Rescue America in an Era of Political Frustration

Reprinted from the Winter 2017 issue of Philanthropy magazine (PhilMag.org)

How private givers can Rescue America in an era of political frustration

By Karl Zinsmeister

14 PHILANTHROPY half of the nineteenth century. Many Americans felt there was something going profoundly wrong. Millions pined for thoroughgoing reform. One impressive young attorney warned a Midwestern audience in 1838 that “There is something of ill-omen amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to were tested and proven by previous substitute the wild and furious passions philanthropists. We need only follow in lieu of sober judgment.” That young their blazes to find our own successful lawyer was named Abraham Lincoln. routes to culture change and social Welcome to Jacksonian America. refinement. I’m going to take you in this Its new party system included the essay to eras that were crucial in setting idea that winners of elections earned up our country for its great success, eras the right to stuff the government that have a huge amount to teach us with their cronies, and often their today about our problems, and how we pockets with silver. From the national might solve them. capital to Tammany Hall, this was an era of fraud, embezzlement, and Been there, done that self-enrichment at the public trough. I’ll begin by painting a little picture Elections turned into circuses. for you. Votes were openly traded for booze, Demagogues and pundits have jobs, or favors. One South Carolinian abandoned serious discussion of principles observed that “civilization” retreats more ots of Americans have grown and stooped to slanders, falsehood, in one month before an election than it discouraged over the last decade trickery, and the “scalping and roasting can advance in six months afterward. Lor so. Discouraged about social alive” of opponents. These cheap tricks A Presidential election was “a national fractures that seem to be erupting have aroused “low passions” among calamity” in its effects on public morals. everywhere. Discouraged about rising the public, and “wild, blind reckless A key tussle in the Presidential disorder—drug epidemics, racial unrest, partisanship” is overtaking reason and election of 1828 was whose wife was murders up 11 percent in one year. individual judgment. Scholars say that no more shameful: Mrs. Jackson or Mrs. Discouraged that some citizens are other era was more politically fractured Adams. During Jackson’s inauguration, lagging economically. And discouraged and obsessed with ideology. observers were amazed at the number about the prospects of government or Many Americans are shocked by of men who ended up with bloody politics improving any of this soon. the crudeness of public discourse, and noses incurred in fistfights. At the For some time now, seven out of ten unprecedented eruptions of vulgarity White House reception, the crowd respondents have been saying our in daily life. Substance abuse is on the broke much of the official china and country is on the wrong track. rise, particularly among the working glassware while pawing their way to the The reality is, it could be many class, which is thought to be under whiskey punch and cake. Destruction years before we feel good about our serious stress due to national economic of the mansion was relieved only when public-sector institutions. dislocations. Racial antagonism and stewards placed tubs of liquor on the However dismayed patriotic scapegoating have resulted in violence front lawn to draw people outside. Americans are about government, though, and street clashes with authorities in Sensitive citizens decried “the they don’t want to sit on their hands. They places stretching from Ohio to New evils of party spirit” that tore through don’t want to pull back into their shells York to Missouri, plunging some cities our politics. Many retreated to quirky and give up on improving their nation. into what observers call “mobocracy.” alternatives like the Anti-Masonic Party Yet they’re unsure how to proceed. Are All very familiar, right? Well, what or the Liberty Party. If you think we there examples or roadmaps that can guide you have just heard is a description, live in a partisan world now, consider public-spirited donors and volunteers taken from mournful contemporary this description, by a Tennessean, of and philanthropists who want to carry reports, of our country in the first U.S. life in the mid-1800s: “The hotels, out constructive reforms even while government remains frozen tundra? Karl Zinsmeister is creator of The Almanac of American Philanthropy. This essay is adapted from The answer is yes. There are his new short book What Comes Next? How Private Givers Can Rescue America in an Era of paths out of today’s wilderness that Political Frustration, just published by The Philanthropy Roundtable, and available on Amazon.

WINTER 2017 15 Andrew Jackson’s inauguration was a festival of drunkenness, fistfights, and the stores, and even the shops, were disorder. Much of the White House china and glassware was destroyed as visitors regarded as Whig or Democratic, and clawed at the food and drink. The President-elect was nearly crushed by the thus patronized by the parties. There rowdy crowd at one point, and to draw the mob out of the mansion, was scarcely any such thing as neutrality. stewards had to position tubs of whiskey punch outside on the lawn. Almost every one—high or low, rich or poor, black or white—was arrayed on one side or the other.” times today’s level. Drunken brawls, street government entities were not effective Ethnicity and social class were sore persecutions, and riots were common, at turning any of this around. points as millions of new immigrants and there were many violent pastimes. started to flood into the U.S., bringing Matches pitting a terrier against 100 Fighting back patterns of religious practice, family starved rats were a favorite among But here is the exciting other half of structure, alcohol use, work, and home gamblers of that day. A streetfighting that history. Middle-class Americans life that were unfamiliar and often style called “gouging” was a problem. and principled leaders who were unwelcome. This was exacerbated Brawlers grew their fingernails long to dismayed by this ugliness didn’t just by the surge of rural men and make it easier to pop the eyeball out of an retreat or throw up their hands. Nor did women pulled out of small towns by opponent’s head; some filed their teeth they partake of the blood-sport politics industrialization and urbanism. Farm to assist in biting off appendages during of the day. They fought back against boys poured into cities “looking for frequent imbroglios. cultural crudity and dirty politics—but work and mostly finding crime, slums, So if you think we’re the first they fought back through philanthropy whiskey, and poverty,” comments Americans to face serious cultural and civic action. one historian. problems, and dispiriting political The problems afflicting Jacksonian Baleful influences were corrupting dysfunction, think again. We’ve been America were not the kinds of things the character of individual citizens. here before. In fact, we’ve been in worse that politics and policy changes can do Consumption of alcohol was three to four places in times past. And guess what: much to cure. So savvy cultural leaders, Association House Historical White the of image courtesy Glanzman, S. Louis

