Sep 06, 2007

Making Your Contribution

by Laura Starita

The fascination with wealth, as it is represented by popular media, generally focuses on the acquisitive side of things: yachts, mansions, cars, clothes. Little is discussed about the insecurity of wealth. Difficult as it may be to believe, people in top income brackets also worry about money: That they might not have enough to sustain their lifestyles or to leave to their children. Studies on high net worth individuals - a category generally defined as those with more than $5 million in non-real-estate assets - show that the very wealthy consistently claim that only if they had twice as much money, they would feel confident in their wealth. This insecurity may explain why very wealthy individuals are less generous as a percentage of their income than the less affluent. And its paradoxical cure may be to give more - in dollar amounts and personal involvement.

A recent Financial Times article touches on wealth insecurity in a profile of Abigail Disney, philanthropist and an heir to the Disney family fortune. She talks about her first forays into philanthropic work nearly two decades ago. At the time, she says she was feeling isolated, as the result of her dissertation work and as a consequence of living a life of extreme wealth. Volunteering for an organization that helped AIDS orphans pulled her out of her malaise. “I think I was just hungry for humans and relevance in a sense that anything I was doing was mattering,” she says. Disney went on to become chairwoman of the New York Women’s Foundation (NYWF), and recently cajoled a NYWF audience to “give ‘till it hurts.” Yet she concedes that for a long time, she had difficulty giving large gifts. “I simply had a very mundane problem that a lot of women in my position have, which is I was afraid of [money]. It felt like I was going to make it all go away, it really felt like one of those little spores that you touch and it turns to powder. I really had a genuine fear that I was going to be a bag lady.” By coupling confidence in her money-managing power with a cause she believed in, Disney became a force in New York philanthropy.

Disney’s message may be that it is not making a difference that matters so much as making your difference - the one that is important to you and for which you have skills or passion. That also seems to be the message in Bill Clinton’s new book, Giving, which was released last week. Giving profiles dozens of philanthropic initiatives that have created positive change in the world. The sheer variety of endeavor validates not only the huge humanitarian activity of the Gateses, Carters, and, yes, Clintons of the world, but also that of everyday people. In short, one need not possess the wealth of Abigail Disney to positively change lives. And a lot of good - for both the giver and the recipient - can come from giving.

Financial Times:Financial Times: The joy of giving till it hurts

Newsday: Bill Clinton’s inspiring book on ‘Giving’