Charity vs. philanthropy

There has been a lot of controversy about the recent  Barron’s list of the “25 Most Effective Givers”, and a column by Cindy Gibson in The Nonprofit Quarterly gave me something to ponder. I’ve used the terms ‘philanthropy’ and ‘charity’ to indicate different strategies of giving – not to disparage one over the other, since both are needed – but to clarify what I was talking about. Gibson made a simple but convincing argument that charity IS philanthropy.  
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One of the online comments (by Rachel F.) also made a particularly useful point about logic models and their place in helping charity become more effective:

"Logic models meet real needs in real communities every day. Consider this simple model used by soup kitchens everywhere: 

We feed folks in our community who are hungry [action], when & where they are hungry [strategy], so that we meet even a part of this community's day-to-day hunger needs [goal], thus improving the lives of folks in our community as a whole [meta-goal].

Add in relevant performance indicators (Are there more people who are less hungry in our community? Are there people still going hungry day-to-day that we can reach?) and you're working toward real effectiveness."

Charity is not only of value but can be effective. I’ll attempt not to use the word in a way that infers that ‘charity’ is something less-than philanthropy in the future.

—Julia

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