Giving Compass' Take:

• This Nonprofit Quarterly blog post examines recent arguments from Winners Take All author Anand Giridharadas about the contradictions in corporate philanthropy, specifically when it comes to big banks that contributed to widespread economic turmoil ten years ago.

• Are nonprofits complicit in the cycle of propping up financial institutions that cause the very problems they're trying to solve? If so, how can organizations break that cycle?

• Here's why we need less elite philanthropy and more democracy.

Is much of corporate philanthropy just a smokescreen that masks corporate greed? As we have covered at NPQ, it is not uncommon for corporate philanthropy to be strategically charitable — the recent uptick in pharmaceutical company donations in the wake of the opioid epidemic being a case in point.

Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, illustrates how these dynamics have played out in the banking sector. In a New Yorker essay, he asks us to consider the role of large banks in helping bring on the Great Recession alongside their major efforts as founders of charitable ventures.

In 2007, Goldman Sachs, a pillar of the nation’s investment banking sector, announced it was launching Goldman Sachs Gives (GS Gives) as an expression of the bank’s "ongoing commitment to philanthropy." As cited by Giridharadas, the New York Times described the new venture as "part of a Goldman heritage that 'discouraged ostentation and expected a level of philanthropy.'" The bank’s president, Lloyd Blankfein, told the Times, "We know we make a lot of money and we know that we live in this world and we have a responsibility to give something back." Since its launch, GS Gives, a donor-advised fund pooling the personal contributions of Goldman executives, has been quite generous, "making $1.3 billion in grants and partnering with 6,000 nonprofits in 80 countries around the world."

As GS Gives was launched, the nation’s economy was crashing. Fueled by a housing bubble and mortgage practices that exacerbated it, the Great Recession cost millions their jobs, homes, and savings. Since Goldman Sachs was kept from failing, its top executives have prospered and can continue to contribute to GS Gives and other charities. Its customers were not all so fortunate.

Read the full article about lessons on philanthropy and the Great Recession by Martin Levine at nonprofitquarterly.org.