GIVING PHILANTHROPY A BAD NAME

It never has passed the smell test with me. It never sounded or felt right. I remember the first time that it vexed me….It was back in the 90’s. A popular and iconic theatre just off the UCLA campus called the Westwood Playhouse, built in 1929, was renamed the Geffen Playhouse, or even now called just “The Geffen”. Why would that happen? How would that happen? Well, this isn’t like when the Idyllwild Airport in New York City had a name change in 1964 to John F. Kennedy International Airport in honor of a distinguished and highly prominent public figure who had just been assassinated. This isn't like the high school in my hometown that is named after John Muir due to his great contribution to saving our natural environment and helping develop our National Parks.

This name change was bought and paid for…it was a classic quid pro quo….David Geffen had nothing to do with the theatre…he was not a thespian or a producer or a playwright. David Geffen just got his checkbook out and wrote a 5 million dollar check to UCLA…and alas, David Geffen’s name would now shine for all eternity in place of it’s established name. It was that simple.

To document all of the buildings and institutions that have changed names due to a similar stroke of the pen by David Geffen would take up more ink than I have but it is striking to note that last year, when the Lincoln Center in New York City secured a $100 million gift from Geffen by offering to rename Avery Fisher Hall after him, it caused a stir among those in the donor class. This is the removal of one person’s name in favor of another…it’s almost a bidding war. I don’t really fault the institutions for wanting to procure large grants…after all, this is how most of these institutions stay afloat and progress, but why the need and desire to supplant an existing name on a building with a history? Why do they have to dangle that carrot? Why does it ever come down to renaming a building in your own name? That is just textbook narcissism.

Ok, so it isn’t enough to have tens of billions of dollars…and maybe you even have bigger hands than Donald Trump…but do you need to remind us of who you are every time you are in the mood to get a tax break?…It's a poorly veiled attempt at immortality…

I have often wondered why people, people who occupy that rarefied privilege of being able to earn hundreds of millions or billions of dollars due to the economic infrastructure that this country has built, would not choose to place the name of someone inspiring who is largely unsung…or maybe even the name of a cherished family member or friend. If David Geffen had named even one of those buildings after his mother or sister I could have given him a pass.

It is my dream some day to be able to donate enough money so that I can name something significant on behalf of Kayla Mueller--the young aid worker from Arizona who donated most of her short life to helping children in war torn countries around the world..she was captured in Syria and enslaved by the head of ISIS, sexually abused and tortured and eventually killed over a year ago. She was only 26. How great it would feel to put her name atop a building…so that everyone could learn about someone who is a true champion of empathy, an "angel", an appeal to our better natures..…not a billionaire who signed bands to recording deals--not the king of greed and narcissism.

Here is a short version of a story that I have never forgotten since I first heard it years ago…it still gives me chills. It is a story about the basketball court at the Galen Center in Los Angeles which is owned by the University of Southern California. Ironically, Louis Galen got his name on the Center as a result of his 50 million dollar donation, but the name of the court itself has a different story.

The Galen Center's basketball court was named after former USC basketball player Jim Sterkel, who played for the Trojans for two seasons in the 1950s, averaging 10 points a game. Two unique factors in the naming rights were the obscurity of the name choice and that the Sterkel family was not aware that the court was named after the late Jim Sterkel until after the facility had already opened. A longtime friend of Sterkel's made the $5 million donation under the agreement that his name never be revealed. In an interview with Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke, who tracked down the person, 'Anonymous' said that he grew up with Sterkel: both attended Mark Keppel High School, both began at USC in 1955 and were roommates. 'Anonymous' later hired Sterkel and helped pay for his treatment when Sterkel was diagnosed with cancer. When the son of the anonymous donor contracted leukemia, Sterkel wrote a poem and sealed it to be read only when the son had died. Sterkel later died in 1997, with the son dying two years later. Inspired by the poem and his friendship with Sterkel, 'Anonymous' made the donation and named the court after his friend, saying, "Some people don't deserve to be forgotten."*

How about donating money and asking to name a building or center for Jonas Salk?..he didn’t sign the Eagles to a record deal like David Geffen did but he invented a vaccine for Polio--a cure. Polio was a devastating and debilitating disease that sent terror into the lives of families everywhere as it crippled and maimed it’s victims (mostly children)…and, unlike the mindset of any businessman of his or any era, Salk chose not to try and patent the vaccine for private profit..instead he said, “Can you patent the Sun”? Studies have projected that Jonas Salk lost 7 billion dollars by not capitalizing on his invention and ingenuity. Salk soon withdrew to a life of anonymity.

Where are the Jonas Salk’s?

When Andrew Carnegie started endowing public libraries in the 19th century (a staggering 3,500 would be built) Mark Twain called the project a shrewd plan not to to elevate mankind but to secure the Pittsburgh titan’s immortality. “He has bought fame and paid cash for it". He has arranged that his name will be famous in the mouths of men for centuries to come”.

Sanford and Joan Weill are a billionaire couple with a lifetime of “philanthropy” to their names. The Weils have donated hundreds of millions and their names are ubiquitous throughout the city of New York…the Weill Cornell Medical College on the Upper East Side, the Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Joan Weill Center, the Joan Weill Center for Dance at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and so on..in 2015 the Weills pledged thier largest gift yet, $20 million to small Paul Smith College in Upstate New York, to be spent at the discretion of the administration, with a major condition attached: The entire college had to be renamed Joan Well–Paul Smiths College. As it turned out, the college’s founder had stated in his will that the school he was endowing was to be “forever known” as Paul Smith’s College of Arts and Sciences, named after the founder’s father. By a court order instigated by the Founder of the College, the college was not allowed to change the name of the college due to the words “forever” in the endowment though the college tried desperately to allow for the endowment and the change of the name. And, not surprisingly, the Weills rescinded their gift. It wasn’t really about philanthropy after all. The Weills, particularly Joan, took a public relations shellacking swiftly thereafter. In Nonprofit Quaterly, Joan Weills was described as having “inscribed herself in stone as one of the greatest , most insensitive egos in today’s philanthropic world”. One online commenter suggested the Weills deserved a prize “for the grossest pseudo-philanthropic act of the year”

Oh, really? It seems like there is a lot of competition for that title. Fewer than 1 percent of charitable gifts by the affluent are anonymous according to Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy.

And btw, the dental school that I attended, the University of Southern California Dental School, has had a name change since I graduated...it is now called the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC. Really? We all know what happened there.

What’s next?…are we to expect the changing of Mt. Rushmore to Mt. Geffen anytime soon? I’m quite sure there is a number out there that will get it done.

How much would it cost to change the name of the Smithsonian to the Geffonian?

Quite unfortunately, too often having grotesque amounts of wealth does not inspire empathy and compassion and true selfless charity and philanthropy as one might expect…it begets greed, narcissism, callousness and a perverse desire to be immortalized by the sheer fact that you have money…you didn’t free the slaves or send a man to the moon, or cure disease or feed the hungry.

The bar is very low in our society….we not only do not expect thoughtfulness and generosity from our billionaires but we are indifferent to their greed and narcissism as well.

What a Shame...what a sham! Thankfully there are things that money can't buy.

Food for Thought....

*equals quotes