Defending the Charitable Status Quo
Writing at Philanthropy Daily, Lenore Ealy, Virgil Storr and Chris Coyne suggest that current defenses of the charitable status quo on the basis of the economic impact of philanthropy need closer examination:
The nonprofit sector today grasps both at its Tocquevillean heritage and at the charitable deduction as necessary to its sustenance. But this is to forget that the vibrant civil society Tocqueville described derived from the beneficent voluntarism of America’s people not from the largesse of big philanthropy or a centralized welfare state. It is also to yield to the schizophrenia of grounding itself on two incompatible analyses of the political economy of philanthropy.
Read the full essay at Philanthropy Daily.
