New Orleans       I’m no fan of Apple, nor was I a Steve Jobs fan.  I would say the same for Amazon and Jeff Bezos.  On the other hand, Bezos ex-wife, Mackenzie Scott, upon becoming a many-billions divorcee, has set a new path in philanthropy.  Jobs widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, may be doing the same, especially if she really walks the talk of her frequently quoted and read, recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. 

            She was triggered to write when a fellow billionaire Bay Area big whoop, Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, stepped in it and got it all over his shoes, when he asked his new buddy, Trump, to send 1000 troops into San Francisco before his annual conference.  Jobs’ op-ed, other billionaires and San Francisco politicians, including the Levi-Strauss heir, who is now mayor of the city, rallied to stop Benioff’s entreaty to the president, and he backed off.  Powell Jobs’ best line was a zinger to the heart saying of Benioff, “…in his eyes, generosity is an auction – and policy is the prize awarded to the highest bidder.”  Ouch!  She bitch-slapped!

That may, or may not, be the end of that story, but the rest of what Powell Jobs wrote about philanthropy in general, and what should motivate generosity, should be a warning to the rich everywhere.  Here are some of the other zingers in her piece:

• When wealth becomes a substitute for participation, giving is reduced to performance art – proof of virtue, a way to appear magnanimous while still demanding ownership. Recipients become props in donors’ narratives, rather than agents of change.  Problems get framed around donors’ interests instead of people’s needs.
• That’s the quiet corruption corroding modern philanthropy: the ability to give as a license to impose one’s will.  It’s a kind of moral laundering, where so-called benevolence masks self-interest.
• Public institutions bend toward the priorities of the wealthy, and communities begin to measure worth in proximity to power.
• Money can open doors, but it can’t speak for a community or dictate its future.
• The work of philanthropy…isn’t to command or correct – and it certainly isn’t to demean and disparage. It’s to sustain.  And its truest measure is not what it buys but what it actually helps to build.

None of these quotes will surprise listeners and readers who are familiar with my rants about philanthropy having become transactional, rather than transformative.  In the dominance of billionaires over so much of our lives now, and all of philanthropy, we can only hope that more than just Mr. Salesforce, will be humbled by her words, take heed, and do likewise.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that it was hard for me to resist Powell Jobs shoutout out to the need to fund “citizens who hold communities together:  teachers, nurses, organizers, small-business owners, the quiet network of people who repair what they can reach.”  Yes, you heard her say “organizers,” so she had me forever by putting us on the list.

I should also add another disclosure in my support of her remarks.  None of our family of organizations has ever gotten a dime from either Powell Jobs or Mackenzie Scott.  We’re ready and able any day their light might shine our way, but in the meantime, we persist and struggle on as part of the “quiet network of people who repair what they can reach,” and we’re proud of it.