Hey everyone, I wanted to tell you about one of my favorite podcasts, it's called Vibechek. Sam Sanders and his two best friends, writer-scied Jones, and journalist and Tony award-winning producer Zach Stafford have a podcast where they make sense of everything that's going on in news and culture, from Elon Musk and foreign policy to how to heal from a breakup in Sizz's album SOS, they check the vibe of what's going on in the world and how it all feels.
It's really funny, it's really genuine, it is exactly like having your favorite group chat come to life. You can join the weekly Kiki every Wednesday and listen to and follow Vibechek wherever you get your podcasts. If you look in the chat, there's a YouTube link and we should press play at the same time. And then, we got to get through the ads probably. I just opened it. Okay, great. Should I play it? Mine's loading. Should I play through the ad?
Yeah, play through the ad to get to the start of it. Oh, this might be the whole thing. You thought the ad was the... Well, yep. Doesn't that start to say it all, huh? Okay, so go to the beginning, go to the beginning, it's one minute long. Okay, ready press play, one, two, three. For 40 cents, I got an egg. Now, tell me who you see on the screen in front of you. I see Gwen Stefani, Terry Washington, Chrissy Trollington. I got a really great hat. Bono. I got half a song. Julian Moore?
Yes. Oh, that guy from Star Wars? A guy. Yeah. Another guy. Jane Lynch. Some bling. Some fries. Gabby Cidabay, Lucy Liu, some guy. I got a bunch of a Shirley Temple. Claire Daines. I got a muffled. You know which. An apple. Sprinkles. 15 minutes of parking. And a ticket. Don Chiddle. Don Chiddle, yeah. Lipstick. Have your bar down. Have your beer bar down? Yeah. And then it flashes on the screen. It says 40 cents buys more than you think. Two pills stay. And there's Bono again.
That's what it takes to stay alive. If your H.R.E. positive, those pills cost about 40 cents a day. 40 cents is what it takes to stay alive if your HIV positive. The Lazarus effect at red TM. There we are. This is the Culture Study Podcast. And I'm Ann Hillen Peterson. And I'm Amy Schiller, the author of the Price of Humanity, Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth. And I'm a writer and an academic. And I've been a consultant in philanthropy and fundraising for about 15 years.
Okay. So the ostensible theme of this episode is celebrity philanthropy. But we're going to get into like lots of things about celebrity and lots of things about philanthropy. But what sort of tropes did you see or hallmarks of fundraising? Did you see in this ad? This is from the red campaign and the aired originally in April of 2010. Okay. What a good find. I can't believe I didn't find this. So two big ones. One is the equivalency of like the value of what 40 cents buys.
That gets us straight into almost like a consumer reports. Like where am I going to get the best value for the same sum of money? Yep. And then of course you have the glamour of the celebrities themselves. Like just the sheer the star power of it. Like there's actually very little about AIDS, the cause, the what approach is being taken. Like there's very little content about the cause. It's just pure. None. Pure dazzlement of like look at all these celebrities.
Like the imagined video that came out at the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah. It's very much the same vibes. And like so many celebrities. It's like Bono's roller dex don't you think he was just like, will you, I don't know, show up in LA or New York for literally one second? Yeah. So be part of this video for this like the Lazarus effect. I mean, what is that? What does it mean? Like, does it do we need to know or do we just trust the fact that all these celebrities are raising money for it?
So it must be good. Exactly. Like that's that seems to be the presumption here. Right. And like also, I think there's like this weird sort of like, can you believe that all that it takes is 40 cents? Like you could save the world if you take the change out of your pocket kind of situation. Right. That's what I call the exchange rate for generosity. I'm like, oh, you just need to know the minimal dollar amount, the minimal sort of unit of money to do something heroic. You know what I mean?
Like the just the minimum increment. This episode is like the companion to the Q&A that Amy and I did in the culture study newsletter back in December. So if you like this episode, definitely go back and read that because we get a lot more wonky and detailed in some ways. But today we're going to talk more about a certain corner of philanthropy, which relates to celebrity. And then we'll expand out to talk a little bit more about philanthropy in general.
So how did philanthropy become your beat for lack of a better term? It's a perfect term. I always say like I kind of took the side door, not into philanthropy per se, but into the intellectualizing of philanthropy. I started my career. I did fundraising for a political campaign. I'm from Ohio. So I went back to Cleveland and worked for a Democratic candidate who won the last Democratic governor that Ohio has had. Maybe ever. And hopefully not probably.
