Why is Charity Under Attack? | Elise Westhoff

- Hi every­one, I’m Doug DeVos. And wel­come back to Believe. My guest today is Elise West­hoff. She’s CEO of the Phil­an­thropy Round­table, which helps Amer­i­cans sup­port wor­thy caus­es. And so we wan­na know, does Amer­i­ca need char­i­ty? What good does it do? And why do some peo­ple wan­na con­trol how oth­er peo­ple give? And what they give to? These are ques­tions that mat­ter for the most gen­er­ous coun­try on earth. So now, let’s see what Elise West­hoff believes.

- [Male Speak­er] We believe and have always believed in this coun­try that man was cre­at­ed in the image of God, that he was giv­en tal­ents and respon­si­bil­i­ties and was instruct­ed to use them to make this world a bet­ter place in which to live. And you see, this is the real­ly great thing of America.

- It’s time to dis­cov­er what binds us togeth­er. And find­ing it has the pow­er to trans­form our world. That’s what I believe. How about you? Well hel­lo, every­body. Wel­come to Believe. I’m Doug DeVos, and we’re hon­ored to have you join us again today. Today’s top­ic is about char­i­ty, char­i­ta­ble giv­ing. You know, why does Amer­i­ca need it? What do we under­stand or don’t under­stand about it? It’s a big indus­try, if you will. It touch­es a lot of our hearts in many dif­fer­ent ways and it touch­es a lot of peo­ple in our coun­try. So why is it impor­tant? Why is it so impor­tant in the Unit­ed States? There’s some­thing about Amer­i­ca and about our his­to­ry that has set us apart real­ly from many oth­ers in the world. And we’ve had a lead­er­ship posi­tion in char­i­ta­ble giv­ing. What does that mean for us? And the fact that we may hear about cer­tain peo­ple giv­ing a lot of mon­ey does­n’t take away at all from the amaz­ing vol­un­tary and giv­ing nature of Amer­i­cans across the coun­try from all dif­fer­ent back­grounds and all dif­fer­ent walks of life. Because giv­ing isn’t just mon­ey. It’s time and tal­ent as well in addi­tion to some trea­sure. So we have a lot of peo­ple who are involved. But the num­bers are show­ing that some of the peo­ple get­ting involved are declin­ing slight­ly, but the giv­ing is increas­ing slight­ly. So there’s a few dynam­ics, of course. In the past cou­ple of years, there have been a lot of dynam­ics in our coun­try. So maybe we can talk about that. Because if we’re gonna talk about it, we need some­body who’s an expert in this field and in this space. And so we are hon­ored to have Elise West­hoff with us, ​’cause she knows not just a lit­tle, a lot about phil­an­thropy. She is the Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Phil­an­thropy Round­table and has spent her time and her life and her career involved in this space, under­stand­ing it and is incred­i­bly knowl­edge­able, not only her­self, but in help­ing to share that knowl­edge with oth­ers as they think about giv­ing as well. And Elise has also been con­nect­ed very much in how we give, not only the act of giv­ing but the study of it. And increas­ing­ly, because giv­ing is a tax deductible activ­i­ty, I guess addi­tion­al­ly, the pub­lic pol­i­cy aspects of it as well. So Elise, wel­come. We are thrilled to have you join us. Thank you for tak­ing some time to join us here on Believe.

- Well thank you so much for hav­ing me. It’s a plea­sure to be here, Doug.

- So let me just start with, tell us a lit­tle bit, Elise, about the Phil­an­thropy Round­table. What is that, you know, for our lis­ten­ers and our audience?

- Well, the Phil­an­thropy Round­table is a net­work of donors who share val­ues. We believe in a strong civ­il soci­ety that’s based on lib­er­ty, oppor­tu­ni­ty, and per­son­al respon­si­bil­i­ty. And we try to advance those val­ues through effec­tive char­i­ta­ble giv­ing. And we also believe that in order to do that well, we need to pro­tect donors’ rights to give how, when, and where they choose. So we call that phil­an­thropic free­dom. And we advo­cate for that as well. We have lots of donors, all dif­fer­ent types of donors across the spec­trum. But all of them share our core beliefs in those val­ues that I men­tioned earlier.

- Yeah, yeah, that’s won­der­ful. So get­ting peo­ple togeth­er to talk about giv­ing is impor­tant because it’s hard to fig­ure out where to give, how to give, whether you’re in your com­mu­ni­ty, whether it’s your time and you wan­na vol­un­teer, where to go, lots of oppor­tu­ni­ties, whether you wan­na give $10 or $100 or more. You may see some­thing, an adver­tise­ment, on TV. You’d think giv­ing is easy; but it isn’t, is it? Tell us a lit­tle bit about what peo­ple have to go through to think about giv­ing or to just give well.

- Yeah, that’s a great ques­tion. It’s inter­est­ing because go back a lit­tle bit to my own jour­ney. I worked in edu­ca­tion and in men­tal health on the non­prof­it side, and had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to then work for a fam­i­ly foun­da­tion and help give away mon­ey on the grant-mak­ing side. And it was so inter­est­ing ​’cause I thought going in: Well, you just write a check. How hard can it be? And any­one who has been involved in the work of phil­an­thropy knows it’s actu­al­ly incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to make those deci­sions. I think, you know, every­one who’s involved in this real­ly has to think about their val­ues and their pas­sions, and real­ly try to iden­ti­fy the orga­ni­za­tions that not only share their val­ues and real­ly relate to those pas­sions, but also are effec­tive at what they do: well run orga­ni­za­tions with strong lead­er­ship that are finan­cial­ly sol­id with great gov­er­nance. It’s quite a task. And I think, you know, the Round­table to me when I was run­ning that fam­i­ly foun­da­tion, the Snider Foun­da­tion, was such a huge resource. Find­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple who share your val­ues and you can exchange ideas with and talk about effec­tive ways of giv­ing was real­ly invalu­able to me. And I know it is to a lot of peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty as well.