16 PHILANTHROPY businessmen, preachers, and even wise government The short book What Comes Next? from which officials increasingly turned away from policies and this article is excerpted contains many astonishing, government programs and elections as panaceas. and encouraging, details on how they accomplished And they started looking for deeper ways to fix what this. They used all the tools of civil society and ailed America. grassroots action: New technologies that enabled Solid citizens decided they had a duty to help create mass persuasion via journals, newspapers, lecture a better and more orderly nation, so they went to work campaigns, and other means of communication. at fixing and elevating our society. At a time when it Music and novels used to grab people’s hearts. was almost impossible to make progress via our electoral Passionate young-adult volunteers recruited by the system, men and women poured their energy and money hundreds of thousands to develop role-modeling into repairing our culture through charity, voluntary and mentoring relationships with needy youngsters. associations, mass movements, business innovations, and Our nineteenth-century philanthropists grassroots action. launched powerful legal interventions to establish And I don’t just mean clubs that bought flagpoles new precedents in the courts. They created for the town square. Many of the most consequential thousands of schools, churches, and fraternal clubs reforms ever accomplished in America—inventive fixes in barren spots. They cleverly wooed reporters, and to problems that cast dark shadows over our future, ministers, and merchants. problems that had stumped all levels of government— All of these things were successfully achieved, not were the products of direct citizen action. Thousands so long ago, through strong leadership from donors, of spontaneous private efforts took the raw edges off volunteers, and social entrepreneurs of all stripes. nineteenth-century America, and positioned us to Similar things can be done today. To give you ideas and thrive among nations. These included campaigns that: inspiration, let’s go time traveling and look at some of their accomplishments in a bit more detail. • Brought literacy to the half of our democracy that was locked in ignorance. Second Great Awakening • Moderated our terrible national drinking problem. During the first half of the nineteenth century, • Turned American public opinion against the stain a great moral movement rose and peaked in our of slavery. country. Historians call it our Second Great • Tamed the cultural fractures, crime, and Awakening. It arose spontaneously, but was then community breakdown produced by massive extended by philanthropic support. Protestant immigration, industrialization, and dislocation of church membership grew twice as fast as population small-town residents into big cities. • Elevated individual character through religious revival and self-improvement crusades that defined what we now think of as the quintessential American values. It’s a reality that U.S. politics is Qualities like sobriety, neighborliness, modesty, thrift, self-discipline, and truthfulness that we think likely to be a source of frustration of as classic American virtues were actually far from universal in Jacksonian America. It was civil-society for some years to come. campaigning during the nineteenth century that turned them into widely admired and practiced norms. But even if Washington, D.C., The social reformers of this era recognized that self-discipline is the foundation for success, remains frozen tundra for people happiness, and good citizenship. What happens in our hearts, in our families, and in our interactions who want to improve America, with our neighbors, they insisted, is far more important in shaping our future prospects (and the there is no reason to doubt our collective course of our nation) than most of what happens in politics, policy, or law. These reformers nation’s ability to make progress. wanted to help Americans refine their souls, and then take interest in the success of other citizens, so all could work together to build a better country.

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French artist Jacques Milbert drew this image of a Methodist Reformers of the day did much more than camp meeting in 1819. Clergy, evangelical donors, and millions of encourage careful personal behavior, though. They reborn believers powered dramatic change in personal behavior and also built an astonishing array of philanthropic social life in what historians call our Second Great Awakening. organizations to change the way society operated. Look beneath their sometimes ornate nineteenth-century over the multidecade course of the awakening. This titles and you will get a sense of the breathtaking paved the way for dramatic changes in both personal ambition of these associations, which quickly behavior and social practices. numbered in the thousands: the Association for For an amusing glimpse of the strong internal Improving the Condition of the Poor, Provident restraints nurtured within Americans by the Second Society for Employing the Poor, Society for the Great Awakening, consider these motherly instructions Promotion of Industry among the Poor, American mailed to an unmarried daughter while she visited a Education Society, Philadelphia Society for the friend in a nearby city during that period: Establishment and Support of Charity Schools, American Temperance Society, Sons and Daughters of • Be cautious of speaking about any person. Temperance, American Bible Society, American Tract (That’s good Christian counsel discouraging gossip.) Society, Prison Discipline Society, Orphan Asylum • Put your trust where it can never be disappointed. Society of the City of New York, American Female (For those of you who didn’t have evangelical Guardian Society, Home for the Friendless, American mothers—this is code.) Seamen’s Friend Society, American Home Missionary • Don’t go out in the evening. Society, Board of Commissioners for Foreign (Blatant code.) Missions, American Sunday School Union, American • Keep near your friend Miss Smith. Anti-Slavery Society. (More strong code.) Collectively, this remarkable ecosystem of volunteer • Write me immediately if you have been dancing. societies became known as the Benevolent Empire. (Foundational dogma of both the Methodist And empire is not too strong a word. By 1834, when the and Baptist churches.) voluntary wave was still in its early days, the total annual

18 PHILANTHROPY income donated to the major Benevolent Empire groups rivaled the size of the entire federal budget of that day. Funders and volunteers produced orphanages, old-age homes, houses for delinquent children, hospitals, job-training programs for former prostitutes, new or expanded churches, shelters for the poor, legal defense for Indians facing removal from their lands, anti-alcohol self-help groups, Sunday schools, seminaries, new colleges, schools catering to girls and blacks and Native Americans, advocacy for the rights of wives whose husbands had abandoned them, clubs that discouraged profanity among children, groups that pushed businesses to close on Sunday and let their workers rest and worship with their families, visiting nurses, milk stations for children, hostels to protect new arrivals from the countryside from urban corruptions, you name it. These creations were crucial in bringing cohesion, order, decency, fairness, and stability to jam-packed cities and rough frontiers where many virtues had leaked away. Awakened citizens gave money and raised it from their friends. And they volunteered their time and labor in vast quantities. The organizer of one charity created to teach children wrote that “Members were not to attempt to do good merely by pecuniary contributions, but especially by personal In the first half of the nineteenth century, only about 50 percent of exertions and labors. Every member of American children were given formal schooling. Many youngsters worked all day the Society was to be ‘a working man.’” —like these Delaware newsgirls. Volunteer schools set up on the day of rest, One important sociological benefit Sunday, changed the lives of these children. of this was that it got millions of middle-class businessmen and housewives solutions to the problems they saw and accelerating pace from the early 1800s and students into direct contact with the then focused their energies on those on, a large group of volunteers and donors poor, slaves, drunkards, lonely seamen, that seemed to work best,” reports went to work to compensate for that—by abandoned widows, and disenfranchised historian Anne Boylan. offering free literacy lessons (and much minorities. The helpers thus developed more) on the one day when almost real understanding and expertise in what Sunday schooling everyone had free time: Sunday. was going on in our tenements and docks Throughout the first half of the Sunday schools were formed and servants’ quarters. nineteenth century, fully half of all where children were first taught the Charitable activists tinkered with a American children were not given formal alphabet, then how to read and write, vast range of new weapons for fighting schooling. Many of these children missed and sometimes arithmetic. The Bible problems. “Early nineteenth-century an education because they were sent out was used as a main text, transmitting evangelicals did not possess to work. Trudging off to a job six days a religious knowledge while providing extraordinary vision or wisdom; they week, they had no opportunity to pick up the tools of communication. Children merely experimented with various reading, writing, and arithmetic. So at an were also taught valuable techniques

