Is Doing Good Always Good? The Ethics of Contemporary Jewish Philanthropy
Andrés Spokoiny
Credit: Kurt Hoffman
Andrés Spokoiny is President and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network. He is the author of Tradition and Transition, Jewish Community and the Hyper Empowered Individual (2024).
Today, the world seems caught between two poles in its approach to power.
On the one hand, many in our society believe in Nietzsche’s concept of “master morality,” rooted in the instincts of strong, self-assertive individuals and cultures. In this view, strength and power are good, and whatever prevents the strong from exercising the full measure of their power is bad. Because Nietzsche believes that “might is right,” he considers traditions like Judaism and Christianity, which protect the weak, to be perversions of nature. Only through unconstrained power can the strong, vital, and creative realize their full potential. Though I doubt President Trump read Nietzsche, his scorning of “losers” and his toying with the idea of the US annexing the Panama Canal simply because we can, suggests exactly this view.
On the other hand, postmodern critiques of power have been gaining currency, introducing a radical distrust of power qua power. These approaches consider almost any exercise of power to be negative, since it serves, by definition, to perpetuate structures and systems of oppression. Someday, they claim, we may “deconstruct” or “decolonize” power, but until then, those who use it are axiomatically considered suspect. Here, we find calls to “defund the police” or to treat a murderer of a CEO like a hero because he acted against the powerful.
What the two sides share is a disdain for “elites,” those perceived to have cultural or economic power. In some cases, elites are disdained for their insistence on “norms and standards,” which are seen by the Nietzscheans as an unnecessary constraint on the power of the strong and by critical theorists as a ploy to maintain “systems of oppression.”
In this context, asserting that it is possible to exercise power in an ethical way, within normative boundaries, is not a popular idea. But that is exactly what makes it necessary to articulate, examine, and reexamine the boundaries around the ethical use of power. Here, I focus in particular on the ethics of philanthropic power.
Because of the explosion of individual philanthropy and the relative weakening of state and collective philanthropic structures, the last decades in the United States have seen the emergence of mega-philanthropists who can deploy enormous resources to steer policy. Some are using this power more assertively than ever before, almost in the Nietzschean mode. At the same time, a burgeoning “critique of philanthropy” expresses the fear that unelected individuals have undue influence in social and political matters just by virtue of their economic power. “Do we want to entrust our future,” some ask, “to a group of (supposedly) benevolent dictators?”
Be that as it may, major funders now play a major role in the Jewish community worldwide; at a minimum, they are influencing communal discourses and practices, and they are often also playing an outsized role in determining communal priorities. This makes questions about power and philanthropy acute for the Jewish community. The organization I run, the Jewish Funders Network (JFN), serves as a barometer of the issues that preoccupy Jewish funders, and the debate about “the ethics of philanthropy” that has been central since 2016.
I would argue further that questions about the ethics of philanthropy have become especially urgent since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. In the last year-and-a-half, philanthropy has been a critical piece of the communal response to the war and the re-emergence of antisemitism around the world. Questions of who to fund, how to fund, and how to use philanthropic power have a new importance.
One could take the Nietzschean approach and say, “It’s my money; I can do whatever I want, and nobody can tell me if that’s right or wrong so long as I don’t break any law.” In the US, the law will largely agree, but will that type of philanthropy be effective in the long term? What type of community and society will it create?
Some—like the effective altruism movement (EAM)—have tried to solve the ethical problems of philanthropy by applying a set of purely rational criteria and rules to guide philanthropic giving. EAM assumes that all lives are equally valuable, and therefore, one has to apply objective parameters of need and impact and then give towards those causes in which the benefit is the greatest for the greatest number of people. This neo-utilitarianism looks good on paper, but it has proven inadequate in real life. According to EAM, nobody should fund local libraries in the West because the same money can save lives in Africa. But if that’s true, is it the case that I shouldn’t feed my children because a meal in the US can save a hundred Africans from hunger? Say I need to choose between saving five ordinary people and one that has, in her brain, the cure for cancer. What should an effective altruist do?
Much of the Jewish legal and moral tradition rests on analyzing situations case by case, weighing the values involved, and looking at precedents from different perspectives rather than a single overarching principle. It recognizes that values can conflict in ways that can only be addressed by personal judgements. This approach forces funders who want to act ethically to analyze every situation piecemeal and make a good-faith judgment for each, as I’ve tried to illustrate above. Even cases that seem clearcut—like donor activism on campus—have grey areas. What is reasonable to expect from, say, a university president? When does the value of making a a strong statement outweigh the value of “staying at the table”? What are “harm” and “safety” for Jewish students, and who should define them?