- Yeah, it is a great chal­lenge in learn­ing and lis­ten­ing and talk­ing to each oth­er about find­ing the right places that match your val­ues, your pas­sions. Because giv­ing of your time, tal­ent, and trea­sure is real­ly an expres­sion of what you believe, which is the title of our show here and why we’re talk­ing about this top­ic because it is an expres­sion of what you believe and what you feel about things. So Elise, let me kind of go back a lit­tle bit big­ger pic­ture. Help us under­stand. I men­tioned it ear­li­er, but help us under­stand how Amer­i­ca devel­oped this sense of giv­ing and some of the num­bers about where we are as a coun­try, as a soci­ety, what role that giv­ing or char­i­ty plays for us. Can you help us get a big pic­ture of you?

- Yeah, absolute­ly. Well, Amer­i­ca is the most gen­er­ous coun­try in the world. This coun­try was built on the idea of pri­vate solu­tions, vol­un­tary action to solve prob­lems. And so, to see that Amer­i­ca has con­tin­ued that tra­di­tion over many, many, many years is I think real­ly inspir­ing. To your point ear­li­er, there are a lot of peo­ple who look at the trends and the way things are going in phil­an­thropy. You know, last year, or 2020 now that we’re in 2022 offi­cial­ly, was a record-break­ing year in char­i­ta­ble giv­ing. So we saw near­ly half a tril­lion dol­lars going to char­i­ta­ble caus­es. And all of this was in the midst of a lot of eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty, peo­ple not know­ing exact­ly what was gonna hap­pen to their own wal­lets. But it real­ly showed peo­ple were will­ing to step up and be gen­er­ous despite all of that uncer­tain­ty. Because we’re built on that idea of neigh­bor help­ing neigh­bor. And that’s the way we approach things. I think if you go to oth­er coun­tries, you see much more of a heavy reliance on gov­ern­ment solv­ing prob­lems and sort of top-down, one-size-fits-all solu­tions. Amer­i­ca is built on, you know, local com­mu­ni­ties find­ing solu­tions to prob­lems and also the pri­vate sec­tor real­ly thriv­ing. So to your point ear­li­er, yes, we’re con­cerned about get­ting more house­holds involved and the idea of, you know, both giv­ing char­i­ta­bly, vol­un­teer­ing, help­ing their neigh­bors, build­ing a sense of com­mu­ni­ty, which I think has been a strug­gle dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, frankly. But we do see peo­ple step­ping up and help­ing one anoth­er in lots of dif­fer­ent ways. And that was a real inspi­ra­tion dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, I think. And I think it will continue.

- Yeah, what a great thing for us to remem­ber in a time of a lot of divi­sion or fear that peo­ple stepped up. They thought about their neigh­bors even when there was risk or unknowns about them­selves. And so, help us under­stand some of the ways. You touched on it ear­li­er. How does char­i­ty, or giv­ing, actu­al­ly help some­body? And what are the things that we should be think­ing about in the ways? Because you can give, there’s a dis­as­ter, you give to cer­tain­ly, you know, just imme­di­ate relief. You men­tioned just in your last answer there, talked about a sense of belong­ing, you know, and build­ing com­mu­ni­ty. But then there’s also things of help­ing peo­ple real­ize their poten­tial. So maybe if you can expand on some of those things of how char­i­ty can real­ly touch some­body’s life.

- Absolute­ly, I mean I think that is the key to effec­tive char­i­ta­ble giv­ing is think­ing about how we can empow­er each indi­vid­ual to reach their unique poten­tial. And, you know, the gov­ern­ment, again, is a place where it’s real­ly not set up to help equip peo­ple to do that. Nor is it meant to do that. And I think that’s why we see the impor­tance of char­i­ta­ble insti­tu­tions and real­ly being those local orga­ni­za­tions that serve unique needs of each com­mu­ni­ty and think about how we can help peo­ple help them­selves. You know, think­ing about equip­ping them with the tools they need long term to real­ly over­come chal­lenges. Think­ing about edu­ca­tion, work­force devel­op­ment, and also the pol­i­cy frame­work we need in our soci­ety to elim­i­nate bar­ri­ers to suc­cess and achiev­ing suc­cess. So at the Round­table, that’s how we think about it. We think about the things that make up a free soci­ety, that, again, this nation was built on the idea of a free soci­ety, but also one where neigh­bors help neigh­bors. And that’s where char­i­ty comes in. So we try to pro­mote Amer­i­ca’s found­ing prin­ci­ples, pro­mot­ing path­ways to oppor­tu­ni­ty for every per­son and real­ly build­ing those strong com­mu­ni­ties that help peo­ple reach their unique potential.

- Yeah, yeah. Well said there. You’ve touched on, and we start­ed with this idea that Amer­i­ca is a gen­er­ous coun­try. And you touched on found­ing prin­ci­ples. Can you help us maybe make the con­nec­tion? What is it about those found­ing prin­ci­ples that led to Amer­i­ca, you know, being in this role and being so char­i­ta­ble, if you will. Now we may watch the news and you may not see a lot of char­i­ty that hap­pens on the news. But thank­ful­ly, no mat­ter what the broad­cast, every once in a while, they’ll have a good-news sto­ry about some­body doing some­thing. But if you go back to, what is it about our cul­ture? What was it about our found­ing that helped either cre­ate or expand­ed this idea that neigh­bors should help neigh­bors and that if you’re suc­cess­ful, look around and do some­thing help­ful rather than wait­ing for some­body else to be part of the solution.

