This presentation was delivered to the HSBC Private Banking
and Investments Forum in New York on October 28, 1998.

In recent years, industry has been sharing its expertise with family foundations. Experts from business have been helping family foundations to arrange giving formulas, do site analyses, and manage the techniques and impact of giving.

Few enterprises, however, are focusing on the more basic questions: Why give? What difference does it make? As people who have chosen to do this work, you have not only asked yourselves those questions, but have also decided to engage those questions at a significant level. I heartily congratulate you on this commitment.

As I said to the family foundations conference about a year ago, you may already have discovered additional family members who had been unknown to you. You may have thought of that as good news and bad news. But really, it is all good news. These newly discovered family members bring new resources that will support your giving strategies. Chances are, they are not going to influence your giving decisions. What is more, discovering them may help you realize that the human endowment you have received from the past is especially bountiful. You may recognize your good fortune in having the opportunity to make substantial change in society because of your access to material wealth. And, just as important, these family members also bring you spiritual wealth. This will enable you to distribute material wealth in ways that are much more powerful and satisfying.

What I am talking about is contained in what I like to call the great wisdom tradition. This tradition was established by the writers whose texts gave us the great, sacred traditions of the major transforming religions. The wisdom tradition also embodies civic texts that have enabled human beings over thousands of years to organize their societies.

As president of Connecticut College, I teach a course in which we study these texts. Some of my students have parents who are homeless. Others have parents who have multiple homes. The idea of the course is to bring them together to recognize their common ancestors. Learning about their common heritage will enable them to provide more meaningful and substantial leadership in the 21^st century.

One of these texts comes from Deuteronomy, where the prophet says, "Justice, only justice, that you may thrive." The prophet does not say, "Justice, only justice, that you may be seen as pleasing God," or "Justice, only justice, that you may be with God in heaven." The prophet is a real pragmatist. Maybe he had a family foundation, because he pragmatically associates justice with thriving, with prosperity, with the here and now.

The call to justice encompasses the call to prosperity. Justice and prosperity are linked. The prophet tells us that with one, you will experience the other. And if you pursue prosperity in the absence of justice, you won't get there.

Maimonides, the great prophet who comes out of the same tradition as the prophet in Deuteronomy, lays out the eight stages of tzedakah, or generosity. Maimonides is not content simply to make a general statement like, "Justice, only justice, that you may thrive." In a tract on agriculture, he describes the eight stages of generosity that people who have wealth ought to use in order to achieve a strong society. Incidentally, Jacob Neusner has written a wonderful, slim book on this subject that is really worth the time you would spend with it.

The least admirable level of tzedakah, as described by Maimonides, is to give as little as you can get away with, as infrequently as possible, as publicly as possible, and as derisively to the recipient as possible. However, Maimonides would still give some credit for that kind of giving because a gift is actually being transferred. The individual is not transformed by the gift, but it still counts. If that is the best that someone could do, it is all right.

In light of that, you might think that the top stage, the most ideal stage of tzedakah, would be to give as frequently as possible, as generously as one is able, and also anonymously and cheerfully. But you would be wrong. That is the seventh stage of tzedakah. The eighth stage, the most ideal stage of generosity, takes us right back to Deuteronomy.

The ideal stage is to enter into a partnership with those who receive the gift. You must place yourself on equal footing with the recipient; you must stand with that person. And Maimonides says, in fact, to imagine looking at the recipient and seeing the future, a moment when this individual will be the only one with the power to save your whole family. And to image that you have one opportunity to incite and enable this person to get to that place. In this kind of context, how differently giving would occur.

By the way, I am not articulating this view to knock strategies or system. On my campus and in other venues, people know that I am a great proponent of strategic planning and systematic operation. In fact, Connecticut College is the focus of the case study being taught at Harvard on academic management. I do not want you to think I am saying we should just think about these high-flown thoughts and not have a good system for giving.

But Maimonides is telling us that there is more to giving than the transformational aspect of the gift in its new site. What happens to the giver and what happens to the relationships among human beings when a gift is given also are significant. These factors, while attending to a material need, also are directed toward a spiritual transformation.

When I say spiritual, I am not locking into any given religious tradition. But I am indicating the significance of the human spirit. I am focusing on the degree to which the relationships among us, while they involve the material, must principally involve a spirit of relationship. This requires a willingness to aspire together. This means a willingness to recognize that all people aspire to the same kinds of opportunities for their children.

All of us fear pain and death. All of us will suffer. In that commonality, which is absent the material, our ability to find one another and forge lasting relationships is as significant as the relationships that are built on the transfer of wealth and the mediation of problems in the world that are caused by deprivation.

Maimonides understands that relationships are what sanctify and strengthen the human community. In order to make a difference, the gift must be made in the context of a profound commitment to the human spirit.