And from there, who went on to work for a firm in New York. And I just as a sidebar, I was hired to work for this consulting firm at 22, which is so young. It was so early. I felt like I was clumping around in my mother's heels. Like, yes, I am a consultant. I know what this is. I very performatively read the Wall Street Journal sitting in the waiting room like this is what grownups do.
Wow. Learned so much in the about five years that I was at that firm full time in the thick of nonprofits, like top nonprofits in New York, major medical centers, major universities, major cultural institutions. The first event that I went to was for Alvin Ailey Dance Company, like just jumping right into the deep end of like what philanthropy does in a city where it's so powerful and it creates so much for better or worse and learning how that operates.
And maybe the most important thing that happened was talking directly to people for whom philanthropy is the large and conscious part of their life. And how like hearing like how they talked about why they were giving how they made giving decisions, what made something a priority. And in that noticing a shift in their language that really intrigued me. It really intrigued me that it was going from a very subjective values based identity based sense of this is my community.
I'm giving back to one that was much more detached and analytical and a kind of extent rather than philanthropy being a counterpoint to their identities in the in the economics sphere. It was an extension of them. It was like I'm going to analyze my giving the same way analyze my investments. Yeah. And figure out where I can where my their equivalent of 40 cents would be like where can my million dollars have the greatest impact.
It was very sovereign focus to use this little academic term there of like very much about like individual agency power leverage like how can I ensure that I personally do the best job like to have the most success. So that led me to productivity culture applied to philanthropy. Absolutely.
Like how can like maximize my value, my dollars value right and make sure make sure that I'm not it's not going into like any bogus philanthropy like you don't want to be a chump big time if you're giving away this money. Of course, right. What me a hedge fund manager a chump. No. I'm a things ever gone wrong for me there before.
So I just was so intrigued and it's actually exactly right what you said that it felt to me like instead of philanthropy and this may well be a very romantic notion that I have but instead of philanthropy in its ideal role being this sort of sanctuary or this bull work against that neoliberal mentality. Where you could use money for in different ways for different reasons based on different value systems.
It just was getting swept up in the same framework and that made me very sad and very nervous that we were losing parts of ourselves that were like I can use money just because I want something to exist just so they want people to have something nice and uplifting. Just because I feel that something is important no it needed to still fulfill the same framework and metrics as as you're more economic analysis.
So anyway that's a very long way of saying I'm afraid it became my because it's how I started my career and then I realize there is more to the story and I explored that through my doctoral work and now through my book.
You know it makes me think of how a lot of us were probably first exposed to philanthropy especially if you grew up in a smaller town which was like very local stuff mine was like at school you would raise money for like the world wildlife fund by selling chocolate bars so that was very alienated from any sort of like I don't know action that you could see but then also a lot of the fundraising that took place in my little town and Idaho was like for the Valley Boys and Girls Club.
And because you fundraise for the Valley Boys and Girls Club then you saw the ramifications of that like in the programs that you were able to attend or tithing a church which is you know part of philanthropy in an interesting way and you would see the effects of that in different ways in your daily life.
And then to be exposed to those larger things the first time that I really understood anything about like the scale of philanthropic giving was when some friends of mine in Seattle worked for like different nonprofits where you have to like manage donors and like prepare for the ask that's like a million dollars just unthinkable amounts of money and you have to figure out how to talk to people about.
Okay so we're doing this fundraising campaign what is the appropriate ask for this season that sort of thing as I've talked to more people who are nonprofits and then also reading your book which just put a lot of things in place for me right like gave me language to describe some discomfort that I've had and I think that a lot of people have had and especially people who are in the field and still in the field like are still doing this work and feel very uncomfortable about a lot of the different tropes intentions in the way that it like you know what I'm saying.
Like nonprofits have to appeal to the donor like there's something about your Q&A and I really encourage people to read that but especially the book it spoke to I think and discomfort that has been there for some time well that's first of all the best thing I could possibly hear that actually like I tapped into something real and yeah your examples of that early philanthropy.