- Yeah; well, I love his­to­ry and I love read­ing about our found­ing because our founders were real­ly just incred­i­ble human beings, enlight­ened human beings. They were not per­fect, of course. And we’ve heard a lot about that in the last cou­ple of years.

- Nobody’s per­fect, right, none of us are perfect.

- None of us are per­fect. But they came to this coun­try with the idea of this exper­i­ment of peo­ple hav­ing the free­dom to pur­sue their dreams. And it was real­ly a unique idea that, you know, that your place of birth or who you were was­n’t gonna deter­mine your sta­tion in life. Like this was built on it. Not every­one had access to the oppor­tu­ni­ty at the time. As a woman, I could say like women did­n’t have that full access. And oth­er peo­ple did­n’t either. But I think they set us up for the idea that any per­son from any back­ground, with any skin col­or, with any gen­der can rise in Amer­i­ca. Again, that’s what this coun­try is found­ed on: that idea, that belief. And not every­one is born with the same oppor­tu­ni­ty, right. And so I think that’s what real­ly inspires me about phil­an­thropy and about char­i­ta­ble insti­tu­tions is that they can help real­ly pro­vide those path­ways to oppor­tu­ni­ty for every per­son to achieve the Amer­i­can dream. That’s what this coun­try is all about. And that’s what makes it, I think, the great­est coun­try in the world. And I feel priv­i­leged every day, I’m sure you do as well, to live here.

- Sure, sure, absolute­ly. You know, we’ve had some pre­vi­ous episodes where we talked about the Amer­i­can dream and peo­ple com­ing with noth­ing and being able to have a chance to be suc­cess­ful. And we know that there were, you know, bar­ri­ers placed for peo­ple to have that through­out the coun­try’s his­to­ry. And actu­al­ly, our his­to­ry is one of try­ing to iden­ti­fy and fig­ure that out and take down some of those bar­ri­ers. And again, we don’t have a per­fect his­to­ry or per­fect track record by any means. I don’t mean to advo­cate that. But for some rea­son, we’ve been able to cre­ate this lev­el of cul­ture where this idea of the Amer­i­can dream has come through. And one of the ele­ments, when­ev­er you talk to some­body, espe­cial­ly some­body who came to Amer­i­ca from some­where else, young and impov­er­ished, and they become suc­cess­ful, they are very focused on giv­ing. And in fact, those who have gen­er­at­ed, in my expe­ri­ence, great suc­cess have been real­ly focused on fig­ur­ing out how to share it and how to give it. And that’s why an orga­ni­za­tion like the Phil­an­thropy Round­table and your role as the CEO is so impor­tant. Because I’ve seen peo­ple, old­er peo­ple, who I would go to, you know, very suc­cess­ful, and say, ​“You know, why are you work­ing so hard?” And they’d say, ​“Well, I made a lot of promis­es ​“to give mon­ey away. ​“So I got­ta keep mak­ing enough ​“to ful­fill those promis­es that I made.” And it became a very impor­tant part of their life. So maybe, you know, tell us a lit­tle bit about that idea of con­nect­ing the Amer­i­can dream with giv­ing and the role that it has as an indi­vid­ual ver­sus the role that maybe you wait for some­body else, whether it’s the gov­ern­ment or some oth­er char­i­ty that may be a lit­tle fur­ther away from your neigh­bor, that idea of step­ping in there and help­ing on their own.

- Well first of all, I could­n’t agree more. I just am so inspired by our com­mu­ni­ty of phil­an­thropists. They’re some of the most gen­er­ous peo­ple I have ever met. And it’s inter­est­ing to hear some of the nar­ra­tives that we hear out there about phil­an­thropists, not being so pos­i­tive, right, and think­ing that peo­ple are in it for them­selves or that they’re only giv­ing for tax rea­sons, or they’re hoard­ing their mon­ey. I mean, that is so far from the truth and so far from what we see in our phil­an­thropists. And I think you’re right. So many peo­ple, espe­cial­ly peo­ple who have come to this coun­try with noth­ing or even were born here and over­came incred­i­ble chal­lenges to build a busi­ness, to build a career and a life and live a mean­ing­ful life in Amer­i­ca, they tru­ly and gen­uine­ly want to see oth­er peo­ple expe­ri­ence that and reach that. And that does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean becom­ing a bil­lion­aire, right? Not every­body needs to be a bil­lion­aire or wants to be a bil­lion­aire. That’s part of the Amer­i­can dream, too, is say­ing: You have the right and the oppor­tu­ni­ty to choose the life you want to live. And that may mean that you live in a hum­ble home in rur­al Indi­ana and are involved with your church and spend a lot of time with your fam­i­ly. And that’s what makes you hap­py. And I think, again, going back to our found­ing prin­ci­ples, the right to pur­sue the life you wan­na lead is so fun­da­men­tal. So when I hear peo­ple today say­ing, you know, talk­ing about redis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth or that every­one should sort of live their life in a cer­tain way, I total­ly reject that. That’s part of the Amer­i­can dream is say­ing: This is what I choose for myself and for my fam­i­ly. And it’s not gonna be the same for every­one. But every­one should have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue the life they wan­na lead. And that could mean get­ting more edu­ca­tion or, you know, just break­ing down the bar­ri­ers that peo­ple have to suc­cess and oppor­tu­ni­ty. And we def­i­nite­ly wan­na do that. But we also wan­na respect peo­ple’s choic­es to live dif­fer­ent kind of lives. And that’s okay, too.