Of course, the great Hebrew tradition of giving is one of the most wonderful assets in the human community. And, as I have studied it over the years, I have seen the influence of the commitment to text, and the engagement of text, and the deep knowledge of the text that the people of the book convey generation after generation. It behooves not only the families of this tradition but other families not to move away from those texts, even though we may have struggles over the ways in which a religion is practiced. It would be a terrible deprivation to move away from the richness of the great text of Torah.

As we move into the Christian texts, Christ brings forward a story of loving your neighbor. Love one another, he says, as I have loved you. The key story in this regard is the story of the Good Samaritan. Again, this is such a pragmatic story. In the story, Jesus is answering a question — it is from a lawyer, so he has to be careful — "Who is my neighbor?"

In answering the question, Jesus does not begin to describe who his neighbor is. Instead, he tells about a businessman walking to Jericho who comes upon a person who had been robbed and beaten. In the story, the businessman continues on his way. He addresses his neighbor's need and provides for his neighbor by paying the hotelier and then by announcing that the hotelier can expect to be paid for whatever else is spent while he, the Good Samaritan, goes on to complete his business day.

Sacred texts like this contain a lot more pragmatism than we probably absorbed when we learned them as children. In the case of the Good Samaritan, he does not attend to the injured man himself, but he sees to it that the right thing is done. He recognizes that it remains his responsibility to pay the hotelier. In doing so, he becomes the person who is connected in spirit to all others. If we found ourselves in a position of need, all of us would want the Good Samaritan to walk by us. In fact, that is exactly the relationship that Christ calls us to when he defines neighbor.

Moving along in the three faiths of Abraham, we touch briefly on the Koran. Among the five pillars of Islam, the second is zachat, charity. In the works of Mohammed, charity is second only to praising God among the obligations of all people. As described by Mohammed, zachat shows that you love God by loving those for whom you are responsible and all others in the world.

There are two kinds of zachat. One is a tithe that everyone must give, even the poorest person. The other is reserved for those who have bounty beyond need. They are expected to provide for others so that the community can be strong and so that they, themselves, can be pleasing in God's sight.

Mohammed says you will sustain and grow your wealth at the rate at which you give it away. This is God's blessing. Mohammed's words are similar to those of the prophet of Deuteronomy and those of Jesus in the story of the Good Samaritan. Giving is not only destined to have some impact on the next life. Giving is designed to have a measurable, significant impact on this life, and on the giver and the giver's family and associates.

These texts show us the relationship between self and other and society. They have been calling us exactly to the moment that we are able to see coming now. This is the moment when we can actually organize ourselves to enable giving to occur in strategic and systematic ways to improve society. We can be conscious of teaching it in our communities and to our children, so they will understand the relationship between material improvements in the world and spiritual improvements in the spirit of individuals.

To digress for a moment, most of us know families where there is no material want, but where there is cynicism, disappointment, rivalry, skepticism and selfishness. One wants to ask, how can this be, when these people are not hampered by material problems? The answer emerges from something Mother Theresa said when she first came to this country. She was shocked when she met with people whom she expected would be totally happy because they were living without material want. She said the poverty in India was easier to address than the poverty here because the poverty in India could be addressed by food and shelter and medicine, but the poverty here was poverty of the spirit.

It is much more difficult to address poverty when people feel collapsed into themselves, without the deep relationships with others that a more generous life calls out of us. Significantly, I know that those of you with families are drawn to ways to enable the wealth that you control to be a source of strength to your children — not only material strength, but spiritual strength.

In a book that I am writing, the first chapters focus on the faiths of Abraham. Then I look at the Confucian and Hindu faiths, to include the wisdom of the East. I will touch on these religions briefly.

Confucianism calls for relationships called bonds. You can only develop yourself into a whole person, using all of your talents to the fullest, if you participate actively in generous bonds of relationship with others at different levels.

The relationship to parents and to children is based on the bond of loyalty, filiality, in the family. The relationship to the community is based on sharing common work. How many of you engaged in philanthropy are sharing the common work of seeing to the distribution of medical assistance or food? You are sharing work in the community to address the needs of others.

Next comes the relationship to the nation. The same kind of bond must be expressed in strengthening the nation so there is order. Because of the absence of order in the Confucian tradition, chaos enters and destructive forces are released.

Finally, the individual must have a relationship with the cosmos — with the universe at the largest level. That is where the individual must forecast what he or she does in terms of what we now call sustainability. Is what I am doing now going to sustain the cosmos? Or will it create implosion and damage?

The Confucian mind-set quickly establishes this four-part relationship. In this context, a person making a decision learns to examine how the decision works on each of those levels. The decision maker is constantly in contact with these levels. The individual is not isolated, not flying solo. The decision is everyone's because it impacts everyone. In order to make decisions in the Confucian manner, your spirit must call you to that work. You cannot practice Confucian spiritual development without making those touches.

