"Leaving a Legacy of Care."
Paul G. Schervish, John Havens, and Albert Keith Whitaker. Philanthropy.
Vol. 20, no. 1. pp. 11-13. January/February 2006.
A long-held view has been that the only reason the wealthy left money to charity
was to escape the estate tax; remove the tax, and charitable bequests would
plummet. Boston College's Center on Wealth and Philanthropy disputed these predictions,
and our research indicates that as people become more financially secure, incentives
more powerful than taxes incline them to support charity and to limit their
bequests to heirs.
"It Is Better to Receive and to Give."
Paul G. Schervish, John J. Havens, and Albert Keith Whitaker. Philanthropy.
Vol. 20, no. 4. pp. 10-12. July/August 2006.
We now turn from the givers, the estate-holders, to the recipients of gifts
and inheritances. Our analysis of the 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances, sponsored
by the board of governors of the Federal Reserve and released in February 2006,
suggests two main conclusions: the great majority of households have created
most of their wealth, including those who have received gifts or inheritances;
even controlling for wealth and income, recipients of gifts or inheritances
give significantly more to charity than non-recipients.
"Today's Wealth Holder and Tomorrow's Giving: The New Dynamics
of Wealth and Philanthropy."
Paul G. Schervish. Journal of Gift Planning. Vol. 9, no. 3. 3rd Quarter
2005. Pp. 15-37.
Increasing numbers of individuals are approaching, achieiving, or even exceeding
their financial goals at younger and younger ages. A level of affluence that
had been rare has come to characterize large groups and even whole cultures.
In the context of an ongoing intergenerational transfer of wealth, the author
examines demographic and spiritual trends that are motivating wealth holders
to allocate an ever-greater portion of their financial resources to chartiy.
“Philanthropy's Indispensable Ally”
Paul G. Schervish, John Havens, and Albert Keith Whitaker. Philanthropy.
Volume XIX, No. 3, pp. 8-9. May/June 2005.
Most observers now recognize that lifetime giving understandably increases as
people move up the economic ladder. CWP research also suggests that it's not
just the objective size of people's pocketbooks that matters but also their
subjective sense of financial security. Financial security means trusting that,
even in the face of major economic downturns, one's means will support one's
desired standard of living for the indefinite future. For people who feel such
security, philanthropic decisions really are different.
“The Inheritance of Wealth and the Commonwealth: The Ideal of
Paideia in an Age of Affluence”
Paul G. Schervish. New Directions for Philanthropic Fundraising: Taking
Fundraising Seriously. Edited by Dwight F. Burlingame. 2004.
The transmission of philanthropy across the generations is the transfer of a
spiritual agency of material capacity, care for others, and a process of conscientious
decision-making and choice. The intergenerational transmission of philanthropy
is less a matter of shepherding heirs to become caretakers of existing philanthropic
instruments and endeavors as it is a matter of guiding heirs to become agents
who reconstitute for their own time and in their own way the relation between
wealth and the commonwealth. In the first section of the paper I draw on an
essay by John Maynard Keynes to set the stage for an understanding of the material
and cultural conditions in the offing during the early twenty-first century.
In the second section, I summarize several elements of the material heritage
we will leave our children, including a substantial transfer of wealth, and
indicate the implications of these trends for the historical circumstances of
wealth and philanthropy that our heirs will face. The third section examines
the meaning of moral biography as the confluence of material capacity and moral
compass, and how our calling today is to provide our heirs the opportunity to
conscientiously shape their own moral biographies tailored to the distinctive
characteristics of the future in which they will live. In the fourth section,
I explore two elements of how we might best go about to help our children and
grandchildren form their own moral biographies. I focus especially on the communication
of paideia, the Greek ideal of formative education and the meaning of
culture, as the ideal of our teachings and on discernment as a process of decision
making aimed at clarifying one’s philanthropic resources, purposes, and
mode of implementation. In the conclusion, I exhort those in my generation to
make it our vocation to help our children freely discover their own vocation.
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"Gifts and Bequests: Family or Philanthropic Organizations?"
Paul G. Schervish and John J. Havens. Death and Dollars. Edited by Alicia
Munnell and Annika Sunden. Brookings Press, 2003.
This paper presents an alternative paradigm to economic models of transfers,
one which we have developed from our extensive ethnographic and survey research
on charitable giving and which we call the identification theory. The identification
theory suggests that it is self-identification with others and with the needs
of others, (rather than selflessness) that motivates transfers to individuals
and to philanthropic organizations and that leads givers to derive satisfaction
from fulfilling those needs. The allocation of transfers to family and philanthropy,
we have found, is not so much a division between individuals and philanthropic
organizations, as it is an allocation of transfers across an array of perceived
needs, which combines both the needs of individuals, including family and friends,
and needs served by philanthropic organizations. Moreover, the allocation is
less a single conscious decision than a process imbedded in daily life experiences.
"Why the $41 Trillion Wealth Transfer is Still Valid: A Review of Challenges and Questions."
John J. Havens and Paul G. Schervish. Journal of Gift Planning. January 2003.
Despite the economic downturn and the fall of the equity markets, the nationally
noted projection that a wealth transfer of at least $41 trillion will take place
in the United States by the year 2052 remains valid, according to researchers
at the Boston College Social Welfare Research Institute (SWRI), which issued
the original projection in 1999.
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