WINTER 2017 19 The founders of Sunday schools were especially concerned about poor and working-class children, blacks and Native Americans, newly arrived immigrants, and other youngsters facing disadvantages, and began their efforts there. But middle-class children soon flocked to classrooms as well. Adult Sunday schools were also formed so laborers could get instruction outside of working hours. Organizers placed schools in factories, homes, shops, and other public buildings in addition to churches, to make sure they reached those in need. Thanks to energetic organizing, steady contributions, and large expenditures of time by volunteer teachers, Sunday-school growth was meteoric. When the American Sunday School Union was founded in 1824 as a coordinating body, it attracted 723 local schools as members. Just eight years later, the ASSU represented 8,268 schools. At the time of the Civil War there were more than 60,000 schools, and by 1920 there were 200,000 Sunday schools in the U.S. Tens of millions of young and old Americans received instruction every year. The Sunday-school movement’s most potent asset was its cadre of volunteer teachers. Most were enthusiastic young adults just a decade or so older than their students. Think Thousands of talented young volunteer Sunday-school teachers were of them as the talented Teach For the Teach For America cadre of their day. They not only provided America recruits of their era. Teachers literacy instruction and Bible training but also intensive became mentors and role models, not mentoring that changed many children’s lives just instructors. (and deepened the convictions and talents of the volunteers). Sunday schooling also became a force in publishing. Not only study plans and Bible lessons but of memorization, and public speaking became a highlight of the week for lots also popular magazines, children’s skills, and offered extensive moral of American youngsters. stories, novels, and morality tales that instruction and character training. Many children picked up more were avidly absorbed by millions of Concerted effort was made to keep the of their literacy, and their moral adolescents and young adults flew off instructional materials broad enough compass, at Sunday school than they presses, with funding and energy from to include all Christian denominations, did in our uneven, inadequate, and philanthropists. As early as 1829, the and the schools were surprisingly often nonexistent public schools. “As American Sunday School Union was successful at avoiding religious battles. an agency of cultural transmission,” printing hundreds of thousands of These schools tapped into deep concludes the leading historian on pages every day of the year. hungers in the U.S. population, and this topic, the charitable Sunday At a time when fiction was became wildly popular. Parents were school “rivaled in importance the dismissed by many Americans as enthusiastic. And Sunday school nineteenth-century public school.” useless or even harmful, a new genre Chronicle / Alamy

20 PHILANTHROPY of Christian fiction for children was reporting. Until his time, when a merchant The premises were used for worship, created and distributed through Sunday from St. Louis or New Orleans showed education, concerts, charitable schools. Movement leaders were wise up in New York wanting to fill a ship with meetings, and public discussion among enough to understand that stories that goods to bring back to his trading area, New Yorkers of all races. The brothers pull children to the printed word both there was no way to know if his credit organized the New York Anti-Slavery train their brains and open opportunities was good. Lewis recruited a network of Society there, in 1833. And before that to inform appetites and values. correspondents all across the country who new charity was two hours old, a riot Sunday-school fiction was crafted to reported on the character and economic broke out. make reading fun, even addictive, while trustworthiness of local merchants. This When they heard that an inculcating wholesome ideas. allowed credit to flow, and sparked an anti-slavery association was being Sunday schools also built up economic boom. It also “purified the air created, a group of opponents gathered remarkable lending libraries with donor in American business” as Lewis put it, a crowd for a counter-meeting. It funding. By 1832, there were about rewarding people who kept their word, and turned violent. The Tappans were not 3,500 Sunday schools with libraries that punishing those who walked away from cowed, however. Arthur immediately children could borrow from, and the responsibilities. This firm evolved into provided grants to set up anti-slavery average collection contained around 100 today’s Dun & Bradstreet. societies in other states, and funded books. Libraries became even commoner, On the philanthropic side, the a new abolitionist newspaper called and larger, as the years passed, and these Tappans were even more influential. The Emancipator. Then he and Lewis helped prepare many children for life in Arthur was known as the most helped organize the first national a nation where reading was becoming generous donor in New York City, and convention of abolitionists. essential to success. he inspired many other Manhattan As prominent merchants, famous A whole culture of reading grew merchants to become much more backers of benevolent groups, and out of Sunday schooling, and historians open-handed. Through heavy giving now chief donors and organizers of report that this was a prime factor in and brilliant organizing, they built slavery-fighting charities, the Tappan making American laborers the most up a huge number of charitable brothers developed a high profile. literate in the world. Sunday schools also organizations that worked on the Vicious rumors began to be spread in transmitted a large complex of Protestant nation’s problems. New York City about their aims and virtues, personal disciplines, and And the Tappans had courage to go practices. On a hot July 4 seven months moral perspectives that equipped poor with their convictions. Culture change after the founding of the American children to move quickly into America’s is not for cowards. Abolitionists were Anti-Slavery Society, Lewis Tappan burgeoning middle class. bullied from the moment they first opened the Chatham Street Chapel stuck their heads up. to a racially mixed congregation for Abolition In 1832, Arthur and Lewis a special worship service. He gave a The most consequential social reform converted a rundown old circus hall “forcible and impressive” presentation of all in America—the movement to in lower Manhattan into a church of abolitionist principles. Then white abolish slavery—was fueled entirely by called the Chatham Street Chapel. and black choirs began to sing a new philanthropists. To get a sense of how important donors were in repairing this Achilles Heel of our otherwise free country, consider the life works of Arthur and Lewis Tappan. Forget about Wilbur and Orville American philanthropists engineered Wright, or the Kennedys, or the Kochs. These two men did more to shape America a range of popular campaigns that than any other brothers in our history. The Tappans were successful exposed slavery as an ugly, immoral, and entrepreneurs, working just off Wall Street in lower Manhattan. And sinful activity, utterly incompatible with they were among the most potent philanthropists ever to operate in life in a free land. This was demanding America. They combined their business, their faith, and their philanthropy in and dangerous work. almost everything they did. To give you a taste of their business skills, Lewis invented the industry of credit

