The Cost of Giving

A philanthropy professional on why generosity can be complicated—and how to cut through the red tape.

By Sharon Rajadurai

These days, provocative slogans like “eat the rich” are nigh mainstream in American popular culture. It’s no secret that the wealthiest among us are polarizing figures, either heavily envied or heavily blamed for society’s ills (often both). Nor do Christian teachings shy away from this subject. At a glance, there are a multitude of Biblical texts that touch on topics like poverty, injustice, wealth accumulation, and generosity. As a Christian myself, I feel the sting of moments in the Gospels when Jesus says things like, “Sell all you have and give to the poor” or, “It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than a rich man in the kingdom of God.” My instinct is to be defensive, and to hope Jesus meant these commands for others, not for me. “Perhaps He was referring to the one percent of His day,” I tell myself. But if I assess the relative wealth I was born into, I have to reckon with the privileges I have that others do not. The data clearly shows that those of us living in the United States reside in one of the most prosperous countries in the world, during one of the most prosperous moments in history. In a global and historical context, I am privileged—wealthy—beyond what I usually acknowledge, and I find that I cannot ignore Jesus’ words. I want to take His commands seriously, even the ones that might point to my own failures or shortcomings.

Through my faith, I know a God who is more generous than I can imagine. John 3:16, perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible, claims, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (italics added)” The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (the nature of God existing as one essence in three distinct Persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) highlights the deeply self-sacrificial nature of God’s generosity. By giving His son, Jesus Christ, God gave of His very self so that the world might be saved. Generosity is that essential an aspect of His character. However, His invitation to believers is not only to benefit from His generosity, but also to experience the gift that it is to give to others, partaking in His Divine nature.

Growing up in a Christian community shaped by an Eastern cultural background, I found that values like generosity and hospitality were almost second nature to those around me. It was expected that we would live with open hands and homes, especially towards those within the church. If someone was in any need, the community banded around them seamlessly, expecting nothing in return. Yet despite the example my community set, I somehow fell into the mindset that generosity was an optional Christian characteristic. Maybe because I saw giving as second nature, I somehow missed the beauty in intentional generosity. But now I find Jesus’ words in Luke 6:30 particularly haunting: “Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.” Everyone. Give to everyone who asks of you. This certainly clashes with the impulses of our modern American tit-for-tat culture, where our national bent is toward a transactional and reciprocal use of resources. I say this not to necessarily critique American capitalism, but rather to show the stark contrast between this economic framework and what Jesus requires.

As a believer, this keeps me up at night.

How do I develop the eyes to see abundance where the culture I find myself in seems to see only scarcity?

How do I practice generosity with my resources (my money, my time, my relationships, my home, my talents, etc.) in a way that reflects what I understand as the heart of God? If the American cultural context around me functions as a never-ending rat race to earn, save, spend, and invest, how do I overcome these conditioned cultural barriers that keep me from living a more generous life? How do I develop the eyes to see abundance where the culture I find myself in seems to see only scarcity? How could I possibly give generously to everyone who asks of me, if the American dream warns me that I should work hard to produce generational wealth to benefit myself and my future biological descendants?

In my day-to-day life, these questions come up on a smaller scale. When I check out at the grocery store and the register prompts me to donate to a charitable cause, I find myself thinking twice about where that money is actually going. When a friend asks for my time in a way that inconveniences me, I struggle to give an emphatic yes. To my chagrin, I find myself wondering—if I give my measly $5 to the woman holding a cardboard sign outside the train station on my commute to work, will it go towards what I deem necessary? Am I creating “dependents” or contributing to “handouts”? Will my giving hurt another’s agency and self-reliance in the long run? At the end of the day, does Jesus really want me to give to everyone who asks of me?

With this soundtrack playing in my mind, it’s probably no wonder that I’ve spent the last three years working in the field of philanthropy. From what I have seen, the field is driven by the same kind of questions I grapple with. Many do not know how large of an enterprise the field of philanthropy and nonprofit work is, but its reach is global, generating billions of dollars and employing millions. I specifically work to manage grants from those who have chosen to distribute portions of their wealth to nonprofits that provide a public service for a community, such as shelter for people without homes or ESL (English as a Second Language) classes for adult refugees.

