Fauxlanthropy: Give to Get

There has always been a give and receive model of philanthropy. The ancient Romans even had a phrase for it: do ut des, which means "I give so that you may give." It started as the way people approached offerings to their gods, and it became a basic rule of how favors and gifts worked in Roman life. Today we might call it quid pro quo, or more simply, give to get. (Quid pro quo is also an IRS term for when a donor gets something back for a gift, like a gala dinner, and the charity has to spell out what's actually deductible. For this post, I'm using it in the bigger, everyday sense.)

The idea is simple. I give you something, and I get something back. And honestly, a lot of the time that's exactly how it plays out.

Gifts with strings attached

I've seen corporate gifts that were really marketing budgets in disguise. The check comes with a lot of strings: logo placement, a press release, a photo op, and a list of deliverables that can take more staff time to fulfill than the gift is worth. The company gets the PR. The charity gets a to-do list and a BIG FAKE CHECK that no one has room to store.

I've also seen individual gifts used as currency between donors. You give to my charity, and I'll help you with _________ (fill in the blank). It can be a business deal, a table at someone else's gala, or just a favor to be called in later.

But here's the other side. I've also seen gifts with strings attached give a nonprofit the big boost it needed to finally move its mission forward. And all that publicity and PR? A lot of times it brings more attention to the need and the cause. That matters too.

The rare gemstones

And every once in a while, a different kind of gift comes in. Like beautiful natural gemstones, these gifts are rare. They come to a charity with no strings attached. They're given because the person or company believes in the mission and wants to see the work happen. Nobody is keeping score. Nobody is waiting for something back.

You can feel the difference. There is so much joy and love around these gifts, for the people giving them and for the people receiving them. They let an organization do its best work instead of its most visible work, and they tell a team that someone trusts them to know what their community needs.

Both are true

People have been arguing about this for a very long time, and I think there's truth on both sides.

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, wrote about giving in a work called On Benefits. He argued that a gift given with an eye on the return isn't really a gift at all. It's closer to a loan. In his words, we should make our benefits "not investments, but gifts." He also said the giver should forget the gift and the receiver should remember it.

Almost two thousand years later, a French sociologist named Marcel Mauss came to what sounds like the opposite conclusion. In his 1925 essay The Gift, he argued there's no such thing as a truly free gift. Every gift creates a bond and a pull to give something back, and that pull is what holds communities together. Mauss was writing right after World War I, surrounded by loss, and he hoped that understanding how we give could help people learn to live with each other again.

You can even see both ideas living side by side at Burning Man. (Full disclosure: I've never been, but I've read about its gifting principles.) Gifts there are given with no expectation of anything in return, and yet the whole event runs on reciprocity. People give, and that giving builds a community that keeps giving back. Maybe that's what a good nonprofit does too. The gift keeps moving, through the organization and out into the community.

What I'm still sitting with

As a consultant, I help clients raise more support for their causes, so I see both kinds of gifts every day.

But this one has me stumped. Is any gift ever completely free of expectation? And is a gift with strings attached any less of a gift if it changes lives? I'm finding the line between philanthropy and fauxlanthropy is very blurry.

The word philanthropy comes from the Greek for "love of humanity." Maybe that's the part that matters most, whether a gift comes with a logo or with nothing attached but trust.

Maybe I don't have the answer yet, but I do know this: if I could pick one for a nonprofit, it would be the gift given because of the mission. I'd love to hear what you think.