Philanthropy in the United States

The United States has a history of philanthropy that possibly dates back to the early settlement by Europeans.

What emerged in this way was a culture of collaboration. Colonial society was built by volunteers, or as later referred to them, "voluntary associations"—which is to say, "private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life". He observed that they permeated American life, were a distinguishing feature of the American character and culture, and a key to American democracy. Americans, he said, did not rely on others—government, an aristocracy, or the church—to solve their public problems; rather, they did it themselves, through voluntary associations, which is to say, philanthropy, which was characteristically democratic.

One of the first, if not the first of these, was also one of the first American governments: the Mayflower Compact of 1620. The Pilgrims, still offshore but in American waters as it were, declared that they "solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation." The first corporation, Harvard College (1636), also in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was a philanthropic voluntary association created to train young men for the clergy

As was typical in that period, American philanthropic associations had ideological dimensions. Three of the leading English colonies—Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia—were styled "Commonwealths", which meant a purportedly ideal society in which all members contributed to the "common wealth"—the public good.

A leading promoter of this Classical and Christian ideal was the preacher Cotton Mather, who in 1710 published a widely read American classic, Bonifacius, or an Essay to Do Good. Mather seems to have been concerned that the original idealism had eroded, so he advocated philanthropic benefaction as a way of life. Though his context was Christian, his idea was also characteristically American and explicitly Classical, on the threshold of the Enlightenment.

Mather’s many practical suggestions for doing good had strong civic emphases—founding schools, libraries, hospitals, useful publications, etc. They were not primarily about rich people helping poor people, but about private initiatives for public good, focusing on quality of life. Two young Americans whose prominent lives, they later said, were influenced by Mather’s book, were Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere.

Regarded in his own time as "a model of American values, and especially of the Enlightenment in America, the key to his life was his Classical, and classically American, philanthropy. He self-consciously and purposefully oriented his life around volunteer public service. Even his political rival, John Adams, avowed in France that "there was scarcely a peasant or citizen" who "did not consider him as a friend to humankind." Immanuel Kant, the leading philosopher of the German Enlightenment, called Franklin the "new Prometheus" for stealing fire from the heavens in his scientific experiments with lightning as electricity, for the benefit of humankind. Franklin had direct connections with the Scottish Enlightenment; he was called "Dr. Franklin" because he had been awarded honorary degrees from the three Scottish Universities—St. Andrews, Glasgow and Edinburgh—and while travelling there he had personally befriended the leading Scottish Enlightenment thinkers.

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