Through my high school and college years, I volunteered and interned at nonprofits, and I learned quickly that a massive portion of nonprofit work is fundraising. Put simply, donations make nonprofit programs possible. With this in mind, I did one final college internship at a philanthropist network, which led to my first full-time job at a philanthropy consulting firm. In that role, I worked alongside a team of consultants to assist philanthropists in their grantmaking practices. This ranged from conducting due diligence (reading, analyzing, summarizing, and evaluating the financial soundness of grant proposals) to scheduling site visits with potential nonprofit grant recipients, along with a slew of other administrative tasks to manage and organize grantmaking processes. Through that job and my current position at a different foundation, I’ve gotten to see, up close, how giving decisions are made for millions of dollars.

Giving away resources is a lot more difficult than it appears. Or, rather, giving away resources well is the elusive North Star.

Every philanthropic organization’s process is different, but in my experience, many follow some order of these steps: first, the funders come up with a vision, mission, or strategy for what kinds of work they’d like to support. For example, I’ve worked with a foundation that decided their giving would only go toward youth and arts organizations in one specific city. From there, the team does the work of finding organizations that fit these qualifications and then performs various types of financial and legal due diligence to establish the organization’s legitimacy (i.e., is the nonprofit a registered 501(c)(3)? Do they have enough in financial reserves to remain in operation? etc.). After that, funders may meet the organization’s leadership or go on a site visit to get a feel for the work they do. If the funders and their team continue to feel that the organization is aligned to their mission and goals, they will invite a proposal from the organization, that is, a formal request for funding with details about how it will be used. These proposals are then reviewed, and decisions are made about which organizations will receive grants. However, these decisions are not always a simple yes or no. They involve questions like, “How much money should this grant be?”, “Will this grant be up for renewal in following years?”, “Which programs, if any, should this money be earmarked for?”, and “What internal benchmarks should we create in order to assess the value of continued relationship with this organization?” After grants are distributed, the team will then manage relationships with organizations to build mutual partnership, while performing ongoing evaluation of an organization’s impact.

In the midst of all this work, I am repeatedly struck by the same simple revelation I have in my personal life: giving away resources is a lot more difficult than it appears. Or, rather, giving away resources well is the elusive North Star. When givers desire to be thoughtful and intentional about where resources are flowing, philanthropy becomes intellectually and logistically laborious for practitioners and potentially burdensome to beneficiaries. For example, it is generally accepted that grantmakers evaluate grantees’ work for effectiveness; in reality, nonprofits can struggle with this requirement, especially since impact is not always easily measurable. To illustrate, imagine an organization that claims a $500 donation will cover a year’s worth of education costs for a child experiencing poverty. And at the end of that year, they can prove to the donor that the child they donated $500 for completed their school year successfully. A nonprofit model like this will most likely easily attract donors, because the outcomes of the donation are measurable, and the impact of the donation is almost immediate and easily replicable.

However, other nonprofit leaders might wonder, “Why is education so expensive?” or “Why was this child unable to afford education in the first place?” They may decide to create organizations that seek to address root issues of poverty and education access. Perhaps these entities focus on advocacy work on the government level to create regulations around education costs, or maybe they provide financial literacy classes that help families find pathways to afford their child’s education—or even a multi-pronged approach that incorporates many unique interventions. However, a $500 donation to this type of organization might not produce immediately measurable and replicable outcomes. Influencing the root causes of a complex issue like generational poverty is slow and nuanced, but to a cautious donor, this type of organization could seem unwieldy, risky, or not fast-moving enough. As a result, donors might be less compelled by this organization’s impact model, leading to reduced support for innovative work. By trying to over-engineer program outcomes and withholding funding from groundbreaking organizations, donors risk becoming part of the social problems that philanthropy sets out to solve.

Generosity that is led by this Love has little to no room for fear, control, and intrinsic distrust.

Not only can philanthropy become over-engineered, but in the American context, the larger conversation about philanthropic giving tends to demonstrate an underdeveloped understanding of the reasons for generosity and the moral underpinnings that make it a necessity. Effective altruism (the modern philosophy of allocating money towards the highest measurable impact above any other priority) and other similar ideas have taken hold of public imagination, but on the other hand, why be altruistic at all? Why contribute to social good in the world or allocate dollars to fuel social justice causes? Who defines what is good and what is just? Is philanthropy genuinely for the service of others, or is it simply a noble-seeming way to obtain tax write-offs? Perhaps altruism just feeds our egos, or absolves us of feeling guilt for our own prosperity? A well-known Biblical passage from 1 Corinthians 13 warns about the vanity of giving everything away, but not having love. Sometimes, even outward selflessness acts as a cover for otherwise selfish motives. It may seem ironic, but working in philanthropy has convinced me that it is entirely possible to give away all that you have, yet to do it without concern or compassion for those receiving it. This dissonance is where I see the unique shape of Christian generosity come into focus, mirroring a God who is the very embodiment of Love itself.