The relevant concept from the Hindu texts is Ahisma. According to this concept, I am connected through the bond of love to all living things and everything on which living things depend. Consequently, I can do no damage.

As Gandhi brought the concept of Ahisma into the 20th century in his most powerful personal testimony, he gave us an entirely new way of dealing with injustice and inequity. Instead of using the structures that had been established in the West — the Roman and Greek heritage of combat — Gandhi brought forward the notion of non-violence, of patience, of long suffering. He drew attention to a way of being in the world that was revolutionary in the West.

The infusion of thought from the East has had an enormous impact on the history of the 20^th century. In fact, I don't think this impact will be clearly understood until scholars who are not yet born begin doing their work in the late 21^st century. Reflecting on the 20^th century, they will be able to see strands of thought from the West becoming intertwined with strands from the East, transforming our understanding of how human beings can be in the world—not just what we can do in the world.

What I am talking about, as I reflect on these five religious traditions, is finding a balance between doing in the world and being in the world. There is something about the spectacular tradition of the West, which is often focused on doing, particularly in the modern world. It is as though we had decided, somehow, that instead of being human beings, we could classify ourselves as human doings.

You know, all of us have a "to do" list. But how many of us keep a "how to be" list? There are always things we have to do. Often they focus our attention so intently that they distract us from who we are being. Every year I say to my students at graduation, "You have had this kind of education because you are called to be different in the world, not simply to do in the world."

This education focuses on high intellectual achievement, but it also involves giving students a set of humane skills. We teach them conflict management and negotiation, authentic speaking, team building. We put them into a variety of service settings and we ask them to reflect on these experiences. We want them to see themselves as individuals who, wherever they go, will be people who will transform—not just by what they do, but by who they are in their various communities.

The great spiritual traditions have given us an enormous gift, whether or not they call us to practice a particular religion. In the past 30 years, we have moved away from these traditions, for all sorts of reasons that would take too long to get into today, but that you could probably think of without much prompting. These great traditions need to come out of the closet. We need to re-engage them and re-integrate them so that we can benefit from them as we move forward.

The great civic traditions are equally important. And for the sake of time, I will just trace the Western civic traditions that culminate in the great gift of the American Founding Fathers, and their aspirational texts.

As a place to begin, think back to school and the reading you did about citizenship in ancient Athens. You will remember that Athenians were told there was a test of citizenship. This was a test of participation as a citizen, but what kind of participation? This participation was a call to doing as a citizen. But what was the definition of being an Athenian citizen?

Citizenship required loving Athens more than winning. What a powerful concept. The citizen had to ask himself, "Am I able, as a participating citizen, to show that in the end, if the majority sees differently, I will find other ways to move my ideas forward, and to do so peaceably, because, fundamentally, I love Athens more than myself? Do I love Athens more than my own ego? Will I not be a source of fracture in society? Do I see the common good?"

The concepts in Greek and Roman writings found fruition among a group of men who met in Philadelphia in the 18^th century. They had been educated in the Judeo-Christian tradition and had been influenced by the great thinkers of the European tradition.

These men gave birth to a set of civic documents that were not initially political documents. They were first aspirational and philosophical documents. When our Founding Fathers said that all men were created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they were not describing reality. They were describing reality only at the philosophical level.

At the pragmatic level, they were laying out a destination. The road to get there was shrouded in fog. They only showed us where we needed to be going. But some of the indications in those founding documents did suggest how we could get there.

Phrases like "providing for the common defense," and "promote the general welfare" meant they anticipated that we would share with each other in the pursuit of these ideals, and that we would make sure that others got to be there. The foundation was one of human equality, and the foundation was a call for justice and freedom.

In our modern interpretation of those texts, particularly in the last 100 years, we have tended to focus on rights. We have tended to emphasize individual and personal freedom. In the last eight to 10 years, however, public discourse has been edging over to the other side of those texts, with a focus on the common good and shared responsibility and generosity.

In the last lines of the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers tell us that they commit themselves to the cause. They say, "We pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor." Those are really the key words: our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor. If we believe ourselves to be American citizens, these documents already have pledged all that we have to one another.

The call that you are feeling is a call that emerges from these forbears. These are the spiritual and civic forbears who laid out very clearly the relationship between citizens, between human beings, and between the material and the spiritual worlds. They could have said quite a set of other things. But, in sealing the compact that they signed, their last words were, we pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. That is a call to philanthropy done in a transforming way. It is there for all of us to consider.

If you think back over this century, you would see that one of the most significant periods of social transformation begin in the 1950s. This period began when a young preacher realized that our society had not remained true to the words in those founding documents or to the words of the great spiritual traditions that this country espoused.

