The second live hypothesis: the involvement of young people in good works is a way of bringing or sustaining meaning, purpose, and hope in their lives. There are many ways to find those qualities in one's life, but I am persuaded that involvement in good works is essential to the good life.

You may look elsewhere for studies of meaning and the problems associated with it.⁶ I refer here to the notion that membership in a social group is an important source of meaning. Membership is profoundly important -- so important that it manifests itself in gang membership, or membership in a dysfunctional family, or in other pathological settings. Membership is better than isolation.⁷ The voluntary association that exists for philanthropic purposes is often the best environment for children and young people to find themselves.

There are many noble purposes to which one may aspire; the purpose I talk about is service that goes beyond the self. Being concerned about someone else's well-being, especially someone a bit removed from one's own immediate community, seems to provide a sense of self-worth.⁸ Giving anything of value to others means that one has something of value to give. If that something is compassion or interest or encouragement, something more than material, it is a gift of the self.

Part of the justification for what I do as a professor in this field is to help my students in the search for meaning, purpose, and hope in their lives: meaning is found in association with others, especially association with the purpose to serve others as well; hope derives from such things. One place to find meaning, purpose, and hope, then, is in participation with others in voluntary action for the public good. Good works provide an important avenue into the good life.

The subject of philanthropy, as I pursue it, is inescapably normative, value-laden, and tied to action. Religion is the most powerful and extensive aspect of philanthropy, and the study of philanthropy brings with it into the university all the same kinds of intellectual problems as the study of religion. The study of religion with faith leeched out of it is the study of something else; the study of philanthropy with philanthropic values and aspirations leeched out of it is the study of something else.

We may see that best not in our writing and research but in our discussions with our students -- not in the discussions of the class or seminar but in the personal discussions that fall under the rubric of "advising." The most widely shared characteristic of the students I know who want to study philanthropy is that they want "something more" than "just a job." It is the great scandal of government and business in our time that so many young people see neither meaning nor hope in the other two sectors and turn to the third sector almost by default. I am gratified to see so many bright and highly motivated young people seek careers in public service and philanthropy; but the de-professionalization and de-moralization of business and government will continue until morally and professionally committed young people come in to reverse those trends.

Most students will pursue careers in the other two sectors, and rightly so. I hope some of our students of philanthropy go into business and others into government service. They will bring a perspective that is badly needed; they will have a better understanding of how the society works, and why. They will enrich their own lives by the volunteer work they do after office hours. They may serve as models to others because they will have found a better version of the good life than is found as a spectator waiting to be amused.

There is another more practical reason why young people should look to careers in the marketplace: that is where wealth is created. Andrew Carnegie understood that very well. To the extent that money is sometimes useful in philanthropy, someone has to create it. Almost all giving is giving out of surplus and the second sector is the only one of the three that generates surpluses. (The problem of the marketplace is not whether it is free of control by government but whether it is open to all those who would compete in it.)

A second practical reason to advise students to look seriously at business for at least part of their working lives: the vast majority of voluntary associations are unprepared to protect the long-term economic needs of their employees. If you rely too heavily on the determination, much less the ability, of voluntary giving to provide for your old age, you may well wind up like those elderly nuns soliciting alms in Penn Station. If there are, indeed, seven-and-a-half million people employed full-time in the third sector, someone should conduct an empirical study of the financial provisions for their retirement. My guess is that what is known about the financial plight of clergy is also true of a great many people in secular organizations as well. I suggest to my students that they spend the next ten years waiting for third sector retirement reform building equity of their own by working in the marketplace.

Students often forget or simply aren't aware that those who work in philanthropy for their livelihood, as well as those who are volunteers, are also family members and

parents, citizens and voters, consumers and believers. All of those roles make legitimate claims that must be met.

"Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out, to thy house? When thou seest the naked that thou cover him, and that thou hide not thyself from thy own flesh?

"Then shall thy light break forth as the morning... "⁹

The challenge to make that poetic aspiration meaningful while at the same time trying to be as honest as one can about the everyday reality of philanthropic work is one of the most difficult challenges we face in teaching about philanthropy. In part because we know that the world would be an impoverished place without people who give themselves to make the lives of others more meaningful and tolerable, and in part because we often admire most in others that which we see deficient in ourselves, we praise those who pursue a life of good works. We encourage young people to take the career of service seriously; we praise them for it and we admire them -- even envy them -- for it.

Advising others to pursue activities or careers that may well carry serious risk -- humanitarian relief, for example, sometimes in regions engulfed in civil war -- is a reminder that "philanthropy" is serious business.

Bringing the two aspects of high aspiration and stark reality into consciousness at the same time offends the aesthetic sense.¹⁰ It is very difficult as well as awkward to talk about such different things in one conversation. One of the redeeming things about teaching is that conversations can be continued over time.

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