Mutuality, Equality and Participation: Practicing Critical Ethics in Philanthropy

• In Event: Reframing Nonprofit Organizations: Democracy, Inclusion and Social Change

Abstract

This paper makes the case for a "critical philanthropy" that aims to subvert the abstraction, corporatism, paternalism, and exclusivism of new conceptions of philanthropy, especially effective altruism. Calling attention to an account of philanthropic giving and receiving that focuses on nonprofit and voluntary organizations as indispensable facilitators for the kinds of citizen participation and inclusion that are vital to moral/political deliberation about the common good, we provide two alternative moral frameworks oriented toward cultivating relational bonds that reflect the values of participation, inclusion, mutuality, and deliberation that concretize how our critical theory-based account of philanthropy can be put into practice.

Two alternative frameworks — feminist ethics and citizenship ethics — are proposed as practical applications of critical philanthropy (in contrast to effective altruism) focusing less on outcomes and more on participatory deliberative process as the necessary condition for discerning effective outcomes. More specifically, rather than approaching philanthropy from the privileged perspective of donors (particularly, affluent donors), both critical moral frameworks provide instances of what philanthropy might look like when it privileges the fostering of relationships between donors and constituents, donors and leaders of nonprofit and voluntary organizations, and citizens from the private, government, and nonprofit sectors. The critical frameworks of feminist ethics and citizenship ethics, therefore, help us to envision what it might mean to put into practice the emancipatory direction of critical philanthropy: that of intrinsic relationality as opposed to a kind of individualism that supports data driven, technical-scientific oriented forms of philanthropy, which, in turn, tends to support forms of philanthropic elitism and imperialism.

Authors

• Ki Joo Choi, Princeton University

• Roseanne Mirabella, Kean University