It used to be that and you know I write about this that we kind of had a model similar there has been a model in operations similar to what happened in ancient Greece where the ancient nobles were responsible for the civic life of the city right like things that actually brought people together banquets libraries parades celebrations you know they could be spaces they could be events whatever and there's definitely limits to
that model it's certainly not like a model for justice or restitution no right but it depends on there being rich people right which means that it depends on an equitable society.
Absolutely and like you know in Greece we're also talking about like slaves being normalized right slavery so like right there's huge huge asterisks and caveats to all this but that is your what you are describing is a kind of descendant of that tradition of like that were this is localized this is community driven this is about quality of life and I'm in relationship with the people who my giving is benefiting I'm one of the people who's benefiting from that ecosystem that's
right ecosystem and the detachment is maybe the most concerning element of all of this the removal from any interdependent context is to me the thing that I'm trying to push back against the strongest. We could just talk about like the philosophy of philanthropy for literally seven hours so instead we're going to use some of our listener questions about celebrity philanthropy to get at those larger questions.
So this first one is about like the whole reason why celebrities get involved with philanthropy let's hear from Stevie when I was teaching college writing my students one semester all became interested in writing about sex trafficking because
I'm curious about the historical and cultural impact of celebrity causes on public thought why do we lend so much credence to an issue when a famous person even someone famous for playing doofuses and bullying ranks like ashden kutcher speaks on the subject. There's so much here so much I mean first I think let's very quickly just address the fact that well I personally think that ashden kutcher's philanthropy is bad.
I mean yeah I think I think ashden kutcher is seems to be an ethically compromised person.
I think we can safely say that for many reasons many reasons which you know not to get to armchair say college is about it is one of the reasons why celebrities find a cause to attach themselves to as a means of misdirection in a means of kind of reputation washing or rebranding you might even say yeah in this case though there's a couple things that are really interesting and one is like when we say why do we give so much credence to ashden kutcher
let's just pause at the fact that he gave congressional testimony meaning he had a plot congress gave him a platform this committee gave him a platform so there was a certain cross pollination there that I think benefits kutcher must much more than it does congress that says oh well if he's giving congressional testimony he's a more serious guy than just a doofus who plays pranks
so already there's a strategy there this isn't just him writing an instagram post about like bisexual having his bad there was clearly an effort to present him as this serious thoughtful citizen expert leader what have you that like begins with the fact that he's even like giving congressional testimony
yeah the question though points to something so relevant and so important about how flattened the issue becomes I think for celebrities they're looking for something that is like unequivocally praiseworthy
they are not going to get into something controversial they're not going to get into something that is confrontational in a way that would risk any of their economic interests so it's not going to be about typically right it's not going to be about like labor politics for example like that's not going to be where they go so what sex trafficking offers is this opportunity to talk about these like perfect victims
in a way because they are like not seen they're not heard most often there's a narrative that you can spin that says basically like they are there there's victimhood and they need rescuing and we are here to do it that is very attractive because if you're looking for something that's again unambiguously heroic or praiseworthy that's a great opportunity to exploit in the most cynical way possible like your stature
and say like I the celebrity coming into rescue these women that's a great narrative that totally erases any of the complexity that the questioner Stevie wrote in about yeah no I think we have to remember that celebrities are like normal people in some capacity so the way that I shouldn't cut your like I haven't done my research here on how he got into philanthropy that addresses sex trafficking
but he probably like watch the Ted talk or like someone started talking to him at a dinner right like someone made this into something that was unignorable to him and then we should also point out the very obvious that like in addition to the reputation washing philanthropy is a way for rich people to get tax breaks as well of course there's a reason there's a reason why so many celebrities so many football players so many anyone with any like a modicum of money they have a foundation
and it is because it is a structural means of decreasing your tax load yeah absolutely true and in you know one of the biggest problems with how we structure that is that the incentives that we have for giving are very like more is more
