Charity is personal, relational giving to people whose names you know, while philanthropy is organized giving to causes and populations at a distance, usually through institutions. The words are used as synonyms, but...
Charity is personal, relational giving to people whose names you know, while philanthropy is organized giving to causes and populations at a distance, usually through institutions. The words are used as synonyms, but they come from different roots and do different work. A family needs both, and the order matters: charity forms the character of your children in a way no wire transfer can.
Charity descends from the Latin caritas, the word early translators used for the Greek agape, the self-giving love of 1 Corinthians 13. It is love with a face in front of it. Philanthropy comes from philos plus anthropos, love of mankind in general, and there is the catch: mankind in general does not exist. As You Cannot Outsource Your Charity traces, the industrial age took personal charity and built its scalable substitute, the foundation, the NGO, the one-click donation. Each step made giving more efficient and less incarnate. Dickens diagnosed the end state in 1853 with Mrs Jellyby, whose eyes could see nothing nearer than Africa while her own children tumbled down the stairs. He called it telescopic philanthropy. The telescope is now a smartphone.
The misunderstanding is that philanthropy is charity grown up, the sophisticated version a serious family graduates into. Scripture points the opposite way. "If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?" (1 John 3:17). Sees. The verse assumes proximity. The Jewish tradition of tzedakah reaches the same destination from the side of obligation: Maimonides ranked eight rungs of giving, and the highest is partnership, employing someone or helping them establish themselves so they no longer need to ask. You cannot form a partnership with a stranger on another continent through an intermediary. And institutional giving carries its own long-term hazard, the drift from founder intent that The Ford Foundation Problem documents.
Distant need is real, and a well-run organization can move vaccines and fund slow science no household can. So the argument is proximity first, never proximity only. Distant philanthropy is a discipline of scale. Proximate charity is a discipline of formation, and it cannot be replaced, because children learn generosity from what interrupts the family, never from a giving statement they will never see.
Before the month ends, name one local person or institution your family will know by name, and be known by, within a year. Put the relationship into your family's annual review beside the portfolio, because it is the part of the portfolio that compounds in your children.