Even so, I’m also wary of analyzing each funder’s ethical dilemma piecemeal—i.e., evaluating the ethics of responding to any one particular need. That can start to feel like analyzing the leaves of a tree while ignoring its roots, trunk, and branches. Here, I will begin by identifying long-term trends that have been shaping Jewish philanthropy (and Jewish life in general) in the last decades and then I will consider three particular dilemmas Jewish philanthropists have been facing since October 7, 2023.
Contra Nostalgia
The Jewish community, like America in general, has experienced a shift from collective—or communal—philanthropy towards more independent, individual philanthropy. The number of private foundations in the US went from roughly 32,000 in 1990 to nearly 104,000 in 2020. Donor Advised Funds were formally recognized by the IRS in 2006 and went from collectively holding 34 billion dollars in assets in 2010 to a whopping 251 billion dollars in 2023. This reflects a process of wealth accumulation by society’s top earners and also relates to social and even spiritual changes. In a society that places the individual at the center, where individuals are hyper-empowered to “choose their own path,” it’s only natural that they seek to treat philanthropy as primarily an individual endeavor. These are the times of what philosopher Charles Taylor called “the expressive individual,” a type of human who seeks to express her uniqueness in all her activities, including, of course, philanthropy.
Historically, the bulk of Jewish philanthropy was collective. Before modern times, most diaspora communities had a kehillah, a communal organism that evaluated needs and priorities and then collected and distributed charitable funds accordingly. These structures also responded to an external imposition: kings and rulers imposed special taxes on Jews, and a central body was needed to collect and pay them.
In the US, the pressure to create collective bodies was largely not external but internal. The need to assist and support massive immigrant populations in an efficient way gave rise to the Jewish federation system, a structure of collective philanthropy that was so successful that it was later copied by general society as the United Way system. For an individual, giving to the local Jewish federation became not only a means to organize charitable giving but a marker of one’s Jewish identity.
While still strong and vibrant, the federation system has been losing ground in the Jewish philanthropic landscape. Proportionally, such communal giving represents a far smaller percentage of total giving (and of total philanthropic assets) today than in the past.
Those who continue to defend federated giving argue that it is intrinsically more ethical and “democratic” because it involves collective decision-making mechanisms, including different constituents and opinions. However, like many nostalgias, the federation system these supporters long for is not a real past but an idealized one.
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While it’s true that federated giving involved collective decisions, I would argue that didn’t make it automatically a more ethical or democratic model for Jewish philanthropy. In most federations, major givers “call the shots,” with decision-making power not only over their own funds but those of other donors. Even in places where one major donor didn’t influence all decisions, those were determined by “cliques,” small groups of insiders that didn’t necessarily represent the community. There were never open elections to choose the federation’s president, and “collective decision-making” in allocations was usually more horse-trading than careful analysis of needs. For example, in 1953, the UJA (United Jewish Appeal, the ancestor of JFNA, the Jewish Federations of North America) decided to allocate its overseas dollars based on a formula that would give 75 percent of its funds to the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) and 25% to the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). [GU7] [CS8] That formula is still in place.
In responding to local needs, too, many federation allocations are made based on political considerations that, while valid, are not necessarily more ethical or better than those made by individual funders. Federation committees are more numerous but not necessarily more representative of the community than foundation boards.
But even if federated giving were inherently more ethical than private giving, we cannot turn back the clock. The toothpaste of individual empowerment is out of the tube, and convincing 21st-century humans to voluntarily delegate decision-making power over their philanthropy is not realistic and may not be desirable.
The growth of independent philanthropy has unleashed unprecedented creativity and entrepreneurship in philanthropy—but it also faces its own ethical challenges. Philanthropy’s individuality, its relative lack of accountability, and its nimbleness allow it to take risks and to be innovative and entrepreneurial; at the same time, these exact characteristics open the gates to abuse, self-aggrandizement, bullying, and lack of public responsibility.
In short, the positive qualities of independent philanthropy, when overplayed or deployed irresponsibly, can become problematic. Because of this, some may be inclined to indict the whole edifice of private philanthropy as structurally irredeemable. I disagree, but I also want to note that even if I agreed it would be better to go back to an earlier model of philanthropic practice, this is an unfeasible scenario for at least two reasons: first, financial, legal, and fiscal incentives will continue—at least in the foreseeable future—to facilitate the accumulation of philanthropic assets by individuals; and second, the value of “expressive individualism” that defines our zeitgeist will continue to stimulate private, individualized philanthropy.