- Yeah, yeah, absolute­ly. So you start­ed to touch a lit­tle bit on maybe the image of a phil­an­thropist, of some­one, and the fact that there is a pub­lic inter­est of the pri­vate actions of peo­ple and that the pub­lic inter­est is con­nect­ed to the tax code, which gives you a tax deduc­tion for char­i­ta­ble dona­tions that peo­ple make. But there’s dis­cus­sion around how peo­ple should give and using the tax code or using the law to impact that. Help us under­stand maybe the back­ground of why would we have put, as a coun­try, why would we have put a tax deduc­tion in there in the first place? What was the idea? What was the found­ing idea behind the gov­ern­ment say­ing or the peo­ple say­ing: Look, if you’re gonna give mon­ey away, we’re going to encour­age that. We’re gonna give you an incen­tive to do that by giv­ing you a tax deduc­tion. Why did they decide that in the first place?

- Well, again, going back to a lot of what we’ve been talk­ing about in this con­ver­sa­tion, our coun­try was built on the idea of pri­vate vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tion and the right of peo­ple to pur­sue their dreams. And I think we do want to encour­age peo­ple to engage in their com­mu­ni­ties and to find solu­tions to prob­lems out­side of the gov­ern­ment. And so, we want to incen­tivize that. And I think that’s a pos­i­tive. What we’re start­ing to keep our eye on and we’re con­cerned about, and some­thing that’s been going on for a long time, frankly, is the idea that that incen­tive that’s pro­vid­ed then means that the mon­ey belongs to the gov­ern­ment or that the gov­ern­ment should have an out­sized influ­ence on how that mon­ey is spent. And that’s not real­ly the pur­pose. In fact, it’s counter to the pur­pose of why we want a strong civ­il soci­ety with lots of pri­vate, vol­un­tary asso­ci­a­tions out­side of the gov­ern­ment. So I think that’s what .

- So you talk a lit­tle bit more about that. We’ve talked a lot about phil­an­thropy or phil­an­thropists, but you’ve talked about kind of com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions, some oth­er… Build on that a lit­tle bit. Help me under­stand, you know, when you say that, what sort of orga­ni­za­tions are you talk­ing about? Is it like a Unit­ed Way or a Sal­va­tion Army? Or is it a Lions Club or some­thing else along those lines? Help us under­stand that.

- Yeah, all of the things you just men­tioned, plus your syn­a­gogues, your church­es, and also edu­ca­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, schools, any­thing where real­ly it’s out­side of the gov­ern­ment. But it’s peo­ple find­ing, you know, com­mu­ni­ty, find­ing ways to solve prob­lems, find­ing ways to asso­ciate with one anoth­er, express their val­ues, any insti­tu­tion like that. And it’s every­thing you men­tioned and more, lots of dif­fer­ent types of char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tions through­out the country.

- And that’s what makes our soci­ety great ​’cause there’s so many. I remem­ber my kids when they’d go to uni­ver­si­ties, they’d say, ​“There’s a club for any­thing ​“You can get involved in any­thing you want.” You just give us a mis­sion, you know, two or three peo­ple, you’re a club. Make it hap­pen. I look around our com­mu­ni­ty here in Grand Rapids, Michi­gan. I see so many amaz­ing peo­ple that step up and try to fill the gap. And I just think that’s a crit­i­cal ele­ment for how com­mu­ni­ty is cre­at­ed, you know, that sense of com­mu­ni­ty being cre­at­ed. But let’s under­stand, you have talked about, and you’ve writ­ten about the inter­est that some have in influ­enc­ing or using the law to influ­ence how some­body else might give. Help me under­stand. I think for many in the audi­ence say: What do you mean? You know, tax deduc­tion has been there for years and years. It’s the sim­plest thing. It’s the one thing we prob­a­bly all under­stand about the tax code. So what are some of the things that are being dis­cussed that some­body like you as the CEO of the Phil­an­thropy Round­table would be going: Well, there’s things we should be pay­ing atten­tion to.

- Yeah, unfor­tu­nate­ly, despite the fact that, again, 2020 was a record-break­ing year in giv­ing, we saw, you know, half a tril­lion dol­lars going to char­i­ty, peo­ple, some peo­ple, activists believe that peo­ple should be doing more. Peo­ple should be giv­ing on their time­line. Or peo­ple should be giv­ing to cer­tain types of char­i­ties over oth­ers. It’s a real­ly top-down approach. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, it will lead to, in the end, in our opin­ion, less mon­ey going to char­i­ta­ble caus­es. And that’s what con­cerns us. So we see things like efforts for donor dis­clo­sure, which are real­ly just efforts to out, poten­tial­ly shame, poten­tial­ly can­cel donors based on what caus­es they invest in if it’s not on the quote unquote approved list. A lot of peo­ple have faced retal­i­a­tion for giv­ing to cer­tain caus­es. And many donors give pri­vate­ly for very good rea­son: either humil­i­ty, fear of retal­i­a­tion, because of deeply held reli­gious beliefs that encour­age pri­vate giv­ing. So we’re very con­cerned about these efforts to force donors to dis­close every­thing to the pub­lic about what they’re doing. It’s real­ly not some­thing that is appro­pri­ate. And thank­ful­ly we have the Supreme Court case from last year that upholds that right of donors to give pri­vate­ly. But we know we’ll see more and more efforts to con­tin­ue that. So the Round­table is work­ing hard to push back against those efforts. We also see, you know, efforts at the fed­er­al lev­el to tar­get cer­tain vehi­cles for giv­ing. One is Donor-Advised Funds. So, you know, those are real­ly flex­i­ble tools that donors real­ly like to use because they allow them a lot of flex­i­bil­i­ty, less admin­is­tra­tive bur­den. We see peo­ple try­ing to force these tools into giv­ing in a cer­tain time­line, only giv­ing in a cer­tain way. We see pri­vate foun­da­tions tar­get­ed and not able to give through those vehi­cles any­more, which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, would real­ly have a huge effect. Because dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, a lot of pri­vate foun­da­tions used Donor-Advised Funds to pool their fund­ing to get mon­ey out more quick­ly into com­mu­ni­ties. So it’s things like that that will be hurt. And that bill that we’re par­tic­u­lar­ly watch­ing at the fed­er­al lev­el is the King-Grass­ley Bill or the ACE Act. And it is tar­get­ing both Donor-Advised Funds and pri­vate foun­da­tions. And again, this is gonna end up hurt­ing peo­ple on the ground who are in need. And that’s what we’re con­cerned about. We wan­na spark more gen­eros­i­ty and encour­age more giv­ing, not, you know, force peo­ple to give on a cer­tain time­line or in a cer­tain way, which ulti­mate­ly means less mon­ey going into char­i­ta­ble causes.

