Assessment

The Introduction said that this essay would examine some of the assumptions about philanthropy and the independent sector. That much has been accomplished, I think. The Introduction also said that the main purpose of the paper would be to search for common themes. I am less confident that I have succeeded in bringing them out.

There is more attention to "compassion" than to "community," for example. There is an important dialectical tension—perhaps most poignantly illustrated when we debate the trade-offs between relief and development—that we can never finally resolve. That tension also appears in the relationship between givers and receivers, between dependency and autonomy.

One fundamental bridging idea between compassion and community—that of stewardship—isn't even discussed. Any Independent Sector statement about fostering values should include stewardship explicitly. (It is implicit in "effective sector management," but that ducks the question raised by the religious tradition of stewardship—where the idea originated.)

Stewardship suggests professional responsibility—and that should be a common theme of the continuing deliberations of Independent Sector. Reflection in and about practice, to borrow Donald Schön's language, will reveal that there are wide differences among us in the way we understand the "roles, rules, and relations" of our field. It may be that we should think in terms of several forms of professionalism rather than in terms of a single ideal.

As long as we presume to act in behalf of others, however, we solicit their trust and respect—and we should examine carefully whether we deserve it.

There may be some structural changes under way: still more innovations in generating fee income; closer interaction between the main business and the philanthropic giving of corporations; more "mixed economy" combinations of government, private business, and not-for-profit elements. I won't bother to speculate about the future of tax policy: That could cause short-term upheaval as well as long-term shifts of responsibility among the sectors and among corporations, foundations, and individuals.

The scale of our activity may cause qualitative changes that are inevitable and both necessary and harmful. Efficiency in generating new income may be achieved at such a cost of depersonalization and alienation that it crushes the "commitment beyond self" as well as the "worth and dignity of the individual." We would do well to reflect on the "iron laws of organization" that Kenneth Boulding formulated almost 25 years ago. (It is Boulding's recent opinion that scale is the most important variable in organization: Being too big or too small has more impact on the character of an organization than anything else.)

These questions do not leap out from the outline of the philanthropic tradition that appears in the Introduction. Perhaps that outline will have to be expanded. Someday it should be possible, however, to construct an encyclopedic summary of philanthropy, as Mortimer Adler has done with his "Syntopicon" and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

I mention that because the new Britannica overlooks philanthropy, as far as I can tell, although an earlier edition—the eleventh—dealt with it quite adequately.

That's the way it goes: One day you take it for granted, and the next day it's gone.