In reading Peter Frumkin’s book, Strategic Giving: The Art and Science of Philanthropy, there’s a discussion about the difference between a charity and a philanthropy.
Dictionary.com defines charity as “generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless,” and philanthropy as “altruistic concern for human welfare and advancement, usually manifested by donations of money, property, or work to needy persons, by endowment of institutions of learning and hospitals, and by generosity to other socially useful purposes.” Sounds fairly similar to me…
I’m not sure if most people would make the distinction, but a good analogy for Frumkin’s distinction would be treatment vs. cure. A charity gives aid directly to those who need it - it treats the symptoms of a societal ill. A philanthropy seeks to find and affect the underlying causes. Where a charity might feed the homeless, a philanthropy might attempt to uncover the reasons people become homeless in the first place.
It is certain that many nonprofits may engage in both charity and philanthropy - treating the patients of suffering from a disease while funding research to find a cure. At Givvy we are trying to figure out if we should attempt to make the distinction between charity and philanthropy, and whether that would help our members. We expect our members to be smart, but we don’t want to needlessly confuse any of them.
What do you think?
Filed under: Taxonomies | Tagged: charity, philanthropy