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized the gap between the aspirations in those documents and the real experience of the people around him. It was a gap that could not be tolerated. And so, he set out to draw the nation's attention to that gap.

He did not commission a poll to find out whether the late 50's were just the right time to engage the country in a discussion of civil rights. He did not conduct focus groups to determine whether the people were amenable to transferring opportunities from the few to the many. Motivated by his reading, King formed beliefs that he thought were shared by others. Then he took a stand.

If you read his works you will find, as I did, that he has constant recourse to the wisdom tradition. In standing to make a point about a given situation in a given city, like Selma, Alabama, he calls on the great prophets. He calls on Deuteronomy; he calls on Christ and Gandhi; and he calls on our Founding Fathers.

Many of us in this room were kids at that time. We did not realize how weak he felt standing by himself. But he gained strength by bringing the family with him — the family of shared wisdom that stood behind him in the words he quoted as he spoke. Now, he was no longer a solitary black preacher from the South speaking to one audience. He was a spokesman for the great human spirit in its transforming state.

He called all of the family together for a family meeting. Of course, many people didn't want to hear about that aspect of the family. They wanted to keep playing the game as they had always known it. But for many, it was hearing Martin Luther King Jr.'s words and hearing the context of the family foundation behind him that had an impact. This is what moved us to an understanding of the moment and to reconsider our understanding of our family history. His words enabled us to place ourselves in that larger context. We began to question deeply what we were doing and who we were being. Change began — change that we could scarcely have imagined.
The change that began there has moved from this country to the rest of the world — not fast enough, not well enough, but nonetheless it has begun to have an impact worldwide. When the United Nations brought forward a declaration of human rights, it was part of the inexorable movement toward the actualization of the wisdom tradition.

I also teach a course in literature. My students read a novel each week by or about people living in difficult circumstances. They read Ralph Ellison's wonderful Invisible Man. If you haven't read it in the last 10 years, read it. It looks like a fat book, but once you sit down with it, it disappears inside of you at an extraordinary rate. They read Toni Morrison's Bluest Eye. They read My Own Country, by a young doctor who comes from Pakistan to practice in the United States and is sent to East Tennessee, where he engages the first stages of the AIDS epidemic.

They read a whole set of books by or about people in difficult circumstances. Each week they provide three hours of community service with people like those they are reading about in the novels. In that class, we read the text in the books and we read the text in life, and we read those texts together. The students comment and reflect on those texts not only in papers for the course, but in journals that they keep each week.

We begin the course not with novels, but with two weeks on the wisdom tradition. I want my students to see themselves in the context of this great family foundation. I want them to see their common forbears across race and religion and nationality and ethnicity and chronology, and understand that we have one human endowment to which our common forbears have contributed over thousands of years.

My students learn that they may draw down on this endowment. It makes them powerful. It gives them more to give away.

In the book that I am writing, I include a number of my students' reflections on how they have been transformed by learning the wisdom tradition. They have learned from the sacred and civic texts, and they have learned from getting to know people in difficult circumstances. By observing the resilience of these people, they have developed an understanding of how to admire them, how to hope for them, and how to hope with them. Engaging them at a personal level, my students want well-being for them. But they are not only doing for these individuals, they are developing a common sense of being together.

As my students look at the material, both intellectual and personal together, what they find is that they have a different mission in the world. They are less cynical; they are less hopeless. They look at the world around them with more optimism. They see that progress will remain difficult, but that the task under way is worth doing. They learn that they will be able to make headway in the world as they begin their careers, whether it is in Wall Street, medicine, the arts, education, or wherever they decide to go.

In closing, I will offer you some quick thoughts to consider as you engage your own challenges in this area. I encourage you consciously to lay claim to your piece of this great human endowment and bring it into the giving framework in which you are operating. This will enable you and those with whom you are associated to see the relationship between giving to others and strengthening self and family.

See to it that others in your community understand the wisdom tradition. Find ways to build it systematically into your giving structures. One suggestion I would make is to choose some short readings for everyone in your organization to reflect upon. You could bring in someone to talk about these readings. Then, as part of your annual report, members of your organization could write short reflections on the giving that has been done, in terms of the words in the sacred and civic texts that have been selected for that year.

Families also could reflect on these texts. Then, if you put all the written reflections together, you could have a table conversation about them and hold them in the archives, just as you hold other papers. These would be documents that your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren would cherish.

Perhaps without realizing it, people dedicated to philanthropy are following in the footsteps of a long line of predecessors who have articulated and passed along the concepts and values that we live by today. Understanding the wisdom tradition that has been bequeathed to us provides a broader context for this work. Appreciating this heritage also helps us to find common ground with diverse people who approach philanthropy from different traditions.