The Scaffolding We Don’t See
Walk down any city street in America and you’re likely passing through a landscape held up by philanthropy. The hospital wing named for a donor, the university library with a family crest carved above its doors, the orchestra hall that opens its season with a gala — these are all pieces of our civic infrastructure, though they rarely make the budget.
We like to think of hospitals, universities, museums, and public media as “public goods.” But in the United States, they are mostly private collaborations between civil society and individual generosity. Without donors, many of these systems would collapse.
Hospitals depend on philanthropy to build neonatal intensive care units, cancer centers, and dialysis wings. Donor dollars fund the research, equipment, and uncompensated care that government and insurance rarely cover. Universities run on endowments built by alumni gifts and foundation grants; scholarships, research labs, and professorships all trace back to private giving. In the arts, the pattern is even clearer: ticket sales rarely exceed 40% of operating costs, leaving orchestras, museums, and theaters reliant on donors just to open their doors. Even the news, that cornerstone of democracy, now depends on philanthropy. NPR, PBS, and hundreds of local newsrooms run pledge drives not because they want to, but because they have to.
The scale of this dependency is staggering. In 2024, Americans gave an estimated $592.5 billion to charities, according to Giving USA. That generosity keeps the scaffolding of our society standing, but it also exposes how unevenly it’s built. Rural communities, for instance, receive only about 7% of all philanthropic dollars, despite representing nearly a fifth of the population (Philanthropy.com). Even within cities, the largest institutions capture the lion’s share of support, while local service providers are left patching together grants and goodwill.
In Europe, higher taxes cover much of what philanthropy subsidizes here: health care, housing, education, culture. But in the U.S., public spending has long favored defense and physical infrastructure over social infrastructure. That leaves health, news, and community life to be supported not by policy but by persuasion, one conversation and one donor at a time.
When I walk into someone’s office to ask for a gift, I’m not asking them to “do something nice.” I’m asking them to help keep the scaffolding from falling down. To keep the lights on in places that were never meant to operate in the dark.
At BIPA, this understanding shapes everything we do. We don’t see fundraising as a side project or an act of charity. We see it as civic maintenance, the work of coordinating compassion at scale. Philanthropy is how America holds itself together. It’s how ideals become infrastructure.
And if we can help people see that, maybe we’ll build a society sturdy enough to hold us all.