A taxonomy of ethical issues in philanthropy
With the understanding that private philanthropy will be with us and continue to grow for the foreseeable future, I want to list some widely recognized aspects of this sort of philanthropy that raise ethical issues. I’ll then explore a few that are particularly resonant at this moment in Jewish philanthropy.
Tax Subsidies and Public Cost: Tax exemptions for charitable donations reduce government revenue, potentially placing a burden on taxpayers to make up the difference. Thus, in a sense, when doing philanthropy, funders are de facto allocating public funds.
Accountability and Oversight: Philanthropic foundations are often less transparent and subject to less scrutiny than public institutions. The government (or IRS) imposes accounting norms but not public accountability. Recipients can rarely hold donors accountable without jeopardizing future support. This creates a situation in which donors can be wasteful, duplicative, or outright foolish without anybody calling them out or stopping them.
Power Dynamics and Influence: Large-scale philanthropy often gives individuals or foundations disproportionate influence over public policies and priorities.
Relationship with Grantees: Nonprofits are generally strapped for the cash that funders have, and the processes and practices of grantmaking risk taking advantage of this dependence.
Perpetuating Problems Rather than Solving Them: Philanthropy can address symptoms of a problem without challenging the structures that perpetuate it. Sometimes this happens because these very same structures benefit the funder’s accumulation of wealth.
Setting Priorities: The lack of a universal standard to prioritize needs means that donors often choose to support causes based on personal preferences rather than addressing the most urgent or widespread needs.
Cultural Insensitivity: Philanthropic efforts can impose external values on local communities without respecting cultural contexts.
Philanthropy as a Substitute for Government: Increasing reliance on philanthropy to address social issues can diminish pressure on governments to provide systemic solutions.
Tokenism and Virtue Signaling: Some philanthropic gestures are performative, aimed at enhancing the giver’s reputation rather than creating real impact.
Ethics of Funding Origins: Donations sometimes come from wealth accumulated through practices that some consider unethical or exploitative.
Ethical dilemmas in today’s Jewish giving
Below, I will focus on three of the dilemmas listed above that I consider to be the most relevant to Jewish philanthropy right now: power dynamics, relations with grantees, and the perpetuation of the very problems philanthropists want to solve. As I noted earlier, many of these dilemmas have been present in the Jewish world for a long time; October 7 has made some of them more acute and prescient.
In 2024, donor activism in response to universities they perceived as tolerating antisemitism became one of the most visible uses of philanthropic power. Marc Rowan’s campaign asking donors to withhold funds from the University of Pennsylvania is the most well-known case. He argued that funders could use “the power of the purse” to force universities to take action, some in very public ways. Was it ethical to do so?
A roundtable published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy in December 2023 highlighted different views of this issue. Those who argue against this sort of donor activism tend to say that academic freedom should be sacrosanct in universities or that donors should respect the governing bodies setting policy. I take the opposite view: I think it’s unlikely that universities would have acted on this issue without external pressure. Donor activism shone a light on the problem and forced the universities to react (even if insufficiently). Donor activism was justified not only because Jewish students and faculty were unsafe but because universities were failing in their basic mission of education and the pursuit of truth. When factually false views (like the notion that Jews are “white colonizers”) are taught, donors must react, not only because it makes Jews unsafe but because it’s a dereliction of the university’s mission. A donor to a food pantry that serves rotten food is ethically obliged to stop its contribution or at least demand an explanation. It would be unethical not to intervene at all.
Many Jewish funders faced similar dilemmas with non-Jewish grantees who took extreme anti-Israel or even antisemitic positions in the wake of October 7. This was particularly the case in the progressive social justice space. Jewish funders experienced not just the heartbreak of feeling betrayed by their grantees but also the very real dilemma of what to do in response. If a nonprofit is effective in, say, refugee relief, but its CEO signed a letter calling on Israel to declare a unilateral ceasefire, should a Jewish funder stop its contribution?
In my view, again, the answer is clear. While funders, in principle, shouldn’t police the ideologies of their grantees but rather focus on the results they deliver, funders’ and grantees’ basic values should be aligned. An African American philanthropist can’t be expected to fund an organization that “does great work” in an area the philanthropist cares about while also praising the KKK.
The problem lies, as always, in the grey areas where it’s harder to evaluate the degree of misalignment between funder and grantee. Should all instances of bias trigger automatic defunding, or should funders institute a process for determining which cases justify defunding? Is there a difference between the CEO of an organization signing a statement in his personal capacity and the organization adopting a policy? Is praising Hamas the same as asking for a ceasefire that ensures the release of the hostages? In this case, the ethical questions play in the “how” as much as in the “what.”
