Philanthropy is on the rise in the United States, hitting a record $373 billion last year, according to the Giving Institute. And yet the image of charity is taking a beating during this election season, a campaign featuring a businessman remarkably stingy with his fortune and an entrenched politico who uses a charitable foundation for political purposes.
Last week brought news that back in 2007 Donald Trump pledged $250,000 to a charity called Friends of the IDF, which supports Israeli military personnel and the families of fallen Israeli soldiers. But the check never came; someone else had to make good on Trump’s pledge. Which is not surprising. Trump only followed through on his promised gift of millions to veterans groups when the press called him out earlier this year. Meanwhile, though Trump’s son Eric has said his father has given “hundreds of thousands” to the Eric Trump Foundation, he now says he simply doesn’t have the time to provide any evidence the donations were actually made.
Trump’s flintiness is nothing new. In 1990, Waldemar A. Nielsen was director of the Aspen Institute’s Program for the Advancement of Philanthropy. Talking with the Chronicle of Philanthropy that year, he dismissed Donald Trump’s charitable gifts as “kind of dinky” given a fortune then estimated to be between $1 billion and $3 billion. Many of the gifts Trump did make, Nielsen pointed out, were thousand-dollar checks written to colleges for seats at gala New York fundraising dinners.
According to research by the Washington Post, “public records show that Trump donated about $2.8 million” in the last decade and a half. And even that may give an overly generous impression. The records obtained by the Post “show Trump has given nothing to his foundation since 2008.” For someone who likes to repeat that he is worth more than $10 billion, this seems like a drop in the bucket.
The Clintons have made more charitable donations, but have done so largely through the Clinton Foundation, an organization rightly criticized for collecting millions of dollars in donations from foreign governments even while Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state. (Most recently, it was discovered that while at State, Secretary Clinton took meetings with foreign donors, meetings that were not listed on her official calendar.) And there have been plenty of influential players stateside—George Stephanopoulos comes to mind—whose large gifts to the foundation have raised eyebrows. Whatever good the Clinton Foundation might be doing for global health, it appears to have been a vehicle of choice for countries and rich individuals eager to curry favor with the Clintons. And the organization also appears to have been a conveniently tax-free way to keep members of the Clinton machine on the payroll. Huma Abedin, for example, was paid by the Clinton Foundation even while she was collecting a salary working for Hillary at the State Department.
None of this—whether Trump’s parsimony or the Clintons’ manipulations—is good for philanthropy. It could well lead to calls on both sides of the aisle for more government oversight of charities. And not just of the conflicts of interest that arise when government officials are also engaged in the affairs of multibillion-dollar foundations. The cries again will start for the end of the charitable deduction on individual tax returns. Politicians will start to wonder why foundations receive so much latitude. Why do they only need to spend 5 percent of their endowment per year? And if the government is giving them this “break” on taxes, why shouldn’t the federal government have more of a say in how they spend their money, and even who serves on their boards?
Many Americans will rightly sympathize. When philanthropies start to look like sham operations, people want to know why they are treated so favorably. And the tax code is the easiest lever by which to change that. But we’ve seen in recent years what happens when the IRS sets out to choose which sorts of nonprofits are worthwhile and which are in need of special scrutiny.
Happily, the presidential candidates are not representative of the American people. According to the National Philanthropic Trust, the average American household gave almost $3,000 to charitable causes last year, including gifts to religious, educational, human services, and arts institutions. Americans making less than $50,000 gave some 4 percent of their income
on average.
Nor are Trump and Clinton even representative of America’s wealthy elites. Last year Stephen Schwarzman gave $40 million to the Inner City Scholarship Fund; David Dornsife gave $40 million to World Vision’s clean water, sanitation, and hygiene projects; Donald Sirkin bequeathed $125 million to Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired; and Gerry Lenfest put $30 million into college scholarships.
These donors big and small, not the scam artists running for president, are the ones who represent America’s true spirit of generosity.
Naomi Schaefer Riley is author of the book The New Trail of Tears: How Washington Is Destroying American Indians.