if you give a larger sum of money away you can deduct that larger sum of money from your taxes it's very regressive in that way instead of kind of flipping the incentives to incentivize and reward smaller dollar giving that may or may not be like a more proportionally higher version of percentage of what people can give
so huge problems with that what you have here is like he could do stuff on the low right he could have a foundation that was just writing checks the fact that it's part of his public persona that he wanted to like be a face of something that's something else that's really a
big deal and I think celebrities very often and cutters a great example of this what do rich people want people who have succeeded in one realm of life they often want the pinnacle of success that is less there's more elusive to them so
has conquered you know he's got fame he's got money he's got looks what doesn't he have he doesn't have renowned for being smart he doesn't have renowned for being like a good person or leadership like that's the thing serious person serious person so that's yeah that's what you're trying to convert is like my stature celebrity I'm trying to convert that into this more elusive form of renowned absolutely I mean that is such a good point in terms of like
what someone who you know like the question asker was like this is just like he's a doofy guy like why are people looking at him for this I would also point out that I think that oftentimes there's a certain point where someone becomes more known for their philanthropy than that whatever became like whatever was the cause of their celebrity so for college students right now like do they know punk
to action culture no right like to them there is not necessarily that dissonance right they're just like action culture is a famous person right he's a person whose name I know and he is tested fine before Congress and he has a big set of
you know I mean he's been briefed by people who have a lot of knowledge and who have a point of view right and so he's giving this testimony and as is often the case I think that we're not doing the critical thinking of like okay why is he doing this you know doing all the things that we're talking about right here he is just a prominent person doing it a thing that we have legitimized yeah as like you know it's like a serious thing honestly
Bill Gates is the consummate example of this right people think of Bill Gates for his philanthropy he has very successfully I mean the tale is yet to be you know fully told but he has so far so successfully rebranded from monopolist slash like potentially other troubling allegations right like he absolutely like transformed his persona
as public persona into like world citizen philanthropist over the last 20 25 years 100% oh this is an opportunity for me to tell me most amazing story from the early 90s which is my mom had this book that had the email accounts of famous people and on her work account I emailed Bill Gates and Kurt Loader and said because this was still when Bill Gates was like always just made of money
yeah and I said this is amazing early 90s why don't you give away more of your money Bill Gates well I must have been 11 12 he wrote me back how is this not come up between us before he wrote me back or someone on his team wrote back but like signed Bill Gates and it like pointed to all of his philanthropic giving my mom was mortified
because it was coming from like her work account as an academic and but also I just I love that my like early self like in the early 90s did not perceive him as a philanthropist yet right like that how to become the valence of his image it was just he is so rich and you know one of my favorite things about the book and about the Q&A that we did is that you
point to the way that like tech philanthropists they think I'm so smart at fixing problems like really what malaria needs is a disruptor to come in and do this yeah and then I can also expand others understanding of me of like I'm not just a genius at I don't know creating an app that makes like cars come to me I am also a genius at like solving the world's problems like all you need is tech brain to solve everything right 100% and if you use tech brain the right way you
haven't just like made a ton of money you save the world right like you're all for good to absolve you yeah can absolve you of like turning entire class of people into contractors instead of employees right I'm still sitting with you the chaotic good of you emailing Phil Kates from your mom's that is I just think of himself as like an early academic you have this like working male that's what I think the first working
me else is that wow I just think it around is like a black and white laptop like no color I I stand we have to stand 11 year old incredible hi everyone okay just a quick note mid episode here if you like the show if it makes you think if you've been listening to it for the last few
years you're like yeah I want to listen to more of this we need your help to make this show sustainable just go to culture study pod dot subsac.com and you'll see how to subscribe it's five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year and if you're a current newsletter subscriber you get a great deal all right now back to the show okay our next question is about a specific charity and how celebs are rallying around it this is from Ellen and it's
very specific so we're going to go with it I'm a Philadelphia Eagles fan and I've been hearing a lot about the Eagles Autism Foundation on game broadcasts the new heights podcast and through the buzz about the Kylie Kelsey sign jacket a few different questions for you what are the consequences of portraying autism as a charitable cause for acceptance of neuro divergence or disability rights activism what are the markers of this kind of