The explosion of antisemitism since October 7 has prompted funders to invest heavily in efforts to fight it, which has generated its own set of ethical issues having to do with the tension between legacy and start-up organizations. Today, there are 160 organizations dedicated to fighting antisemitism in America, with new ones springing up seemingly every week. I suspect that this mushrooming of entities betrays frustration with the perceived lack of success on the part of established organizations in fighting antisemitism. However, I am finding that most new organizations duplicate existing efforts or lack the capabilities to produce meaningful results. Many of these organizations are supported by funders who “know” what everybody is doing wrong and think that they alone can “fix it.” This sort of hubris is unethical. It may well be that existing organizations are failing at fighting antisemitism. However, the responsible—and effective—way of responding to this failure would be first to study the field thoroughly; then to set goals realistically and humbly; all while acknowledging it’s unlikely that a single “stroke of genius” will end a 3000-year scourge.
Another aspect that presents ethical dilemmas to the funders today is the current Israeli government’s incompetence in responding to the war and its consequences. On October 7, 2023, and in the weeks that followed, it was incapable of responding to the emergency, both militarily and in terms of rescuing and supporting the hundreds of thousands of citizens affected. Since then, over eighteen months of war, the government has failed to create a comprehensive structure to assist the residents of Northern Israel impacted by the war. Here and in other ways, philanthropists continue to step in.
When philanthropy and civil society stepped up to fill the gaps left by the inadequate government response, virtually no American Jewish funders expressed ethical concerns about that muscular intervention. It was, to paraphrase President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1940, like lending a garden hose unconditionally when the house is on fire. But now we must ask: at what point does philanthropic intervention enable the ineptitude and corruption of the government to continue? It is telling that the government has maintained most “coalition funds”—budget lines that partners in the governing coalition receive to serve special interests and particular populations—unchanged, despite the added expenses of the war.
And yet, there is no guarantee that if funders step back, the government will step in. Even if an incompetent government is benefiting from our intervention, do we have the right to turn our backs on the people who are suffering? Who else will take care of them, if the government does not?
Dilemmas of priority are now everywhere. Is it legitimate to continue funding, say, a museum, when Israel is on fire? Can I choose to defund Jewish education to fund the fight against antisemitism? The solution that we’ve been promoting to these dilemmas is simply to “enlarge the pie,” meaning that this is a time for funders to step up and give more, beyond what they are required to give or what they’ve given before. The idea that emergency giving needs to be “above and beyond” normal giving is a good rule of thumb. But ultimately, an increased level of giving is not sustainable, and we will face the need to make hard choices.
“Un homme, ça s’empêche”
In Albert Camus’s Le Premiere Homme, a French soldier reacts to a horrific sight by saying un homme, ça s’empêche, “a person restrains himself.” By this, I understand Camus to mean that being truly human requires imposing limits on one’s impulses, arrogance, and selfishness.
Ultimately, every ethical deed is an act of restraint, a willing submission to a set of standards, norms, and principles. In many areas of human activity, those standards are dictated by laws and regulations. In philanthropy, however, ethical standards are generally self-imposed.
For all the good that philanthropy does, there are ethical lapses and abuses. We could advocate for greater regulation. But I would argue, we need to remember that it is precisely the lack of regulations that allows philanthropy to be so nimble, innovative, and entrepreneurial. As a result, while it would be unethical for, say, a federation to gamble collective funds on a high-risk-high-reward idea when fiduciary duty dictates that only programs of proven effectiveness be implemented, philanthropy can still serve as a laboratory for new ideas. Philanthropy can “absorb the risk” that the communal system is unable to take. If we impose communal philanthropy’s restrictions on private philanthropy, then that advantage would be lost.
A few years ago, at the annual JFN conference, I talked about “Empowered Humility,” the idea that funders need to be aware of their power to change reality and not be afraid to use it. At the same time, they need to be aware of what they don’t know and treat the work of those who preceded them with respect and even reverence. Humility comes from “humus,” Latin for soil: being humble is being grounded in a series of principles and relations that set limits to our power. In Jewish terms, it reminds me of the teachings of Rabbi Simcha Bunim, who said that every person should carry two notes, one in each pocket. One note says, “For my sake, the world was created,” and the other says, “I am but dust and ashes.” Each note serves as a reminder of a different essential truth about life and human existence, but when read together, they help us realize our power while keeping us humble and responsible.
The meaning of self-imposed responsibility lies in the word itself. Responsibility is the need to respond. Even when doing philanthropy as individual and independent agents, we are responding to a community. The Hebrew term for responsibility is no less revealing: achrayut, from the word acher, “the other.” Being responsible means considering the impact of our actions on others.