- Yeah, inter­est­ing. Now you’ve said a lot there to unpack. I would think for many of us, you know, when you respond to the Unit­ed Way or when you give to the Sal­va­tion Army or some of these oth­er com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions that we talked about, or your local school or church or syn­a­gogue that you’re not think­ing about the legal frame­work of this or the pol­i­cy issues of this. So you talk about, you know, things like donor dis­clo­sure. I said: Well okay, I gave to my church. Did they have to dis­close me as a church mem­ber or a donor? Nev­er thought about that. And, you know, you’re giv­ing out of, as we said ear­li­er, an expres­sion of val­ue. So that’s a pret­ty inter­est­ing ele­ment. I’ll go to Donor-Advised Funds next. But talk about that idea that at some point, you know, because foun­da­tions and many char­i­ta­ble activ­i­ties have a lot of tax report­ing and fil­ing and dis­clo­sures, there’s a lot of that. But there are cer­tain­ly some oth­er orga­ni­za­tions that don’t. Help us, help our audi­ence under­stand maybe that dif­fer­ence a lit­tle bit more.

- Right, so pri­vate foun­da­tions are required to file a 990-PF which dis­clos­es their giv­ing for the year. I, hav­ing run a pri­vate foun­da­tion, have done-

- You know all about that, don’t you?

- Know all about that. That being said, there were times where as a pri­vate foun­da­tion where we would give to a Donor-Advised Fund for very good rea­sons. Some­times it was per­son­al safe­ty. We were giv­ing to an orga­ni­za­tion, for instance, to fight extrem­ism or ter­ror­ism. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, that can get you on a list of being, you know, tar­get­ed by ter­ror­ists. So it’s kind of a scary thing. That is one rea­son we would give in that way and give through a Donor-Advised Fund. We also had some giv­ing that was a lit­tle bit out of the ordi­nary. And we did­n’t wan­na receive unso­licit­ed requests from sim­i­lar places because it was­n’t typ­i­cal. We did­n’t wan­na sig­nal the wrong thing to the com­mu­ni­ty by dis­clos­ing that type of gift. So pri­vate foun­da­tions use Donor-Advised Funds for pri­va­cy rea­sons or oth­er rea­sons as well. This bill will not allow that to con­tin­ue, which is part of what con­cerns us. In terms of indi­vid­ual donors, you can give anony­mous­ly. Obvi­ous­ly, Donor-Advised Funds allow that and, I think, add an extra lay­er of pro­tec­tion in doing that. Because some­times, the orga­ni­za­tion itself does­n’t know who advised that gift. So it kind of pro­tects you from, you know, being dis­closed even to the orga­ni­za­tion itself. The Supreme Court case last year was about Sched­ule Bs, which are filed by an orga­ni­za­tion and list major con­trib­u­tors. That is dis­closed, but it can only be request­ed by cer­tain par­ties if there’s a very com­pelling rea­son to do so. So if there’s crim­i­nal activ­i­ty involved or there’s cer­tain rea­sons why that can be request­ed. And we saw some states try­ing to request it for arbi­trary rea­sons. And that’s what the Supreme Court case was all about. It was say­ing: You can’t do that. You can’t request it for no rea­son. There has to be a com­pelling rea­son to request that infor­ma­tion. So we’re real­ly encour­aged to see the Supreme Court uphold that right of donors, of indi­vid­ual donors. But it’s some­thing to just con­tin­ue to watch because states will con­tin­ue to push that issue. And it’ll have to be chal­lenged over and over again.

- So it seems to me though, isn’t this an inter­est­ing con­nec­tion? We’re talk­ing about pri­va­cy rights in so many aspects. We’re doing so many things to respect peo­ple’s pri­va­cy, whether it’s in med­ical or tech­nol­o­gy or what­ev­er. But this would seem to be kind of going against that grain. Would­n’t it? That where you give, whether it is time, tal­ent, in this case it would be trea­sure, that dis­clos­ing for a non-com­pelling rea­son would seem to fly in the face of the direc­tion of so many oth­er things. Am I miss­ing that?

- No, I think that’s very true. And I think it’s just a mis­guid­ed way to think about this. And unfor­tu­nate­ly, you know, we do see… I think it ties in with some of the broad­er cul­tur­al issues that we’re fac­ing as a coun­try. The idea that, you know, cap­i­tal­ism and wealth cre­ation are neg­a­tive things, and that we’re try­ing to sort of bring down those peo­ple or out and shame those peo­ple and real­ly force them into the pub­lic square. I think that’s the sort of rea­son­ing behind it. And it’s very concerning.

