As a charity gets to a certain scale, you will inevitably find some person or persons there whose work consists entirely of “donor relations” or some such moniker. And these people will reach out to the donors who write the biggest checks (in absolute dollar terms) and generally wine and dine them. Not always literally “wine and dine,” but you know, basically bend over backwards to make sure donors feel like VIPs.
The fact that this is a real thing is to me symptomatic of a great failure in the moral imagination of wealthy people, who, even as we write checks to fight poverty will find a way to get something out of it, or even worse, make “get something out of it” a hurdle to check-writing in the first place. I place none of the blame on the donor relators themselves.
Sometimes this takes the form of naming rights and power favors (in addition to literal wining and dining), but more often it’s a thin and tiresome layer of nonsense–that we require to be handled as VIPs, that we expect some “accountability,” that we in ways great and small desire to center ourselves in the story of the poor and the oppressed.
So, it is no big thing certainly, but it’s also no small thing as a wealthy person to simply opt out of this whole perverse game. Give anonymously. Or if a name is attached, simply bend over backwards to the Donor Relations people and let them know we don’t need to be catered to, that we can skip all the nonsense, that we aren’t filling out a rubric and grading performance, that we simply wish to do our duty.
Meaningful Returns 