If you make a song and dance over how much you’ve given, are you really being ‘charitable’ at all?
MANY years ago I sat on a slope of green grass high above the Sea of Galilee in Israel. It’s a sacred, tranquil spot, and the place where Jesus is said to have preached his Sermon on the Mount.
Of the many things that he said that day, a few of his words of advice were about giving money to those in need. The King James version of the Bible refers to those charitable donations as ‘alms’ but the English Standard version reads as follows:
‘Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.’
These lines came to mind yesterday when I read the story of Elizabeth O’Kelly.
For this dignified and genuine philanthropist quietly, and without fanfare, donated an astonishing €30million to five Irish charities, equally divided, so that the Irish Cancer Society, the Irish Heart Foundation, the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, the Irish Kidney Association and the Irish Society for Autism were all the beneficiaries of €6million each. €6million!
As the spokesperson for the Irish Kidney Association said on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland yesterday, ‘it’s an awful lot of money’.
Interests
Elizabeth O’Kelly died at the age of 93 in December 2016, having lived for the latter part of her life in Co. Laois.
Born in France in 1924 to a French mother and a Yorkshire father, whose own mother lived in Markree Castle in Co. Sligo, young Elizabeth Sykes was orphaned at the age of only two and then raised by her father’s sister.
At 21 she married Major John O’Kelly and the couple spent their married life near Maynooth in Co. Kildare. Widowed when still in her 30s, she moved to Laois, the county that was to be her home until her death almost two years ago.
As well as property interests, she was a partner in the Leinster Leader newspaper group. When the group was sold in 2005 she benefited to the tune of €30million: that same Christmas the 180 staff of the newspaper group each received an anonymous cheque for €3,000.
When asked if she was the person who had so generously given the staff their unexpected windfall, Elizabeth O’Kelly said that she couldn’t possibly say – because the financial gifts in question had been anonymous donations.
How refreshing is that? How unusual for someone to just give quietly without looking for any kind of kudos in return?
Genuine charity is the Elizabeth O’Kelly kind, where to give is to give for its own sake, just quietly and anonymously, and for no ulterior motive whatsoever.
Not that Mrs O’Kelly was some kind of hermit who shut herself away from the world.
Rather, she appears to have been a hugely active member of a number of societies, including the Kildare Archaeological Society and the Georgian Society, and was, apparently, well known in her earlier life for her ‘tennis parties and splendid teas’.
So, despite being widowed at the tragically young age of 38, Elizabeth O’Kelly appears to have been a woman who embraced life. But not in a way where she put herself centre stage. What was important to her in 2005 was that the newspaper workers got their €3,000. That they knew where it had come from was the last thing on her mind.
Trumpets
And yet, by contrast, so much modern philanthropy ‘sounds trumpets’ when it gives to the needy.
It’s not done anonymously: it’s done very publicly and with great fanfare. Take, for example, Google. Or Vodafone. Or the Oprah Winfrey Foundation. It’s wonderful that these organisations donate, and the recipients are hugely grateful.
But why can’t they do it anonymously like Elizabeth O’Kelly?
Or maybe, if you really have to blow your own trumpet, why not in the name of a loved one rather than the name of your company – or yourself?
By making a public show of it, they allow the perception – even if totally untrue – that they are trying to make themselves look good. Or even that they are basically using a charity to advertise their business!
For there is undoubtedly a degree of kudos and certainly a great deal of publicity generated when any company puts itself out there on the charity circuit. And while nobody is saying that money given to charity – from whatever source – should not be welcomed, there can be a bit of unease as to why exactly any given company is making such a song and dance about it.
For while the actual money donated for charity is vitally important, motivation is important too.
So, you’d have to ask yourself, is a particular company giving all those thousands to a given charity because it genuinely wants to help that specific cause, and might even have some personal connection with it, or is it more to be seen to be doing so in the hope of selling more of its own product, or service, whatever that happens to be?
For all too often, of course, the charity giving is only a front. It’s a marketing tactic, pure and simple. These companies may well be donating considerable amounts of money, but the object of the exercise is actually to make money – for themselves.
Cover-up
Yes, associating your company with a charity may be deemed philanthropic, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that it is often as much about the getting as it is about the giving.
And it can also be used as a diversionary tactic or as a means of cover-up. To be seen to donate to an environmental cause, for example, would naturally heighten your own company’s ‘green’ bona fides.
Why would you be donating to the World Wildlife Fund, for example, or to Friends of the Earth, if you were running a company that was riding roughshod when it came to environmental sensibilities? That, of course, is the very seed of doubt that some such companies want to place in the minds of the public.
Elizabeth O’Kelly was no hypocrite. Nor did she believe in blowing her own trumpet or looking for praise from any quarter. She just lived her life, made and inherited considerable money and, when the time came, simply gave it away with no fanfare whatsoever.
Not for her the craving to be known as a great philanthropist. We would not even know of her extraordinary generosity were it not for the Irish Cancer Society naming her as their benefactor. Nor had she any interest in having her name, literally, in lights – on the front of some building, perhaps, as a place that would stand forever as a permanent testament to her philanthropy. That was not what made Elizabeth O’Kelly tick.
And we could all – on a personal and corporate level – learn from her example. For surely it is the Elizabeth O’Kelly way of giving that is the very essence of what charity is supposed to be about.