The land of quiet givers
By Sarah Worthman
Warren Buffett and Bill Gates recently started “The Giving Pledge,” asking billionaires to donate at least half of their wealth during their lifetime, or after death, to charitable causes. Could Milwaukee start a comparable campaign to convince the wealthy to donate half of their money to local charities? Some local philanthropy experts say yes, calling this a generous community. Others say this is a community of quiet givers who might be disinclined to join such a public campaign.
“Milwaukeeans are incredibly generous,” says Jerry Benjamin, president of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. “I’m amazingly impressed.” No, the city doesn’t have wealth of the scale of a Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, he adds. “But just regular prosperous Milwaukeeans that have made their living and their money in Milwaukee, they do such generous things, and all of us benefit from it.”
D
eborah Fugenschuh, President of the Donors Forum of Wisconsin, says the Buffett/Gates approach has potential in Wisconsin. “Individuals here are generous and compassionate,” she says. But it would need local leadership, she adds. “There would have to be key leaders leading a call to action, rather than a general call to giving made by Warren Buffett.”
Without this leadership, she adds, Milwaukee would hew to its normal quieter pattern of giving: “Traditionally philanthropy in Wisconsin is private and voluntary; these types of discussions are most likely had between friends and colleagues, not the public.”
This quiet style of giving would make it difficult to mount a public campaign where donors pressure each other to give. “Many individuals like to remain anonymous even when we want to recognize them for their donations with a plaque or an award; they will actually deny them sometimes,” says Dr. Robert Davis, President of the Milwaukee Zoological Society.
Denise Callaway of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation agrees, saying most local donors don’t want to discuss their giving. “People are very generous, but they’re not talking to Charlie Rose or Fortune magazine about what they’re doing” says Callaway. “People want to do good things because they want to do good things.”
Benjamin says that some people prefer to remain anonymous because it becomes a huge time drain when people know you have money to donate. “When you’re very public with your giving, you come up on everybody’s list and it becomes very hard to manage. You almost need professional help to manage all the requests.”
A 2009 study by the Donors Forum of Wisconsin found that people in this state gave, on average, 2.14 percent of their adjusted gross income to charity. That ranked Wisconsin below the national average and behind 28 other states in this category.
On the other hand, Wisconsin is a national leader in the creation of community foundations, ranking ninth in the country “despite the fact that Wisconsin has a much lower population than nearly every other state in the top 10,” the Donors Forum study noted. This may partly be because a higher state income tax here pushes people to look harder for charitable contributions to lower their taxes, the study speculated.
Statistically, there is some evidence to suggest people in this area are more likely to give anonymously. The Chronicle of Philanthropy found that nationally, about three to five percent of gifts of more than $1 million were donated anonymously. By contrast, about ten percent or $140,000 of the $1.4 million donated to the Milwaukee Zoological Society last year (through September 2009) was given anonymously.
The Donors Forum study found that about 86 percent of the $3.5 billion in charitable donations in 2009 was given by individuals while corporations donated about 14 percent of the money. “Wisconsin’s philanthropy, like most philanthropy, is dominated by individual giving,” says Fugenschuh.
One way that philanthropic leaders are trying to increase local giving is by pushing “planned giving,” whereby people begin planning their giving before they die. “Culturally, we need to shift our focus on people from beyond the grave to recognition now so they can witness the fruit that is born from their giving,” Davis says.
But that effort faces the challenge of an economic decline that has decreased giving. Total giving in Wisconsin declined by 5.5 percent between 2007 and 2009, Fugenschuh says. And giving to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation dropped from $31 million in 2007 to $22.8 million in 2009.