Odendahl, Teresa. Charity Begins at Home: Generosity and Self-Interest
Among the Philanthropic Elite. New York: Basic Books, 1990. 299 pages.
Professor Teresa Odendahl is an anthropologist and a consultant to
nonprofit organizations, who has contributed to two other scholarly books
on private foundations. For this book she interviewed 140 millionaire
philanthropists, and surveyed 100 foundation staff members and 70 personal
advisors to the wealthy. Her conclusion is that "contemporary American
philanthropy is a system of 'generosity' by which the wealthy exercise
social control and help themselves more than they do others" (p.245).
Odendahl recommends a restructuring of the philanthropic and tax systems,
and greater accountability in the nonprofit sector.
Perhaps due to her ease of access, Odendahl devotes more space to
liberal, feminist, and progressive funders than to the conservatives who
bankrolled the ideological right during the Reagan years. Her conclusions
are all the more stunning because of this, for she cannot be accused of
hiding a partisan political bias behind her detached academic methodology.
This is a sober, mature, skeptical look at the ethnography of isolated,
upper-class elites, both liberal and conservative, who use philanthropy to
extend their personal control and protect their wealth, and have convinced
the rest of us that we should be grateful.
ISBN 0-465-00962-X
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