WINTER 2017 21 street pole. But it was a heavy granite building, and Arthur Tappan had holed up inside with clerks and friends to whom he handed out 36 muskets. When a watchman told the attackers as he was being stabbed and beaten that the building was full of armed men, the invasion halted. By now the Tammany Democrats who had fomented the anti-abolitionist uproar were concerned that the violence was out of control, so they belatedly called in cavalry troops and infantry and placed the city under martial law. Police and soldiers were told to deal leniently with the ruffians, though, and most of the 150 leaders of the multiday violence who were arrested got quickly released by Brothers Lewis (top) and political authorities. Arthur (bottom) Tappan were pioneering businessmen, and The great mailing campaign even more remarkable as The final accounting from this riot philanthropic organizers of included seven churches and a dozen both personal transformation and social change. They houses wrecked, and fires smoldering pioneered a “comprehensive” across southern Manhattan. Scores style of civic action that left of private citizens had been beaten, deep imprints on America in and many police and members of the numerous sectors. 27th Regiment of Infantry had been clubbed, stoned, or stabbed. New York’s political establishment, and pro-slavery elements of the press, tried to airbrush this violence. The destruction of Lewis Tappan’s home was described in the Courier and Rose Street. Lewis had been warned Enquirer newspapers as a peaceful anti-slavery hymn written for the that trouble was on the way and he and demonstration by some gentlemen, occasion by John Greenleaf Whittier. his family fled. The rabble broke down in the course of which a window was But slavery apologists had infiltrated his front door and dragged all of the broken. To put the lie to this false the balcony, and now they rained down family’s personal possessions into the reporting, Lewis announced he was prayer books and hymnals from above. street, and then set them on fire. going to leave the ruined shell of Stomping, hissing, and fighting, they The next day they were out again, his house, strewn with his destroyed drove the worshipers away. smashing black and white abolitionist personal possessions and those of The pro-slavery press celebrated churches, beating blacks on the street, his wife and children, exactly as the the action, and published more slander and threatening to destroy Chatham attackers left things, to serve as a “silent about what the Anti-Slavery Society Street Chapel, the offices of abolitionist anti-slavery preacher to the crowds who and its backers were up to. A few charities, and homes of donors will flock to see it.” days later, bullies were back at the and leaders. They roared up to the This became national news. chapel, throwing benches, trashing the three-story warehouse and store run Descriptions of how white and black premises, and beating bystanders. The by the Tappan brothers on Hanover advocates of ending slavery were being next evening, a mob of several thousand Square, where they beat police trying violently persecuted spread across the All rights reserved — people began to maraud. to guard the premises, pummeled the country. The same stories outlined A well-dressed man on a horse led building with rocks, and attempted the principles of the new national and the crowd to Lewis Tappan’s house on to batter in the front door with a state-level Anti-Slavery Societies. NYC Granger,

22 PHILANTHROPY Despite their several narrow escapes, the Tappan brothers recognized that their personal misfortune offered an opportunity to advance their charitable cause. In the aftermath of the riots, one ally observed that Arthur Tappan’s “whole soul never seemed so enlisted.” Lewis too was invigorated by the danger. In the weeks after the biggest riot, the two brothers and their abolitionist allies fought back. They wielded words rather than battering rams and stones. They devised a plan to flood the U.S. with anti-slavery mailings. These philanthropists founded, expanded, and subsidized a host of weekly and monthly publications devoted to popularizing arguments against enslavement. These included high-circulation newspapers, a children’s magazine (which Lewis Tappan headed up himself as it was being created), a more philosophical journal, and a heavily illustrated monthly. These publications were churned out in volume on new steam-powered presses, and then staged at New York City post offices to be hurried across the country. The campaign was powered by $30,000 of personal donations pledged to the American Anti-Slavery Society. Philanthropists who fueled the abolitionist charities recruited The abolitionists called this their effort in highly talented activists to run their journals, organize their societies, “moral suasion.” The National Postal Museum and create inspiring art. Poet John Greenleaf Whittier was one of has described it as America’s first-ever direct-mail these creative masterminds. Here is the first publication of his poem campaign. It was certainly one of the most ambitious “Our Countrymen in Chains.” The violence at the Chatham Street polemical blitzes ever conducted in our country. The Chapel that grew into the 1834 anti-abolition riots was sparked main targets of the mailings were ministers, local by hymn-singing of some of Whittier’s verse. legislators, businessmen, and judges living all across the country, including in the South. Over a period for stirring up listeners and bringing this first bloom of just ten months, the American Anti-Slavery of abolitionism to a climax. Society’s publications committee, headed by Lewis This moral-suasion campaign absolutely Tappan, mailed out more than a million pieces of maddened apologists for slavery. In particular, the anti-slavery literature. circulation of abolitionist arguments through the federal mail hit a nerve. Anti-slavery mailings began to Speaking and authoring be methodically pulled out of post offices and burned. At the same time, the American Anti-Slavery Society Threats were floated against anyone who subscribed. launched special efforts to woo ministers. Anti-slavery The U.S. Postmaster General gave aid and comfort to materials were printed up for use by the Sunday local postmasters who abetted these acts of censorship schools beginning to burgeon across the land. And and intimidation, and U.S. President Andrew Jackson Arthur Tappan spearheaded a program that hired actively urged postal authorities to suppress deliveries gifted lecturers to go on public-speaking tours across of all abolitionist documents, or at least look the other the country presenting the case against slavery. way while others did. In his 1835 message to Congress, Soon, a carefully trained cadre of 70 lecturers Jackson called for a national censorship law that would was roving across the nation. These 70 orators— shut down the charitable mailings of “incendiary” described at the time as “he-goat men…butting writings, and severely punish the men organizing them. everything in the line of their march…made up Faced with a well-funded mass charitable of vinegar, aqua fortis, and oil of vitriol, with campaign that informed people and mobilized brimstone, saltpeter and charcoal, to explode and volunteers, defenders of slavery lashed out. Arthur scatter the corrosive matter”—soon became famous Tappan was hung in effigy in town squares, as

