The Shifting Landscape of American Generosity
Benjamin Soskis is a senior research associate and the editor of this Generosity Commission report, which aims to understand the world of giving as it exists today, with all its contradictions:
The current moment, then, is a peculiar one, in which we find ourselves freshly surveying a landscape that is both as familiar as millennia-old traditions of person-to-person giving and as novel as the latest giving platform to sprout online. This is a moment to get our bearings, to take stock of the landscape. We are aware that it is changing, even as we recognize its established landmarks. We intuit that some of the changes are likely permanent, while others are reversible. Some we acknowledge as the product of broader social transformations which seem beyond our immediate control, while others we know are
the products of decisions we have made and attitudes we have developed that are within our power to change or to reinforce, if we mobilize to do so. We welcome some of the changes as salutary adaptations—to technological advances or to socioeconomic conditions—while we acknowledge that other changes will likely mean reduced charitable resources making their way to nonprofits across the country, with deleterious consequences for those they serve.
