Deep Pockets for Doing Good

By Evan Thomas

At the turn of the century, when robber barons were amassing embarrassingly large fortunes, charity sometimes served as a form of atonement, a guilt tax for living so well. Nowadays, says David Rockefeller, who as chairman of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has overseen the donation of $342 million of his family's immense wealth to worthy causes, philanthropy can be, well, "a lot of fun."

It certainly seemed to be for the nearly 5 1/2 million Americans who lined up singing and laughing across America on Memorial Day weekend to raise money for the hungry and homeless. Hands Across America was but the latest in a series of pop-charity extravaganzas-- Farm Aid, Comic Relief and Live Aid --that have raised somewhere around $81 million over the past year for farmers, the homeless in the U.S. and the starving in Africa. America's fascination with celebrities, so often demeaned as shallow and voyeuristic, has been turned into a vehicle to aid the least celebrated. Says Rockefeller: "If Tina Turner and Mick Jagger can have fun while raising money, why can't the rest of us?"

Americans are digging deeper into their pockets than ever before. Last year charitable contributions in the U.S. reached a record high of some $80 billion, an 8.9% increase over 1984. As the Reagan Administration has cut back on social services, the citizenry has responded to President Reagan's call for a new voluntarism. Private charity, of course, will never be a substitute for the public welfare state. Still, last year, for the first time in 16 years, - the average American donated more than 2% of his income to charity. Although precise comparative statistics are hard to come by, "citizens in no other country come close," asserts John J. Schwartz, president of the American Association of Fund-Raising Counsel, Inc.

Giving in America is remarkably democratic. Nearly nine out of ten Americans report making some contribution to charity. Those earning over $50,000 a year say they give away on average 2.9% of their income. But those who make the least (under $10,000) give slightly more--about 3% of their income.

Churches remain the largest single recipient of giving: $37.7 billion a year is raised by religious organizations and agencies. Corporations, with their stockholders to worry about, give far less (about $4 billion last year), but in the past decade some 1,600 U.S. companies have pledged to give 2% to 10% of their pretax profits to charity.

The young give comparatively little to charity: those ages 30 to 34 report giving 1.7% of their income, according to a 1985 Yankelovich poll. That may be because they have not yet reached their full earning capacity and have less disposable income than their elders. Still, baby boomers seem less willing to give than their parents--"a downward trend that bears serious watching," says Richard Lyman, president of the Rockefeller Foundation. "It would be a tragedy if it is an early sign that philanthropy in this country is losing some of its force."

The pop-charity events like Live Aid could help get the young into the habit of giving. But organizers are already worrying about "compassion fatigue." Pop charity may turn out to be one more passing fad. At the upper end of the economic scale, some wonder if charity is in danger of succumbing to chic. New York Financier Felix Rohatyn, who along with his wife Elizabeth has launched a small crusade against events that concentrate more on social glamour than helping worthy causes, is concerned that the pet charities of the New York rich, the favored museums and cultural institutions and hospitals, will sop up money that could be better used to help less fashionable but equally needy causes. "Why should a program for the homeless be allowed to disintegrate," he asks, "if at the same time large institutions with professional fund- raising staffs can raise huge amounts?"

American charity will never be an orderly or evenhanded process. Even so, millions still depend on private largesse, not just at home but abroad. Last year Americans sent more than $2 billion in private donations to the peoples of foreign countries. The Rockefeller Foundation alone will spend up to $300 million over the next five years to promote economic development in Third World countries and focus on politically controversial goals like fostering contraception. "Because philanthropy is not concerned with election returns or stockholders, we see ourselves deliberately moving into things that government and business are not picking up," says Rockefeller Foundation Vice President Kenneth Prewitt. In America, charity is not just the fruit of compassion; it is a legacy of free choice.

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With reporting by Eileen Garred/New York