WINTER 2017 23 The leader of the Amistad uprising, Cinque, stands in court while important legal-defense efforts. By Arthur Tappan listens to whispers from one of the lawyers that he and this means they were able to protect Lewis Tappan engaged to defend the kidnapped Africans. pioneer activists. They established vital precedents in courtrooms. And torches were put to piles of newspapers violence by slavery apologists—these they used high-profile proceedings and magazines. Lewis was mailed a actions turned large chunks of public to educate Americans on the realities slave’s ear, a hangman’s rope, and many opinion firmly against slavery. of slavery and get them involved in written threats. A Virginia grand jury The rioters and mail burners who righting the wrong. indicted him and other members of the were hoping to suppress the American First Arthur paid the fines and Abolition Society of New York. Offers Anti-Slavery Society and intimidate court costs for jailed anti-slavery of $30,000 and $50,000 were made for its charitable backers had exactly the journalist William Lloyd Garrison. delivery of Arthur’s or Lewis’s head to opposite effect. In the year after Lewis Then he defended a Connecticut Louisiana. A South Carolinian raised Tappan’s home was invaded, 15,000 schoolmistress who enrolled a black girl the bid to $100,000 for Arthur. After Americans bought new subscriptions in one of her classes. “Consider me your hearing of these prizes, Arthur was to AASS publications. Anti-slavery banker. Spare no necessary expense. reported to have said in an uncommon societies began to spread like wildfire Command the services of the ablest moment of humor that “if that sum all across the country. There were 200 lawyers,” he wrote her. is placed in a New York bank, I may chapters in 1835, then 527 a year later, The most dramatic Tappan possibly think of giving myself up.” and 1,300 just two years further on. In courtroom drama began to unfold in A boycott of the Tappans’ business an era of difficult communications, the 1839. Rogue slavers were continuing operations was launched. This was American Anti-Slavery Society had by to run Africans into the Americas— one of the first organized attempts to then enrolled 250,000 paying members—a sometimes protected by corrupt damage a national business because of full 2 percent of our national population. government officials. Several dozen the moral and political convictions of In comparative terms, that made the Africans kidnapped from the nation its proprietors. It would not be the last. AASS bigger than today’s Boy Scouts, of Sierra Leone managed to take over Amidst this struggle, the hearts or National Rifle Association, or U.S. a ship called La Amistad, killing the and minds of many Americans were Chamber of Commerce. For the first time, captain and ordering the remaining won by the anti-slavery forces. The philanthropists had turned abolition into crew members to sail them back to attacks on the New York City homes a major popular crusade, and slavery was their home. Instead, the navigators and churches, the violation of the mail, now a subject no American could ignore. landed the ship near Long Island. The the suppression of speech in American Africans were taken into custody and precincts, the attempts to have the Legal defense charged with murder. Tappans and other advocates extradited A final piece of the Tappan As soon as he heard of the case, to the South, the many acts of thuggish philanthropy was their marshaling of Lewis Tappan leapt into action. He 1939. Amistad Captives, the of Trial The Woodruff, Hale Harholdt Peter Photo: College. Talladega © Alabama. Talladega, College, Talladega of Collection

24 PHILANTHROPY journals. Abolition turned a huge many of our communities. In 1830, the corner toward a wide popular following. average adult American imbibed more The most consequential than seven gallons of pure alcohol each social change in the history of the year. San Francisco hosted one saloon United States had begun. And two for every 58 residents in 1890—and that philanthropist brothers were at the counted men, women, and children. A center of it. similar tally in Manhattan that same year found that just in the area south of Triumph of the 14th Street, which was packed with poor temperance volunteers immigrants, there were 4,065 liquor and Another triumph of American civil beer shops. Journalist Jacob Riis described society was the Temperance movement. how drunkard parents would send their Powered by charitable donations and children to bars with a tin pail to have it volunteers, it organized local groups filled with beer. They coated their buckets and mutual-aid programs to temper with lard on the inside to keep the drinking and stop drunkenness. foam down so they could maximize the Consumption of alcohol was quantity of drink received. dramatically reduced, and American Plenty of propaganda and social life was transformed. exploitation went into building up engaged a first-rate legal team, then I realize today’s common view this level of drinking. Advertisements launched a savvy journalistic and is that alcohol prohibition was pushed the idea that booze was public-relations effort. He used the case nothing but a puritanical flop. healthful, invigorating, and good for as a teachable moment for informing But the late-in-the-game flop of a calming children. But in practice, Americans on the realities of slavery. law-enforcement effort by the national America’s high rate of alcohol It took two years for the case government obscures a much deeper consumption brought domestic to wend its way through the courts, success. Encouraged by a powerful violence, damaged health, family drawing banner headlines over charitable effort, huge numbers of turmoil, workplace costs, and other ugly many months. As in their great Americans voluntarily stepped away social fallout. mailing campaign a few years earlier, from booze. Stepping up to battle the the Tappans had to battle a U.S. One historian described our problems that resulted from heavy President and the weight of the federal pre-temperance nation this way: drinking were a series of volunteer government—spurred by Southern “Americans drank from the crack of dawn and charitable organizations: the interests, President Martin Van Buren to the crack of dawn.” Hard numbers American Temperance Society, the appealed lower-court verdicts all the prove that an alcoholic haze hung over Women’s Christian Temperance Union, way to the U.S. Supreme Court. At that point, Lewis Tappan convinced former President John Quincy Adams to join the all-star legal team for the final appeal. Our highest court ultimately ruled that the Africans were kidnap Though conventionally viewed as victims, not property, with a right to defend themselves. They were declared a flop, the temperance movement wholly free. Lewis Tappan had almost actually reduced alcohol consumption single-handedly orchestrated this defense and engineered the dramatically—to just 29 percent communications and reporting that transfixed many Americans. And of the level that prevailed when all across America, the courtroom struggle aroused new disgust with reformers first went to work. human bondage. Thousands of people started donating money to abolitionist Hale Woodruff, The Trial of the Amistad Captives, 1939. Amistad Captives, the of Trial The Woodruff, Hale Harholdt Peter Photo: College. Talladega © Alabama. Talladega, College, Talladega of Collection charities, and subscribing to their

