Last week I was having coffee with two amazing and insightful people at my favourite local coffee shop - @CaffeRosso in Ramsay. @MicheleFGartner and Bob McInnis, Executive Director of @brownbaggingit, and I were talking about donor motivations and charity trends around fundraising and identifying other revenue streams.  At some point during the conversation Michele identified that "Feel-Good Philanthropy" can have a negative downstream effect on overall grant-making because it does not look at a foundations overall social strategy.

I tweeted with her about this afterwards and her comment was that everyone has a "Feel-Good Quotient".  And that one cannot completely separate the emotion from the giving.  That makes sense, since a charitable donation is a tangible response to an emotional experience.  This begs further exploration - at what point does a donor move from being a "Feel-Good" philanthropist to an adaptive or strategic philanthropist?

In further reflection I turned to the writings of Amy Kass.  I was introduced to Amy at the Advisors in Philanthropy conference earlier this year. Amy is a professor at the University of Chicago and her focus is on the philosophy of philanthropy.  In 2002 she published a book The Perfect Gift: The Philanthropic Imagination in Poetry and Prose.  It is in this book that I found historical insight on the moment that an individual moves from the emotional response of giving to the thoughtful response of giving.

The source I gravitated towards is one from Aristotle.  Aristotle argues that virtue is what "governs the desire to give and receive material goods."  Aristotle (through Kass) explains that excessive giving is extravagance and that insufficient giving is stinginess.  A generous person is someone who can distinguish the right amount to give AND identify the right person/charity to give this to.

In this regard, a truly generous person is conscious of when s/he moves from the "Feel-Good" grant-making to strategic, impact focused of grant-making.

Can you tell the difference? Do you, as a donor, know when you have moved from purely an emotional response to a thoughtful and meaningful community investment?