- Yeah, yeah it sure would be. And so just a reminder, we’re talk­ing with Elise West­hoff, the CEO and Pres­i­dent of the Phil­an­thropy Round­table, about char­i­ty and the role it plays in Amer­i­ca, the sig­nif­i­cance of it. We were just kind of talk­ing about the pri­va­cy aspects of it. But, you know, let me explore just a lit­tle bit more with regards to this Donor-Advised Funds. So I think, well, let me do a cou­ple things. One, we’ve been talk­ing a lot about pub­lic pol­i­cy issues and the fact that char­i­ta­ble giv­ing is built into our tax code. And there’s a lot of pol­i­cy aspects, which would sug­gest to me that peo­ple have been think­ing about the pos­i­tive or, poten­tial­ly, some of the neg­a­tive things that peo­ple would use in char­i­ty to mask inap­pro­pri­ate activ­i­ties or to try to take advan­tage of the tax code. It would appear that there’s been, you know, a lot of dis­clo­sure and infor­ma­tion, inap­pro­pri­ate but lim­it­ed ways, to make sure that peo­ple don’t abuse this right in the tax code in the past. Would that be accu­rate to kind of say that, that there’s been enough? There is a lot of report­ing. There are the things that have to be done in that regard. Is that some­what accurate?

- Yes, and there are lim­i­ta­tions to what pub­lic char­i­ties are allowed to do, right? So, you know, they are not allowed to par­tic­i­pate in polit­i­cal activ­i­ty. And I think some of the crit­i­cism you see… And by the way, this isn’t all com­ing from one side. I think, you know, the left and the right have con­tributed in this crit­i­cism. And I think some of it, you know, is a real­ly fair dis­cus­sion to have. At what point do you cross over into polit­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry? Because that is not the role of a pub­lic char­i­ty, to be involved in pol­i­tics. And, you know, when we see orga­ni­za­tions that are, for instance, there to get out the vote, but they’re only tar­get­ing areas with their own polit­i­cal par­ty, that gets a lit­tle on the edge of: Well, hold on a minute. Are you try­ing to get more peo­ple involved in the vot­ing process or you’re try­ing to win an elec­tion? Because that starts to sort of hit the line. And I think there is some­thing fair to crit­i­cize there.

- Well, I love that you’ve touched this and you’ve kept the dis­cus­sion above a polit­i­cal, or a left or right issue. And that’s real­ly impor­tant in all the dis­cus­sions that we try to have here. We’re try­ing to look at it and under­stand dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and get to the high­er-lev­eled issue of ideas of pri­va­cy, of com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment and involve­ment, and rec­og­nize that both sides will try to use dif­fer­ent laws for their advan­tage and to the dis­ad­van­tage of the oth­er. So when you’re talk­ing about these things, I real­ly appre­ci­ate that you are look­ing at it in such a broad per­spec­tive. And that’s why an orga­ni­za­tion like the Phil­an­thropy Round­table is so impor­tant in this debate. Because it joins with peo­ple across the polit­i­cal spec­trum. Because peo­ple across the polit­i­cal spec­trum have become very suc­cess­ful and have giv­en mon­ey, whether it’s at a large lev­el or a mod­est lev­el. It’s not dri­ven by their pol­i­tics. It’s dri­ven by their val­ues. Is that what you see?

- Oh, absolute­ly. And, you know, I always say this. But I would pro­tect any­one’s right to give pri­vate­ly whether they were giv­ing to a pro-life orga­ni­za­tion or Planned Par­ent­hood, or any­thing along the spec­trum. It is a fun­da­men­tal right. And, you know, I think it does­n’t mat­ter which side of the spec­trum you’re on. It goes beyond that. We will still fight to pro­tect that. And on this issue, we have part­ners, to your point, all across the polit­i­cal ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum that work with us to fight for this right. Because they know it is fun­da­men­tal to the Amer­i­can tra­di­tion of philanthropy.

- I love that. We did­n’t talk about a polit­i­cal side of giv­ing. We talked about it as an Amer­i­can. These ideas touch every­body. So let’s dive into that. So thank you for unpack­ing that because there’s a lot of pol­i­cy issues here. And espe­cial­ly, if I can do one more thing, help us with Donor-Advised Funds. So this is a way for donors of all lev­els, $10, $100, to kind of give towards a fund that’s mis­sion ori­ent­ed. Am I under­stand­ing that correctly?

- So Donor-Advised Funds, you’ll find a lot of dif­fer­ent types of them. They are char­i­ta­ble accounts. You will find ones that are mis­sion ori­ent­ed. You will find ones that are kind of com­mu­ni­ty foun­da­tions in com­mu­ni­ties. You will find ones that are housed at big banks. You know, it’s more of the tool itself. It’s a char­i­ta­ble account. It allows a donor to give very flex­i­bly to orga­ni­za­tions pri­vate­ly if they so choose. It’s just a vehi­cle for giv­ing. A pri­vate foun­da­tion can be very dif­fi­cult to set up. Not every­one can afford it. And you know, it’s real­ly for donors who have a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey to invest. Donor-Advised Funds are for any­one. You can open one at some places for $100. There’s no min­i­mum. But they allow peo­ple to say: I want to invest in char­i­ta­ble giv­ing because all of the mon­ey that goes into Donor-Advised Funds must go to a pub­lic char­i­ty. It’s irrev­o­ca­bly des­ig­nat­ed for a pub­lic char­i­ty. And it allows peo­ple to say: Maybe I wan­na do that all at once. Maybe I wan­na do that over a peri­od of years and treat it almost like a pri­vate foun­da­tion would where they’re dis­trib­ut­ing over a peri­od of time. Maybe you wan­na accu­mu­late some mon­ey in the Donor-Advised Fund so that you can do some­thing big for your alma mater or for a hos­pi­tal, you can set up a schol­ar­ship at some point. So it’s a real­ly flex­i­ble vehi­cle. You get a tax ben­e­fit up front. But you can give flex­i­bly over a peri­od of time. And the admin­is­tra­tive costs are much low­er than set­ting up a pri­vate foun­da­tion. So it’s a vehi­cle we wan­na see a lot more of and we are see­ing a lot more of. It’s tremen­dous­ly pop­u­lar. They’re grow­ing just leaps and bounds over the years because of this flex­i­bil­i­ty that it allows donors.