WINTER 2017 25 America’s heavy consumption of alcohol didn’t just happen. Booze was heavily promoted by brewers and distillers, even to the young in startling ways. the Anti-Saloon League, and many became a multimedia effort, propelled “Close Up the Booze Shop,” and “Girls, others. As early as 1833, more than 700 by millions of published words, the Wait for a Temperance Man.” separate Temperance Society branches most popular public speakers of the The campaign against bondage had been organized in our largest state day, a flood of instructional material to alcohol involved one of the widest (New York), and 12 out of every 100 for schools, prominent blue-ribbon coalitions ever assembled for social New York residents had signed a pledge commissions, celebrity endorsements, change—running from unionists to of alcohol abstinence, shutting down and popular entertainment. manufacturers, political conservatives to 133 out of 292 distilleries in the state. There were essay contests on avid progressives, rural pastors to urban The popularity and success of the the damage done by alcohol, with settlement-house activists, very rich to anti-alcohol charities continued to grow. substantial prizes. Doctors were very poor. There were charitable groups By 1909 the secretary of the United recruited to sign statements on the working to change conditions at every States Brewers’ Association was warning unhealthfulness of distilled spirits. level: nationally, in states and counties, his membership that “we have to reckon Early anti-alcohol societies were within workplaces, through individuals by with” the Anti-Saloon League, which launched at colleges like Amherst, asking them to sign personal pledges. “has over 800 business offices, and at Williams, Union, Andover, and And all of this civil organizing least 500 men and women on its regular Colgate. Temperance activists stirred eventually told. Drinking was throttled salary list…. It employs large numbers of up voluntary boycotts which convinced back from our frontier-era average of 7.5 speakers on contract, from the governor the New York Tribune, Boston Record, gallons of pure alcohol per adult per year of Indiana down to the local pastor of the Chicago Herald, and other newspapers all the way down to 2.6 gallons in the years Methodist Church.” to stop accepting liquor advertisements. before prohibition. During prohibition, Temperance philanthropists believed Fraternal organizations were drinking was slashed even further, and even that alleviating problem-drinking would created to offer social life, mutual after repeal, drinking levels remained at 1.5 require individual transformation. But support, and benefits like insurance to gallons per adult for a decade. they also thought it required social Americans who favored temperance. So what about today? Well, betterment. They wanted to speed both Songs were written and performed American alcohol consumption is now kinds of change. And they created all to catch people’s hearts. A little about 2.2 gallons per adult per year. sorts of charities to make that happen. ditty called “Blue Monday” mourned That’s a 71 percent whack off the levels For many decades before it turned wasted pay checks. This was a people’s that prevailed when the temperance into a Constitutional amendment, the campaign, though, not a guilt trip. So activists first went to work. civil-action portion of the anti-alcohol temperance “glee singers” also made And historians point out that the campaign was built on persuasion. It merry with bouncy singalongs like temperance movement did more than

26 PHILANTHROPY mishandled medical conditions like autism, breast and prostate cancer, Ebola, Huntington’s disease, and schizophrenia. • Givers inaugurated the Green Revolution, attacked tropical diseases, invented and spread microlending, promoted individual land ownership for peasants, and shielded developing-world entrepreneurs from government stultification—the most effective series of moves of the last generation to reduce misery in poor countries. • Amidst gross underperformance by government job-training programs, philanthropy is demonstrating effective ways to move hard-to- employ Americans like the homeless, released prisoners, disabled persons, recovering addicts, and so forth into the labor force for the first time. • Philanthropy has revived hundreds of ill-maintained urban parks that millions of Americans depend on to refresh themselves (beginning with Central Park in New York City), and is creating many dramatically new and popular parks in underserved areas of Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Tulsa, During the nineteenth century, the temperance movement relied Dallas, Memphis, Louisville, and most of all on persuasion, peer support, and voluntary pledges other cities. to moderate or stop alcohol use. • It is philanthropy and civil society that recently invented new approaches to chronic problems in just reduce binge drinking. It “profoundly The fact is, philanthropists have the U.S. like foster care and adoption influenced American values”—popularizing continued in much more recent years backlogs, drunk driving, health the idea of self-improvement, and to step into breaches in performance by relapses among elderly patients just strengthening our attachment not only public agencies, offering vital alternate released from hospitals, addictions to sobriety but also to frugality, work, and repairs through private action. to smoking/drugs/alcohol, various middle-class respectability. stall-outs in medical innovation, and This transformation was driven • It is philanthropy and civil society that so forth. by volunteers and donors—men and provided the most helpful new ideas for • At research universities, donors women pursuing the national interest, improving American schooling over have been crucial in birthing but more often through philanthropy the last generation, sparking real and important new fields like biomedical than politics. desperately needed education reform. engineering, computer-assisted Examples include charter schools, learning, gerontology, character and More recent successes Teach For America, hard-headed leadership education, systems biology, So in earlier eras where American teacher assessment and accountability, and so forth—frequently after battling society desperately needed reform value-added pay, potent new STEM through serious resistance from that our political system was unable to programs, widened access to school government and other bureaucracies. deliver, many necessary culture changes choice, revived religious and private • Even when it comes to getting came through civil action fueled schools for needy children, enriched government’s own house in by philanthropists. Do we have any digital-learning options, and much more. order in the form of repairing reasons to think those successes could • Donors jumped obstacles to improve today’s dangerous trillion-dollar

Kean Collection / gettyimages Collection Kean be repeated today? the management of many neglected or underfunding of public-pension

WINTER 2017 27 Dallas’s new Klyde Warren park—spearheaded by private donors—has changed its city by becoming a magnet for social interaction. In cleverly decking over a below-grade highway, it provided missing common space that links formerly isolated portions of the arts district. Donors mustn’t feel like only grand national projects improve our society. There are millions of ways to make America stronger, better, and more lovely.

systems, it is philanthropists who have led the new mechanisms such as charitable limited liability way to constructive win-win solutions for locales corporations, fresh methods like investing as a supplement ranging from Rhode Island to Detroit to Utah. to grantmaking, and so forth. These are increasing the bandwidth and culture-changing power of philanthropy. This is not a call to give up efforts to improve In addition, there is room today for us to our government and political process. Patriotic increase the long-stagnant share of our national Americans will always work for a better public sector income devoted to charitable reform. If Americans and healthy politics. But efforts at government half a century ago were able to put 2 percent of their improvement proceed at glacial rates—and regularly income into philanthropy, with today’s much greater retreat backward. While those back-and-forth standard of living and level of discretionary income attempts at good government unfold, philanthropy we should be able to touch 3 percent or more can make many real-life improvements in America. without discomfort. That would represent hundreds And there are reasons to expect that the kind of of billions of additional charitable dollars every year. philanthropic assists to governance described above can be multiplied in the future. New entrepreneurial tools are A wish list for next steps coming into use in philanthropy. Things like randomized Where might a social entrepreneur make a control trials that improve assessment capabilities, contribution today? Many exciting initiatives James Burnett of The Office

