Giving Tuesday

By Samantha Hill

Hannah Arendt Center fellow Amy Schiller writes about what happens when only rich people give to charity for the Washington Post. On “Giving Tuesday”, which follows “Cyber Monday” each year after Thanksgiving, Schiller highlights how up to thirty percent of all charitable gifts in the United States are made in December. And while charity has always been a part of the American mythos, who gives has changed over time, and giving on average has declined:
 

Thanksgiving and charity, after all, both represent the American mythology of individual contributions combining for shared gains. The idealized Thanksgiving potluck meal meshes seamlessly with the notion of charitable giving as a universal civic practice. The slogan for the Community Chest fundraising campaigns in the mid-20th century exemplified this American collectivism: “Everybody gives, everybody benefits.”

Today, though, American giving looks less like a diverse potluck and more like a lavishly catered meal with a tight guest list. The principle of universal participation has given way to “megadonor” billionaires, several of whom have started to tout such philanthropic accomplishments as a defense of their wealth, particularly in the face of aggressive recent taxation proposals. Total giving decreased last year, with individual donations declining by 3.4 percent. After the 2017 tax cuts, which raised the individual standard deduction to $12,000 — removing some incentives for charitable donations for filers whose deductions don’t hit that threshold — the share of taxpayers who took the charitable deduction went from 24 percent to 8.5 percent. While people are still giving even without the tax deduction, such a drop shows a new and sharp exclusion of many people’s gifts from “official” participation in the charitable sector. The ramifications are ongoing: Blackbaud reports a further decline of 1.3 percent in 2019 gifts, compared with this time last year.