- Yeah, very help­ful. Thank you for that. Flex­i­bil­i­ty and acces­si­bil­i­ty. As you’ve said, when we talk about phil­an­thropy, you may think of the Rock­e­fellers or the Carne­gies, all these names, Gates or oth­ers, which is great. But it’s also peo­ple who are giv­ing $10, $100, $1,000. They’ve worked their whole lives for things. They’re very focused on some­thing. And this is a vehi­cle, in a way, to do it. So as we kind of build off of that, I think for our audi­ence and for the mis­sion of the Phil­an­thropy Round­table, we just want to encour­age giv­ing. I think one of the bar­ri­ers, or I won­der if one of the bar­ri­ers that hap­pens if peo­ple say, ​“Boy, these prob­lems are big. ​“What can I do?” And I would like to say, what­ev­er you can do, do some­thing. Is that kind of how you talk about and think about things as well?

- Oh, absolute­ly. I think, again, going back to the pan­dem­ic, this was just such a great illus­tra­tion of what hap­pens dur­ing times of cri­sis in our coun­try. You know, I can just give a per­son­al anec­dote. I had a fam­i­ly mem­ber, a young fam­i­ly mem­ber, cousin of mine, sec­ond cousin, who set up a non­prof­it to sew med­ical gowns when there weren’t enough med­ical gowns in the hos­pi­tals. And she and her friends all got togeth­er and, you know, they were doing vir­tu­al school and they had extra time. And so they start­ed sewing gowns and they got more peo­ple to do it. That’s neigh­bor help­ing neigh­bor. You know, those are the kinds of sto­ries that were real­ly inspir­ing to see dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and dur­ing real­ly any time of cri­sis. And not only is it ful­fill­ing for the peo­ple on the receiv­ing end, it’s very ful­fill­ing for the per­son doing the work. Because it feels like in a time of cri­sis, you often feel lost. What can I do? You feel hope­less. And this is a way to actu­al­ly put that hope­less­ness into action and make a dif­fer­ence. And that’s some­thing that I think brings joy and hap­pi­ness to the peo­ple who are givers and the peo­ple who are receiv­ing. So it’s a won­der­ful thing to see. And no mat­ter how much mon­ey you have, it does­n’t mat­ter. You can find a way to be involved and to help peo­ple who are in need.

- I love that sto­ry. You’re spot on. I’ll share just anoth­er one. And so many hap­pened here local­ly in Grand Rapids in a sim­i­lar way. But one of the things we did at Amway was, you know, a lot of folks in our per­son­al care man­u­fac­tur­ing said, ​“We wan­na make hand san­i­tiz­er. ​“We don’t know how to make hand san­i­tiz­er. ​“We’re gonna fig­ure it out. ​“We’re gonna switch our machines over.” And every­body, every­body involved in the man­u­fac­tur­ing process: the sci­en­tists, every­one jumped to it. And with­in, you know, I think 20 or 30 days, we were doing that and deliv­er­ing it. Nobody thought about, is this a good tax thing or not? Nobody thought about, what’s the legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions, cer­tain­ly prod­uct safe­ty, but they just want­ed to give. It was just in their hearts, and just like your cousin, just want­ed to give. Peo­ple at church­es and com­mu­ni­ty cen­ters across were sewing masks and doing things. So while there was a lot of chal­lenge with the pan­dem­ic, like you said, giv­ing increased. You see that. So let’s cel­e­brate that. How do you cel­e­brate that at the Phil­an­thropy Round­table or in this space? Do you have a chance to kind of just cel­e­brate and rec­og­nize and cheer peo­ple on and encour­age peo­ple at all lev­els to be givers?

- Absolute­ly. I mean, we love cel­e­brat­ing sto­ries like that and sto­ries big and small real­ly of peo­ple who are par­tic­i­pat­ing and giv­ing. We try to, you know, just incor­po­rate that as much as we can into our web­site and oth­er ways that we com­mu­ni­cate with our donors and peo­ple in the pub­lic, the gen­er­al pub­lic, and real­ly lift up the excep­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions that maybe you don’t know about, maybe you don’t hear about because they’re not the ones that are out… They don’t have maybe the bud­get to go out and toot their own horn. But they’re doing excep­tion­al work. And we try to find those dia­monds in the rough and real­ly bring them to our com­mu­ni­ty who’s look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to invest in great caus­es, either through our events or webi­na­rs or dif­fer­ent, you know, oth­er ways that we com­mu­ni­cate. We love sto­ries because that’s what brings all of these con­cepts to life. And real­ly, that’s what a strong civ­il soci­ety is about is find­ing those excel­lent orga­ni­za­tions, those tru­ly won­der­ful human beings who are giv­ing because they’re pas­sion­ate, because they believe in what they’re doing and who are real­ly help­ing the peo­ple in need on the ground. And that’s what all of us who are involved in phil­an­thropy are here to do. And it’s real­ly inspir­ing to see.