28 PHILANTHROPY are already incubating and could be experimentation, including from The hundreds of thousands of threatened expanded quickly by enlightened Philanthropy Roundtable’s Culture of boys and girls. philanthropists. Others are ripe for Freedom Initiative, that donors can • Another sector where civil society has the founding. Here are some practical build on to find lasting solutions to proven it can make progress (and where suggestions on where leaders of civil family decay. government is utterly disqualified from society willing to put their minds, • Energetic Americanization efforts even trying to help) is in rebuilding the shoulders, and checkbooks to the that provide immigrants with religious participation of Americans. task could be enormously helpful to accelerated language training, Within the last decade or two we America over the next decade or so. computer literacy, higher job skills, have entered onto a steep and slippery family coaching, and citizenship downward slope when it comes to the • An urgent attack is needed on instruction could speed the practice of faith—with many negative drug addiction using modern tools success and integration of this last ramifications for community intactness, of science, pharmacology, social generation’s large bulge of new mutual aid, generosity to others, rates reinforcement, faith, and economics. arrivals—many of whom live and of volunteering, and the inculcation Donors could also inaugurate work with awkward separations from of healthy habits that help individuals sophisticated new campaigns against other Americans, creating unease on resist destructive personal behaviors. the precursors that lead to addiction all sides. This is work that thousands The sky is the limit on ways donors among vulnerable populations. of philanthropists energetically threw could help. How about bolstering • Speaking of new, what’s preventing themselves into in previous American today’s most effective seminaries tech-oriented philanthropists today eras—with enormous success—so (just as donors have expanded our from launching a large collaborative we needn’t wonder whether this is most effective K-12 teacher-training crusade to reduce today’s dire an undertaking that lends itself to programs)? How about rotating capital weaknesses in cybersecurity? civil-society solutions. It does. funds to help burgeoning churches Many of the ugly privacy breaches • We need new approaches to that often now perch in rented and worrying security holes in our homelessness that treat the sanctuaries, suburban office parks, computer webs are just a result of whole person, combining material high-school auditoriums, or strip malls out-of-date procedures and tools, and and therapeutic supports with a buy the inspiring but nearly empty a shortage of understanding. As can tough-love approach that expects and and moldering buildings of ghost be attested by anyone who has seen requires from the beneficiary personal congregations in cities, creating exciting the antique technology on display in investment and change. physical campuses where muscular Social Security offices, FAA control • The pioneering work that has been religious practice and healing can be towers, or police stations, government done in Colorado, Georgia, and other revived where they are most needed? is usually the last sector where states showing that backlogs of children How about just doing a better job of advanced computer standards arrive. languishing in foster care can be letting people know what religious But a mix of nonprofit organizations radically reduced needs to be transferred supports are available? and private companies could research to scores of other states and expanded, • One of the most troubling trends in this yawning problem, establish with philanthropic investment, bringing our welfare state today is the soaring consensus on common standards, and much more wholesome family life to rate at which prime-age individuals lead the way toward less hackability and fallibility in the IT networks on which so much of our personal and national lives now depend. • America desperately needs a bloom When we take direct action to improve of creative services that can stop the rocketing rise of single-parent the life around us, instead of waiting for childrearing—which is seriously damaging the well-being of our next officials to descend as saviors, we become generation of American children, and feeding the tumorous growth of many producers of governance rather than just secondary social pathologies. Unlike a generation ago when Americans consumers of government. sensed this was a problem but had no idea of how to reverse it, we are now getting research and embryonic field

WINTER 2017 29 bolstering, church support, and housing help to individuals who are leaving prison need to be scaled up dramatically. Millions of convicted persons will be returning to our communities over the next decade. Whether they become assets, burdens, or predators is to some considerable degree up to us as neighbors.

A new bloom of microgovernance Our country was set up on a “federalist” basis so that each state would have its own identity and many of its own peculiar ways of governing itself. Important social responsibilities like education, welfare payments, and transportation links were pushed even further down to county, city, or village Fred Cuny was a larger-than-life Texas engineer and charitable entrepreneur governments. Our founders insisted who used money donated by George Soros to save lives in Bosnia on letting many flowers bloom, with more effectively than all the material assistance offered confidence that people would migrate by national governments plus the U.N. combined. to the loveliest scents while leaving behind those that turned ugly. Throughout our history there have are enrolling in permanent disability re-train the large number of Americans been periodic attempts to reinforce the programs. Millions are dropping who are stuck in jobs that can’t federalist quality of our nation. The out of the productive workforce to support their families, are clinging 1980s, for instance, brought concerted depend on easy but dribbling public by their fingernails to positions likely efforts to shift some authority from payments that often leave them not only to disappear in the future, or have officials in Washington to state and economically hand-to-mouth but also already dropped out of the labor force. local governments. Nothing wrong socially disconnected and personally Our modern economy requires a with that, but what I am proposing depressed. Over the last generation we’ve culture of lifelong learning and regular here is much more thoroughgoing— undergone medical, technological, and skill-burnishing, yet government lots of tasks should be shifted out of legal revolutions that make it possible agencies have a dismal record at these government altogether and handed off for almost anyone to contribute to tasks. Nonprofit organizations, however, to the organs of civil society. society—it’s just a matter of finding the have showed real verve in figuring out We should encourage a social right match of job, abilities, needs, and how to train and inspire economic marketplace of micro-experiments accommodations. But so far we’ve wasted strugglers, as documented in two recent in culture, social organization, family these new opportunities to integrate the guidebooks from The Philanthropy healing, moral teachings, economic disabled into mainstream self-support. Roundtable (Clearing Obstacles to incentives, and so forth. Rather than Inventive philanthropists could have an Work, and Learning to Be Useful). An pretending we all share the same enormous influence in rolling back today’s expansion of these tailored job-training assumptions, want the same end results, troubling surge of Americans languishing efforts, which transform the lives of men have equally worthy goals, and are on disability. Some donors already are, like and women missed by state programs, willing to put equal effort into realizing those backing the Independence Project would be an enormous public service— our goals, we need competing local now being run by HireHeroesUSA allowing some workers to support their laboratories—ranging from regional to transform injured veterans into family at a middle-class level for the alliances, to subcultures based on shared proudly independent workers instead first time, while simultaneously building principles—where ideas can be developed of government dependents. There is an technical and service skills that are badly in daily practice so we can see which enormous upside for more work like this. needed by our economy. nostrums are actually good for human • More generally, the nonprofit sector • Today’s nascent efforts to provide flourishing over an extended period, and needs to lead a push to train and mentoring, job services, family which are snake oil. Walgren Judy