capital B capital C big charity I think that legitimizing this kind of conspicuous consumption like with the jacket or the celebrity events is one potential marker but I'm really curious to hear what you think thank you all right so this is such a good opportunity to talk about how charities objectify people like actually turn like something that is your identity into an
object that you can fund or unfund or that's what I think so where does this take you okay where does this question so I think that autism goes in very much the same category as sex trafficking in that there's a narrative to be spun about people who may or may not be able to define themselves and it is exactly as you said and very
much objectifying flattening there's a need for perfect victimhood there's a need for sentimentalizing something rather than actually grappling with some level of mutual responsibility as a in some sense of like oh this is this is a charitable cause it's a cause for pity I can give pity that doesn't really threaten my power doesn't really require any sacrifice or like adjustment on my part it just you know you push the right emotional button and like I give the right amount of money and that's
and now I've done the right thing so I totally agree that presenting neurodivergence is a charitable cause and especially kids I have to add that like you know the won't think of the children card is evergreen you know you can and you can get away with a lot of objectification and self a grandisement when you're talking about kids and looking like such a responsible thought
person because again, these are not necessarily people who can define themselves and kind of defy your expectations with their agency Or at least not in ways that you would you know openly allow or display so that's definitely going on as far as the conspicuous consumption
You know, I do I it's totally in the same line as creating like products cause branded products in this case, I'm you know, I don't think this is the most egregious example of that simply because like Silent auctions are like just kind of a fact of how fundraising happens like there's a I'm not as troubled by that, but I do absolutely see where it sits on this continuum of sort of flattening
Giving into shopping. It's like a more I think it's a more sort of familiar and innocuous version of what has sort of become Way out of control and way more harmful. I Think of it as like a spur. Yeah, right? That's like oh, I was gonna give $500 to this anyways
But now I also get something for me, right? Like I also get someone's cabin in the Berkshire's for a weekend like when we're talking about Silent auction type things, but it does strike me as a different In a different realm than 5% of proceeds from this purchase go to saving the Brazilian rain for a straight which is yes Right making yourself feel better The order there is important like you just say like okay, I'm already going to give money to this cause
This is just gonna get me to give a little bit more than I had originally thought like this is another incentive versus like The purchase is on the front end like the point is to buy something that then as an add-on effect Also give something back to charity like I agree with you that the sequencing matters You know and then part about like getting access to star players like a meet and greet kind of thing it reminds me of
How that structure is part of philanthropy in so many ways like whether it's at a big gala in New York or In my town it was the Boys and Girls Club auction Which was like the dress up event of the year and it was how you intermingled with power whether you were in a small town or a large town and
So I think that like that understanding that like Your access to power and privilege is also an opportunity to like give to those less fortunate in the whole like Narrativizing of that is so So Erie said the word dissonant, but it's so like there's just It's a rich On there. It's a rich rich text. I Have been
Obsessed obviously with the Guil d'Age and I know if you've been watching the Guil d'Age on HB. Yeah, yeah But it makes such a meal out of all of this about the way that philanthropy is and I believe in a very early episode Christine Bransky's character Agnes says like there's two purposes for charity and one is to actually help the poor Which is noble admirable and the other is to allow people into society who might otherwise not
Qualify for that stature. Yeah, right and then the whole second season is all about that and it is all about Bertha Russell building this opera house to assert her wealth her power her stature That is her great victory now. What's the downstream effect of that and is and whether or not It's worth it is absolutely an open question, but the downstream effect of that is we still have the met opera today You know, there's still there was some there's something interesting about you know
Having built all of this cultural infrastructure that does Have some level of benefit to the you know the populace Whether again, whether or not it's enough is absolutely an open question But the motives are always always always mixed and it's fascinating to when you see that actually openly narrated instead of as it usually is sort of tacitly Sort of obscured well, I think always about the fact like Are you the person who gives a donation to like I don't know a university a hospital?
