act of giving to benefit others become an act we regard as more honorable, lauded, and revered as a significant gesture?

American history recognizes the “titans of industry” as the first philanthropists in the United States. Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, and others are celebrated as the fathers (yes, even the field of philanthropy is gendered) of the field as we know it today. In other words, it only became “philanthropy” to capture needs that were not taken care of by a capitalist system.

If we look through that lens, we can easily miss that at its very core, philanthropy is essentially about taking care of each other — which is what resilient communities have done forever. Burial funds, rummage sales, beach clean-ups, barn raisings, bake sales, quinceaneras, weddings, baby showers, birthday parties, bar and bat mitzvahs, “meal trains,” are all traditional ways of taking care of each other.

These days, crowdsourcing for families enduring tough times, to pay for someone’s surgery, victims of any range of circumstance, education, and other things is increasingly common.

When we look at each of these acts, which are not altogether isolated and exclusive, but actually part of a value system, a social contract we make with each other as members of community together, what are we really seeing? At their core, each of these acts, whether planned and traditional or spontaneous and responsive to a life event, illustrate empathy and our investment in each other. They illustrate and communicate our connectedness as growing pieces of networks dependant upon their moving parts and personalities, our understanding that we are not in this alone, and our investment in the future. Cumulatively, they build elasticity and resilience — in other words, they build the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. The same difficulties philanthropists donate, strategically or generally, to address.

What do motherhood and philanthropy have in common? Both are very much about the business of taking care of others. Like in mothering where many acts go unnoticed, so too in philanthropy.

While feminists have tried to shine a spotlight on those invisible acts of mothering, who is lifting up those acts of philanthropy that have been essential to the survival of marginalized communities? In many cases, the very communities that philanthropists who carry the privilege of being called so strive to support.

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This is part 1 in a critical series on philanthropy and the culture of social impact work, broadly defined.

Ellie Tumbuan is a social impact strategist working at the intersections of everything. She is the Chief Strategy Officer of The Justice Collective and founder of her own practice, ET Consulting.

Ali Sirkus Brody is the Managing Director of The Alignment Project, a coaching and consulting firm that assists progressive individuals, groups and organizations in staying true to their values while addressing complex social issues and institutionalized injustice.