2024 arrives with a sense of urgency on all fronts. At a time when democratic norms are slipping, inequality and human needs are rising, and the climate is dangerously heating up, we are called upon to meet challenges that are stark, and steep. Against this background, we debate how philanthropy should be done, and what it can do to stave off these dire or even existential threats.

To know what we ought to do, we must consider first what we can do. Philanthropy even in dire times is an expression of our hopes for the future. But hopes as well as fears often contain myths that, if left unexamined, can render us less effective.

Here are three such myths that form the background for what is possible.

Myth 1: The work that we do will create a just world.

Even after an 18% drop in 2022, foundation endowments in the U.S. alone exceed one trillion dollars. Critics decry low levels of spending by foundations (typically 5% of total assets annually). When the world is burning, how can we justify sitting on such vast wealth? Basic human needs and persistent injustices far outstrip our resources, and the tsunami of funding that foundations could unleash would surely make a difference.

But this begs the question of what kind of future we can expect. Will the injustices we solve stay solved? Would the result be a durably better world?

Progress on any given issue plausibly makes people generally fairer, more tolerant, and more sensitive to the subtleties and varieties of social exclusion. Perhaps going full speed on all fronts will be even more transformative.

But after three decades in social justice and human rights spaces, I am not optimistic.

Social change resembles co-evolution, the process by which predator and prey become selection pressures driving each other to evolve. When prejudices become socially unacceptable, often new targets or forms of oppression emerge. Many different groups have been systematically maltreated over the course of history. It is hard to imagine a transformation so thorough that conflict and oppression do not continue to mutate and gain new footholds.

Further, the problems we face today may intensify in an ecologically bleak future  – for example, social scientists predict that violence will be more common in a hotter climate. We need more money to address the problems we know, but the ones we don’t yet know are likely to be even more trenchant.

Social justice struggles are not finite and bounded, but unpredictable, changing and indefinite. New threats emerge like hydra heads as the arc of justice slices on. We will need philanthropy for the long, long term.

Myth 2: The growth of philanthropy is evidence of a more humane world.

As I argue here, the NGO sector rests on morally dubious foundations. In the US, it quadrupled during the same period as wealth became more concentrated at the top. Inequality has had dire consequences for those on the losing end: wages have stagnated, personal debt has risen, and deaths of despair have lowered life expectancy.

It makes sense that inequality and philanthropy would go hand-in-hand. Ordinary people spend a greater proportion of their income on basic needs. But when the system makes the rich richer, less goes to survival, and more can be given away.

We must address the staggering growth in inequality around the world. But if the first myth is correct, ‘working towards our own obsolescence’ is unrealistic. This creates a conflict: To the extent that we are successful at reversing income inequality, we risk creating a world where our sector shrinks, but problems do not.

In a more equal world, foundations will have an even more critical role to play. Nonprofits run on deep pools of wealth, and foundations are where many of the deepest pools are found. They provide a way to maintain the concentrated resources that nonprofits need even as we create shallower but more even prosperity across society.

Myth 3: Winning social justice struggles depends on finding the right strategy for change.

It is a truism that the right ‘theory of change’ is necessary for social justice advocacy. Measuring outcomes and revising theories to respond to data, proponents argue, is the best way to ensure that we are maximizing their impact.

A natural outcome of this approach, one might think, is that as bad theories of change are winnowed away, a few good strategies will come to the fore. The trend towards very large grants for bold new ideas would seem to be a logical outcome of this idea.

In an earlier Alliance article, I argue that this promise is illusory, and that placing big bets on the most promising theories is a poor way to gamble. Theories of change are developed with an incomplete understanding of the murky problems we confront, implemented in a dynamic environment where the parameters and pressure points envisioned are constantly shifting. Frequently, changes result from factors that no one foresees. In the ever-shifting push-and-pull of social justice advocacy, no theory of change will be proven correct.

Doubling down on one strategy is a recipe for failure. But even if all theories fail, collectively they may still achieve positive change, albeit not exactly as anyone envisioned. The wise philanthropist hedges their bets, supporting many strategies towards a goal rather than going all in on one. This ecosystem approach aims to nurture a variety of actors and a diversity of approaches that, sometimes in concert and sometimes not, move the needle towards justice.

Making the Most of What is Possible

Together, these myths suggest a set of demands that are difficult to square. We want to solve urgent problems now. The surest way to do so is to spread our bets. Even compared to the MacArthur Foundation’s ‘100 and Change,’ a promising ecosystem approach would be strikingly expensive. There might be enough in the philanthropic universe to address today’s problems, but little would be left for new threats that will come.

This suggests three principles to balance:

1. Give as much possible;
2. Give for as long as possible;
3. Give to as many groups as possible.

Any given set of philanthropic values may prioritize some points over others; the key is to do as much as possible in our favored direction without leaving the others dangerously weak. This will be unsatisfying: However we triangulate, there will always be more that could be done, and, sadly, work that ought to be taken up but isn’t. Such is our dilemma.

Devon Kearney is a non profit consultant and former director of development at the Earth Law Center.