- You know, that’s the inspi­ra­tion that we have to take away. And maybe as we kind of bring this dis­cus­sion to a bit of a close, this idea of a civ­il soci­ety, of build­ing com­mu­ni­ty and a sense of belong­ing, the foun­da­tion­al aspect is that you don’t look out­side of your com­mu­ni­ty for that to hap­pen. You look inside of your com­mu­ni­ty. You look to your neigh­bor. And you look to peo­ple around you who are clos­est to the chal­lenge. You know, one of the things I’ve always cel­e­brat­ed as you talk about this, and what I’ve noticed in char­i­ty is you have some that they give kind of out of oblig­a­tion. But you have oth­ers that are start­ing and they’re new and, if I could say from a busi­ness per­spec­tive, their entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it in this space is just infec­tious. They’ve giv­en up every­thing else to be able to help their neigh­bors. And they’ve found a new way to do it bet­ter and to get bet­ter results and have bet­ter impact. Do you have any sto­ries, or can you give us a per­spec­tive on how you see that? Because it’s so much more than just mon­ey. It’s peo­ple’s hearts.

- Oh, absolute­ly. You know, I just start­ed a new series called ​“Doers to Donors.” And it’s talk­ing about the entre­pre­neur­ial spir­it of Amer­i­cans and how they bring that to their phil­an­thropy. So peo­ple who have built busi­ness­es who are now giv­ing their mon­ey away vol­un­tar­i­ly. And, you know, my first guest was one of my heroes, Bernie Mar­cus, the co-founder of The Home Depot. And hear­ing him talk about the entre­pre­neur­ial ways he thinks about his giv­ing, but also his pas­sion for phil­an­thropy. I mean, this is some­thing that he wakes up think­ing about and goes to bed think­ing about is how to help peo­ple in need. And the things that he has done with his phil­an­thropy. To give you a cou­ple of exam­ples, he has thought a lot about how to help our nation heroes, our vet­er­ans. He real­ly is con­cerned about the cri­sis of men­tal health with­in that par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty. And the inno­va­tion and fresh ideas that he has brought to that space, to help­ing peo­ple who have trau­mat­ic brain injury, PTSD, depres­sion, the sui­cide epi­dem­ic that is fac­ing the vet­er­an com­mu­ni­ty. He has pio­neered a whole new way of think­ing about how to help peo­ple who are strug­gling in that space. And not only will it help vet­er­ans, it will help peo­ple, you know, across the coun­try. So he’s devel­oped these new mod­els and new ways of think­ing. And it’s sim­ply because of his pas­sion. And because, as we talked about ear­li­er in the pod­cast, these are peo­ple who have come here with noth­ing and have built so much. And they want oth­er peo­ple to expe­ri­ence the Amer­i­can dream the way that they have. And so, his pas­sion around that is infec­tious. And I hope any­one who’s inter­est­ed will check out my inter­view with Bernie. Because he’s tru­ly an extra­or­di­nary human being.

- That’s fan­tas­tic. Check it out, ​“Doers to Donors.” And I would sug­gest every­one lis­ten­ing. Every­one in this coun­try is a doer and they have that heart to be a donor. And that’s the mes­sage I think we’re try­ing to get through here, that there’s a spe­cial role for peo­ple to seek out an oppor­tu­ni­ty to impact and touch the lives of oth­er peo­ple to help them achieve their poten­tial. And that’s what we’re talk­ing about. That’s what the Phil­an­thropy Round­table does. That’s what Elise West­hoff has done in her life and is doing in her lead­er­ship there. And Elise, this has just been a won­der­ful time of learn­ing. There’s a lot to it. It’s hard to be a giv­er. There’s a lot of pol­i­cy issues around it. It’s in the pub­lic space. But it’s still a mat­ter of a per­son­’s heart, and giv­ing. So maybe share with us some of your thoughts, your last words of encour­age­ment for us about how to engage in this space, how to share, how to give with our time, tal­ent, and trea­sure, and how to real­ly cel­e­brate and make an impact.

- Yeah, I total­ly agree with you. Phil­an­thropy, char­i­ta­ble giv­ing, is all about your heart. So the first place to start is what makes you pas­sion­ate and what makes you excit­ed? And then, you know, again, look around you and think about the things, the prob­lems that you see and how those relate to your pas­sions and your strengths and what you feel you can con­tribute, whether it’s time, tal­ent, trea­sure, vol­un­teer­ing. One of the most mean­ing­ful expe­ri­ences for me has been my deci­sion to become a men­tor for a youth in the fos­ter care sys­tem. And the expe­ri­ence that you get from doing that, the learn­ing you expe­ri­ence from doing that of real­ly engag­ing humbly with a per­son who has real­ly walked in dif­fer­ent shoes than you have is a tru­ly inspir­ing expe­ri­ence and some­thing that you can learn so much from. So I would encour­age every­one to think about what makes them pas­sion­ate and excit­ed and what their val­ues are, and find­ing an orga­ni­za­tion where you can give of your time, tal­ent, or trea­sure. And I promise that you’ll receive more than you give.

- Won­der­ful. Thank you for those words of wis­dom. Elise West­hoff, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the Phil­an­thropy Round­table. Elise, thank you so much for your time and engag­ing with us and help­ing us under­stand this space. And thank you for your lead­er­ship and your encour­age­ment and your ener­gy to encour­age us all to be doers and donors all at the same time. We’d love to have you back and keep this con­ver­sa­tion going because we wan­na keep Amer­i­ca giv­ing and touch­ing each oth­er along the way, right?

- Absolute­ly, thank you so much for hav­ing me. It’s been such a plea­sure to talk with you.

- Great, thank you. Thank you, Elise. And thank you all for join­ing us on Believe. Just a won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion about how we can con­nect with our neigh­bors, neigh­bor to neigh­bor, won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ties here. So thank you for join­ing us on Believe. And we look for­ward to con­nect­ing with you soon. Thanks everybody.