Whatever it is do you want your name on that wing or are you the person who is on the wall with the 17 other Anonymous's you know, I think that underlines something right like what is how do you give how do you think if you're giving Is it something that you think of us like oh, this is my legacy right that people should have like understand that I am a person who gives but isn't that also complicated very
Very complicated. I don't know how much time we can like dwell on this But I have I have a lot of stories and some of which are I Think there's a way to do Named things that are really meaningful In proportion so a story that I've told Actually wrote about it in my dissertation is that there's a brick Outside of the stadium where the Cleveland baseball team plays the guardians. Thank you very much
Yeah, the guardians. Thank you and It has my name and my brother's name on it and it's in A plaza full of other bricks with other people's names on them and my dad sent in $100 which we could do as a family like I'm not saying this is
Freely accessible for everyone, but he did that because he wanted us to feel like we were a part of building something larger part of this communal space And I think there's a way that People may want to you when you name a bench in Central Park or wherever your park is or you name us a brick at the
Walkway to your high school. There's totally a way to do it that is collective. It's when it becomes like your one person's name Over everything that you get into a really distorted reflection of like who matters
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that's such a great point. I love any place that has like All of like the bricks or the names and that sort of thing like you always can find people's dogs You can find inside jokes You can find a really loving and brief because it's on a brick a really loving dedication to like a member of a family Like all of those things that makes me feel like oh This was the result of an entire community coming together to raise money for something that would benefit all of us
Instead of this is one rich person's Beneficent yeah, that they have decided to bestow upon us, you know, like it's just it's a different structure 100% and right that stuff is so moving. It's makes you feel like you're you are part of something larger than yourself as opposed to like Alienated and you know
So this next question is like a second level. It's about a second level celebrity All right, I'll explain more after after we read the question This is from Lisa grant love Alexander grants art philanthropy project seems to be a very unusual approach to charitable donation
By branded merchandise promotion Grant runs it as a for-profit business under her personal LLC But unlike a business that designates a percentage of their profit from sales to a cause All the prints and merchandise sold or donated by grant love Our branded with her registered trademark love symbol and have no other purpose or market It appears to give grant maximum reputational benefit while operating in a totally non-transparent manner
At the end of the day, this is grant pledging to donate the profits or proceeds of her sales or a percentage of them Of items produced by her for-profit LLC With zero minimum donation amounts or reporting requirements She announces beneficiaries, but rarely have ever announced as the amount raised through sales or donated Nor do the organization selected generally promote the donation amount She tells this is a model for other artists of modest means
But why would anyone else try this? I am mystified that first full-gram arts and now the entertainment industry foundation Have been willing to serve as fiscal sponsors for what appears to be a vanity project Particularly one that has raised so little in the 15 years or so it has operated
This would be trivial if grants association since 2019 with actor Kiana Reeves Hasn't raised grants profile and that of her love for philanthropy She substantially raised item prices and seems to be attempting a move over to license branding of items with the love symbol Okay, shout out to this person for knowing so much about this particular model of
I was saying the person that art is so impressive. This is like Dave fair and halt level This is amazing Well done Lisa And if you're in the art world, maybe you know Alexander Grant's name if you're not maybe your familiarity with her is that she has been in relationship with Kiana Reeves for several years She is an artist in her 50s and the grant lift situation from what melody and I can tell from the website Is like a bunch of products
That have the word love on them written in like loopy cursive that's and there's like an oval around it um There is a hoodie. We'll put this in the show notes There's a hoodie with a bedazzled version of the logo that costs $475 And the website says each grant live artwork and product benefits an artist project Arts education organization or arts nonprofits It is both a fundraising and friend-raising project Building partnerships and support between artists non-profits and community initiatives
Okay, what's your read on this? It's So convoluted of a model I don't have first-year knowledge of this but I think the problem is the kind of reinventing the wheel nature of this setup where it's like, you know Listen you could just write checks. That's always an option You could just Sell stuff and then give it money away this thing of like It's percentage and it goes to something and you share it with the other person It does feel like a kind of downstream version of
You know a I don't want to be a chomp b. I wanted this to be a business rather than just you know giving money away um, it feels emblematic I don't think it's it's it's too it's not the number one Version of this that I've investigated because of course Lisa takes that spot with flying colors