Generosity that is led by this Love has little to no room for fear, control, and intrinsic distrust. As I have assessed all of the lingering questions in my personal and professional life in light of Christian tradition over the last few years, I have discovered that the root of many of my worries is simply a lack of fearless Love, both for God and for neighbor. One major way I feel this lack is the notion in my heart that anything I have is “mine.” This is something I continually have to unlearn. If I genuinely believe that God is sovereign (as the Christian faith teaches), my relationship with everything that (our economic system says) I own should shift from one of control to humble stewardship—that is, caring for things entrusted to my care by their ultimate owner, God. Mixing lack of love with fear of “doing it wrong” in giving is where I struggle. I hypothesize that a similar form of hesitation is the reason why billions of dollars in assets sit in Donor-Advised Funds (accounts set aside for charitable giving that often are not actually given away). In light of this, Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6 to avoid “laying up treasures on earth” feels especially pertinent.

Material resources are not problematic in and of themselves; the spirit with which we do or don’t use them can be. To “lay up” is to amass, to collect, to set aside, to store, to accumulate. A harsher description would be “to hoard.” Building wealth for myself, for my comfort, and to satiate my greed is the starkest type of “laying up treasures on earth” that Jesus’ teachings remind me of. But even more insidiously, when my field and I tightly grip resources out of fear of giving them away “incorrectly” or inefficiently, we are still contributing to this accumulation of wealth. An obsession with making sure our generosity ends up in the hands of those we think deserve it or will use it maximally well is still just another form of control. Yet the invitation of Jesus allows resources to be distributed according to need, while also freeing the human heart of its obsessive tendencies around protecting and preserving what we have. When taken with other evidence in Scripture, such as Old Testament laws protecting the vulnerable and New Testament commands to care for the poor in the Apostle Paul’s letters, I see a call to a redeemed form of philanthropy take shape in the Christian tradition.

I picture that call as something like this: If wealth is like a full water balloon of resources, philanthropy is like poking a thumbtack into that balloon and watching it burst, water gushing out. I picture it as the breaking open of a dam–the shift of resources from a state of stagnation to a flow of vibrant motion. When resources move, rather than staying in place, they have the power to cultivate life. When we find ourselves gatekeeping wealth out of fear of not having all the answers, not being able to solve all of the world’s problems, we unintentionally stifle the generative potential of our assets, running the risk of producing nothing. I wonder if something like this is what Jesus was referring to when He claimed that “laid up” treasure on earth decays and is eventually destroyed.

To be clear, I am not advocating for thoughtlessness or recklessness with what I believe God has given. I still highly value faithful stewardship, and I hold that the field of philanthropy’s effort to give effectively is a deeply needed and important function in the fabric of society. However, I believe that the uniquely Christian call to generosity inherently seeks to reflect the Spirit of a benevolent, wise, and loving God, even in the midst of our questions and doubts. That call is rarely easy—in my own experience, giving is synonymous with vulnerability. I say this because there are a set of fears that naturally accompany generous choices—what if I am taken advantage of? What if this gift is misused or wasted? What if I regret giving this gift? The more wealth a person has, the more power they can leverage to do anything they desire. Giving away those resources is the relinquishing of that power to someone else. While wisdom and generosity are not mutually exclusive, I believe Christian giving requires a transfer of control from the giver to those who receive. Put more aptly, it requires trust that the shared asset is under God’s eye, and not mine alone. I assume that the vulnerability inherent in generosity is God’s intentional design to keep Christians humble. Perhaps, this simple humility and trust is what He is after in the end.

Yet even beyond our personal character growth, generous living is an invitation from the ultimate Giver, to use the movement of resources to redemptively cultivate communities that reflect His beauty and order and promote human flourishing. Reflecting God in both method (humble stewardship) and objective (redemption) serves as an answer to His invitation. In both my personal and professional life, Jesus’ commands regarding generosity have allowed me to see wealth as the treasure on earth that it can be, while calling for the dissipation of its hold over my life. While my reservations and questions remain, Christ, in His kindness, continually offers me the gift of sharing with others, working together to see His Kingdom come, and to truly live.

All photos from Unsplash

Sharon Rajadurai lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She graduated from Suffolk University in 2021, and her passions lie at the intersection of faith, international development, and generosity. She currently works as a Program and Research Associate for Imago Dei Fund and serves part-time as the Executive Director of the Lady Doak College Foundation, which supports the women’s college of the same name in Madurai, India.

All opinions expressed are the writer’s own, and do not reflect those of her employers.