From the book, Philanthropy: Voluntary Action for the Public Good, by Robert L. Payton

It seems that one thing we need for our task is a certain courage, a courage in following out the course of our thoughts where it leads us, a mental courage, about which common experience allows us to say definitely that it is infinitely less widely diffused than physical courage is.

Private voluntary giving will not increase unless there is better and firmer understanding of its importance to our society and the people in it. That understanding is not the product of a how-to course; it is not the result of rote learning from a textbook; it will not follow directly from classroom exhortation or from unreflective experience. I hope that the philanthropic tradition might come to be thought of as a familiar topic of the formal education of Americans, tied in some cases to the out-of-classroom student experience of giving and raising money and volunteering and becoming involved in the tradition as a dynamic process.

Such an education should deal with fund raising and giving as part of a single process. More of us might then better understand the psychological quirks that make that relationship so difficult at times. The linkage of research, teaching, practice, and experience has not yet been achieved for most people—including those of us who are paid to be involved in it.

Public education will not advance until professional education does. Professional education will not advance until philanthropy begins to permeate the undergraduate curriculum—especially those basic courses known as general education. While research proceeds in its plodding, unorganized way, philanthropy must earn its place in the discussions among students and faculty members. It has to be talked about on the campus as a continuing and pervasive influence in the society, contending for attention with other unresolved issues: nuclear weapons, , ethnic conflict, Marxism in the Third World, deconstruction in literary criticism, the place of religion in American politics, and so on.

Conversation interacts with learning in the classroom and research in the library; it doesn't always lead to action, but it should always seek understanding. More not-for-profit organizations with an established base on the campus should seek to become more directly involved in the campus dialogue about philanthropy. There is a natural link between courses in sociology and psychology as well as politics and economics and the activities of the philanthropic organizations. Many of these organizations play an important role in providing forums for debate of all sorts of issues; most of them have close ties with faculty members in those fields and in other departments; all of them have a continuing interest in engaging students as volunteers.

• The first responsibility is to help professionals in philanthropy to become better educated in their own tradition.

• The second responsibility is to encourage research and the dissemination of the results of that research.

• A third responsibility—and all these have to go on concurrently—is to encourage the publication of teaching materials: more histories like Robert Bremner's American Philanthropy, more anthologies like Brian O'Connell's America's Voluntary Spirit, and more analysis like James Douglas's Why Charity?

Knowing that some views of society are unsympathetic or even hostile to the philanthropic tradition, we need to know what those arguments are. Independent Sector's task of advancing the tradition must go beyond cheering it on.

None of this noble work will proceed without money—or at least, no widespread effort will occur. The surprising fact is that the independent sector has failed to invest in the study of itself. Scholars are likely to work in fields where resources are available to support their work. Marginal journals and esoteric articles require subsidy. These facts are known to all of us in the field, yet few of us invest in advancing the understanding of the philanthropic tradition.

We are our own bottleneck.