But it's sus. I don't mean like she's a fraud. I just mean like it's sus and it's a bummer That someone would feel the need to kind of ricochet the money in so many different ways When you could do it more straightforwardly and so my question is like Why does she feel the need to do that and the answer is like probably because she at like many other people have absorbed this ethos of like You don't just want to give money away
You want to synergize you want to make it a business and then the business makes the charity and then the charity makes the business And it's a brilliant scheme Right well, and also I think that buyers Have come to earn turtleneize or like it's a motivation to buy something
Makes you feel somehow like better about buying a $475 sweatshirt If it's also like quote unquote Territable right agree like it's a branding exercise yes Yes, absolutely and like in my previous podcast I used to read ads and one of the ads we always had to read this This
This line that was about um how for every item purchased that they Would plant a tree right in the rainforest and then there was always a line that I kind of cut that you were supposed to emphasize That's so many trees Right then and the trees was meant the trees was meant to really
Highlight when you buy this item which is like many other items on the market You should feel better and like it's not lost on me that this ad was running on a progressive network Like it's appealing to that part of the brain that says if I'm going to buy an item I should also have that item
benefiting rainforest Recovery and that I think goes back to what we're talking about at the very beginning Which is that oh we should always be maximizing our dollar spent So it can't just be I'm buying an item it has to be I'm also giving and eliminating the friction
Yes, I feel like this so this is a bit like in another realm of stuff that I know you write about where The overwhelm just the cognitive overwhelm of life makes it difficult to think okay I do my shopping and then I also use separate cognitive energy to figure out where I'm giving my money
If you can merge the two more is the better that a lower of convenience that a lower when we're all so overwhelmed That's that's the selling point really yeah well and I see You know there are like data bases that rate philanthropies and stuff like that and I think a lot of
People my age our age really I rely on those a little bit and some of it I feel like you could write a piece about this is connected to like kony 2012 Right, I actually have a whole essay about kony 2012 Because I think that there's this idea that like
It's so easy to be duped. I don't want to give to anything that is somehow or like even all of the disaster relief Which I think has become much more prominent and visible in the wake of climate disasters more climate disasters and also social media Like there will be things that say like you need here are the reliable charities that you can give to don't give to the Red Cross right like At probably just the wrong that's the wrong lesson from kony 2012 2012 is also in that category of
needing to flatten a complex situation with multiple actors and multiple motives into a very um reductive narrative that makes you the giver like her central and heroic very main character right of like I'm I'm rescuing these children Never mind the actual political situation on the ground the status of the Various armies of child soldiers we found something that we can latch on to and we can sell as a story that really positions the heroism of the giver
So that's that's the it's more of the messaging than the fact that some things are scams like yes, some things are scams Let's go a little deeper And like don't just rely on an app right like one of the things right that was the other problem is like you're Right the lesson was supposed to be think critically not like not find the thing that's right right you don't have to think critically about Yeah, no, and I think there's some lines to be drawn between
That fear of like being duped and effective altruism right big time like here is an objective way of Donating yeah, an objective way of donating that just happens to align perfectly with my systems of thought and worldview right and And what a coincidence perfectly aligns with my power position in society gosh Wow, you're telling me a white man in stem that I uniquely can save the world great sign me up
For pennies a day remember for pennies a day. That's right. That's right. I found the most efficient way Now you other dumb dumb's just missed it because you never had algorithms It's like all of this millennial shit. It's just like productivity culture and like Like we should not let we should not let not very non millennial Peter singer off the hook for that one Yeah, but like that I think like the some of this susceptibility is like a mysterious slew of a lot of things that collide around
Coming of age in the 2000s agree. No that fetishization of efficiency is like right there in the stream I will say this is like me going a little bit into our next subject, but like one of the ways that I've grappled with those feelings is by trying to
donate to a lot of organizations that are local to me Yeah, and then it feels like I see this work and it's important And I'm not just talking about like local as in like hyper local I'm talking about like oh the food bank in my community, right exactly that sort of thing Okay, so
I want to zoom out because I think That this will allow us to talk a little bit at like wrap up in some way and then also give some practical advice Because I think one of the things that I was most struck by in the comments
To our Q&A was people being like this all makes sense and it also kind of makes me feel like shit Right that like they're they're just trying to give money and like and help and All of the ideologies that have consolidated around it are really toxic, but like what else can you do So this question comes from page and again, it's a little bit of a way for us to wrap up What are some ways to engage in philanthropic activities without falling into the trap of giving becoming shopping?