30 PHILANTHROPY This is not wishful thinking. Localized responses to human needs are what philanthropic entrepreneurs create all the time. The last two or three decades brought an explosion of private solutions to public problems, resulting in many triumphs. The thousands of dispersed social reforms documented in the recently published Almanac of American Philanthropy occurred in almost every sector of U.S. society, at a pace that accelerated during recent years. Localized service is now sweeping American business as well. The Marriott company, for instance, has spawned more than 30 separate lodging operations that can provide different customers with what they need, where they are, in personalized ways. Not just Marriott Hotels, but Many effective nonprofits like Goodwill (which provides billions of dollars Fairfield Inn and Suites, Courtyard of training and work experience every year to hard-to-employ Americans) by Marriott, SpringHill Suites, are highly decentralized. The Goodwill network is made up of 163 autonomous Ritz-Carltons, Renaissance Hotels, regional affiliates, each with its own board, and funding, and methods. ExecuStay, Westins, Four Points, Aloft, Le Méridiens, W Hotels, and many more. The Internet revolution, wikis, and resources, and the problem-solving personal solutions—is now closely in crowdsourcing, and other bottom-up capabilities of small actors linked in step with wider trends in American mechanisms have demonstrated the networks. Philanthropy—with its society, technology, and economy. inventive power of dispersed authority longstanding tradition of local, custom, Curing alienation and anger And devolving authority to groups of Americans so they can chip away at problems in their backyards in ways The 1980s brought efforts to shift some they think best can do more than just make our communities function better. authority from Washington Micro-governance will yield a stronger sense of having a voice and active role in to state and local governments. the direction of our communities. It will reduce the feeling among Americans of Nothing wrong with that, but what being bossed or coerced. Letting a thousand flowers bloom, I am proposing here is much more instead of trying to do everything in one standardized way, could turn one thoroughgoing—lots of tasks should be of today’s most worrying weaknesses— our polarization—into something shifted out of government altogether useful. Let all of those very different Americans try different ways of fixing and handed off to the organs problems in their own communities. Then look hard at which work and of civil society. which fail. Expand the successes and walk away from the disappointments. Philanthropic change generally comes The Pueblo Chieftain The Pueblo with much less friction than politically

WINTER 2017 31 driven change. As one social entrepreneur has put it, of all Americans now consistently say our country philanthropy relies on “the social dynamic of addition and is on the wrong track. The deepest and most multiplication,” while government action often comes understandable complaint of angry voters today, via “subtraction and division.” Philanthropic/voluntary argues writer Andy Smarick, is their feeling of solutions will be gentler and more respectful of dissenting powerlessness, their sense that their concerns and perspectives than even the smallest-scale government/ perspectives are not represented in government, that mandatory monopoly fixes. their values are rarely enshrined in public policies. Dispersed governance through civic action “The straightforward solution,” he suggests, “is to can thus help cure the popular unrest seen in give more people more power.” the political candidacies of Donald Trump and Allowing people to vote every couple years Bernie Sanders, and today’s wider frustration with on whether to change a few members of a class politics. It’s not healthy that more than two thirds of full-time politicians ruling over us is not American-style self-rule. Thomas Jefferson called Recent Polling: for a society “where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic…and feels that he is a Americans want more localism, participator in the government of affairs, not merely more philanthropy, and more social invention at an election one day in the year, but every day.” When Alexis de Tocqueville studied America’s thousands of charitable groups almost 200 years ago, what impressed him was not just their ability to meet practical needs, but also the way they allowed citizens to govern themselves, solving local problems through the actions of local civil society. An American “teaches himself about the forms of government by governing.… It is fair to say that the people govern themselves.” Empathy for other citizens also grows out of the personal contact of civic association. “Feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the understanding developed only by the reciprocal action of men one upon another,” says Tocqueville. That’s our history. What about now? Writer John McClaughry warns that today “we are steadily reducing the scope of local civic responsibility.” When we insist on professionalizing and centralizing all social problem-solving in government, we fall into the trap that Jefferson warned against: “concentrating all cares into one body.” “This is the issue of this election: whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.” That was how Ronald Reagan put it in one of his classic speeches. When we transfer responsibility for strengthening our communities away from the direct-democracy of civil society and charity and voluntary action, and toward bureaucratic agencies instead, we don’t just get clumsier, more impersonal services—we shrink the arena of American citizenship, as McClaughry puts it. That is a crucial reason so many Americans now feel alienated from government and politics. National Journa l and Independent Sector. Allstate/ by 2016 and 2015 national surveys Sources:

32 PHILANTHROPY And for all of this, philanthropic action is a perfect antidote. You can think of the millions and millions of private givers and volunteers in our country, and the hundreds of thousands of nonprofit organizations, as a kind of matrix of private legislatures. They define social ills, set goals and priorities for attacking them, then methodically marshal money and labor toward solutions. And philanthropic Americans do all this spontaneously— without asking the state’s permission. When we do these things we become producers of governance rather than just consumers of government. We take direct action to improve the life around us instead of being dependent citizens who wait for officials to descend as saviors. We need a blizzard of local The deepest and most understandable complaint of angry voters today philanthropic campaigns today that is their feeling of powerlessness, their sense that their concerns and attack societal problems in a range perspectives are not represented in government, that their values are of ways. And those of you whose rarely enshrined in public policies. The solution is to decentralize power philanthropic passions are unrelated to and let people govern themselves much more locally. deep social reform shouldn’t feel like there is less purpose in what you do. Don’t imagine that only philanthropists who support think tanks, heal wounded It can answer even the stiffest social no say in how their communities are run. soldiers, restore the Lincoln Memorial, challenges, as donors and volunteers Muscular, inventive philanthropy can fight Zika, or sponsor other grand have demonstrated over and over in serve as a desperately needed antidote to national projects are improving our the past. today’s political alienation—which could society. There are thousands of ways And at the very same time, grassroots otherwise leave many of our citizens to elevate America. Simple charitable civic action will reduce the toxic feeling feeling hopeless and angry for years

comforts, direct personal assistance, among many Americans that they have to come. P support for local education, art that inspires, soothing parks, spiritual faith that brings healing, underwriting for local pillar institutions—these traditional charitable priorities are vital In addition to uncovering new ways contributions to making our nation good and healthy and unified. of solving social problems, competing So don’t feel limited by rigid boundaries when pursuing social experiments in micro-governance would improvement and culture change. The key is just to take a part. To contribute give citizens a deeper sense of being directly. To act—rather than waiting for some distant, divided, impersonal agency involved in the community, and less to solve our problems for us. Philanthropic micro-governance is feeling of being bossed or coerced. a practical way for us to uncover new paths to progress and solve cultural ills Alex Wong / gettyimages Wong Alex that are gnawing at our national fiber.

WINTER 2017 33