Self-Less vs. Self-Aware Giving

by Nathaniel Whittemore

category: philanthropy

Published November 04, 2009 @ 11:50AM PT

• 3720 Views

Is there such a thing as selfless charity? That's the question being debated in the comments on a great post on Tactical Philanthropy. Inspired by the new book "The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan," TP author Sean asked about motivations and why people give? While I don't believe there is such a thing as selfless giving, I do believe that giving can be much more self-aware - and in the process, much more fulfilling, sustainable, and effective.

This notion of selfless acts is fascinating not only from the standpoint of philanthropy but from economics, psychology, and faith as well. Economists might think of this from the standpoint of utility. If a $10 gift to charity gives you more valuable feelings than $10 spend on a CD, you're going to give to charity because we're utility maximizers.

That idea of maximizing utility brings up psychology - or more specifically the idea that reward is emotional and not necessarily monetary. Perhaps even more profound, emotional reward can come even at the expense what is psychically or financially good for us.

The thing that's profound about this for me is that it is the quintessential story embedded in human culture is our social self over coming our biological self. Sacrifice - as embedded in every movie, novel, and story in human history - is about doing something for others that costs us greatly in terms of our own biological imperative to survive and thrive. This is, of course, the story at the heart of Christianity, among other traditions.

The question is whether, in our day to day lives, sacrifices that cost us monetarily cost us emotionally as well, or whether in fact, the emotional reward tends to be much higher in terms of our utility. My general feeling is that people give because they feel a sense of obligation or commitment, and the utility is the personal satisfaction and social affirmation that they receive in return. This may be at great "cost" to them, but it's not "selfless" in pure terms.

Given that, why would someone want giving to be selfless? There are many reasons, but the one that I think is most worth considering is the notion that giving and philanthropy must be to the ends of actually creating change for real people, and sometimes the particular emotional reward that people are looking for can get in the way of creating change in the most effective way. What's more, it can create false expectations about agency. Put more plainly, people giving money to causes want to feel like they actually did something. They want to feel like it was their money, individually, that had a specific, calcuable, knowable impact.

This is the emotional desire at the core of the recent Kiva marketing controversy, and at the core of the controversy around child sponsorship programs in the past. As I wrote before, I don't think that insisting that people be selfless in their giving is the answer.

I ran philanthropy and social change education programs at Northwestern University for the last four years before moving out to San Francisco to start Assetmap. What I found in that time is that while people weren't ever going to be self-less givers, they could be self-aware givers, and this could be even more powerful.

As I wrote in the comments on Sean's post:

One of the things we always did with students at our programs at Northwestern was start by examining motivations.

We did this NOT to convince them that their motivations were wrong, or needed to be a particular way, or even to get them to shift their behavior, but because our M.O. was to get people hooked on contributing to the greater good for their whole lives.

In that context, “sustainability” becomes about finding a way to contribute to the world that is sustainable with your individual aspirations – career, style of life, etc. Not everyone can or should be a social entrepreneur. Not everyone can or should be a international development practitioner. Everyone can and should figure out what their commitment to the world means for them.

I’ve never really believed in “selfless” acts of giving. I do, however, believe in self-aware giving. What we’ve found is that when you ask people to examine their motivations, they get better at giving. The reason is that what most people are looking for is the feeling of having made a real difference in a tangible way. If you can break it down to that level, you can help nudge them towards experiences where that desire can be manifest in the most effective ways possible.

(Photo: liewcf)