And this also brings this full circle to the red campaign, right like it's not So you can like very easily say okay my philanthropic giving is not going to be uniquely vis-a-vis purchasing an iPhone But this larger idea because I think one of the things we discussed in our Q&A was
Even the idea that like donors choose falls into this rubric in some way or When someone has it go fund me that like the appeal has to be written in a certain way and you have to emphasize these certain things and like that is a way of Of us all becoming consumers of other people's trauma and pain Yeah, so how do we avoid that? Well first thing I want to say is that there are
Examples they're in the Q&A. They're in the book that say it doesn't Have to just be this neoliberal rot like I'm pointing out a flaw But I think one of the things that I'm really proudest of having thought about deeply and written about is what are the other models Well, and so that's where for example the LeBron James comes in but also I wrote about libraries
I wrote about parks. I wrote about lots of spaces and places that exemplify what philanthropy can do to resist this collapse into a kind of like techno efficiency exclusively only aligned with neoliberalism world so the precise version of that is starting where you did and of
Giving locally and I think giving to a balance of things that address crises so a food bank is totally Right on because we do not have policy that adequately addresses food security So it's a bit of a rule of third situation like Definitely address Urgent needs and urgent crises like I it would be irresponsible to
You know sweep all that away. I think the problem is when that becomes our exclusive focus right so the second bucket is What are good advocacy organizations grassroots national what have you? That are actually pushing back on the actual policies and structural framework and trying to create more just policies That could be on the local level and some of that may not be your philanthropy some of that may be your activism some of that may be other civic work that you do But that is
sort of another lane of this but then the third bucket is really important but third lane is Things that actually improve people's quality of life and that might be a community theater troop that might be Playground maintenance that might be the bikes right that can be small things at music programs
Things that are getting slashed because they don't Meet that rubric of efficiency, but are really important that we really need to have exists for our lives for like they have meaning for us to be like we have connection So there are going to be things that are local that fulfill that Where you can have relationships with people and actually see over time how
Those programs benefit people. It's not it's not a silver bullet kind of thing I gave one dollar and I got like five music lessons and that's what it was like You're going to see the subjectivity of that person emerge in a different way The last thing I would say is to address more civically giving that's not shopping is giving unrestricted money So if you are in a position to give money that like you could designate or if you're
Offered that option. Don't do it. Don't line item restrict things. I will say one small anecdote about this which is um a fundraiser friend of mine had a donor who Said well, I want to help the women in this shelter, but I don't want to just pay for the elevator
And I looked at her and I like exclaimed I couldn't even pause before I said this and I was like the elevator is the women I They're the same day the women need the elevator Everyone needs the elevator like that you have to let go of that part of yourself
That's like well, I only want to give to like the nice thing the people the stuff that makes me feel good We need infrastructure you need operating costs you need you know, you just need undershirts to operating funds So like release the part of yourself that doesn't like that because
Giving unrestricted giving without strings. That's what makes it not shopping not buying a tangible outcome Right one thing that you brought up that I think is so important for us to remember is sometimes giving money is actually Like it's always kind of gonna be shopping right because money is what we sometimes use When we don't want to make actual sacrifices. I mean this depends on how much money you have right but like sure
But like so sometimes you're like oh, I could never go volunteer at the food bank. That's way too much of my time But instead I'm going to donate to them and it like sometimes I do this calculus as well. It's like What's worth more Should I give them money should I go volunteer? I mean the best answer would be both you do both
And by the way just to be clever is money too. Yeah, it is it's okay if that's where you put things like It's not the problem is not that you're using money the problem is that you're using money the same way you use money when you're shopping Which is like I want to know what I'm getting
Yeah, yeah, yeah, and like also So like I need to have like a receipt, you know like that there has to be some sort of like Here's all of the work that your money did every like very clear like right results when it could be And I hope we can all try to internalize this like it should be the elevator. It should be gifts It should be deodorant like all of those things it's aggregate that like aggregate is just another way of saying communal Yeah, yeah Okay, so that's our advice
Amy if people want to find more of you on the internet. Where should they find you?
You can follow me at Amy the show as chil on Twitter and Instagram my website is Amy bestshiller.com And you can find my book the price of humanity in bookstores everywhere on bookshop anywhere you buy books And feel free to get in touch with me by any of those means also if you need any recommendations for Cleveland Amy is the person to talk to It's true Like I was in Cleveland for Christmas and Amy was like go here go this part of the art museum
I will say both of us agree that you should absolutely go visit the Cleveland Museum of Art because it is an example of the type of philanthropy that we're talking about here In terms of like an incredible incredible free collection um just magnificent in so many different ways and um the best things that it's free to enter it's totally free to enter and I the motto that they have is for the benefit of all the people forever And if you can adapt that motto of expansiveness in generosity
Definitely take your take your cue from the Cleveland Museum of Art the place where I go to believe that humans don't have to fuck everything up yeah see I just I had to set you up you did that quote and I really appreciate that you did that
If you like today's episode and you're in the DC area go see Amy on her book tour She'll be at politics and prose at the Wharf this Friday, February 2nd The event is free so don't miss it and if you're a paid subscriber stick around for a two-questioned edition of Ask and Anything
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