Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University and founder of The Life You Can Save, not only thinks it is acceptable to browbeat prospective donors, it’s exactly what he did in an op-ed article published in The Washington Post.
In my opinion, Singer’s piece, “Heartwarming Causes are Nice, but Let’s Give to Charity with Our Heads,” contains a glaring ethical problem:
Coercive Manipulation. Singer suggests that people who donate to causes that he does not endorse, such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation, are guilty of murder.
Let’s look more closely at this issue before exploring other problems with Singer’s reasoning.
After pointing out that the Make-A-Wish Foundation does not save lives, Singer presents a variety of examples of how contributions to his select group of organizations, instead of Make-A-Wish, can actually preserve lives. Singer writes:
Yet we can still ask if these emotions are the best guide to what we ought to do. According to Make-A-Wish, the average cost of realizing the wish of a child with a life-threatening illness is $7,500. That sum, if donated to the Against Malaria Foundation and used to provide bed nets to families in malaria-prone regions, could save the lives of at least two or three children (and that’s a conservative estimate).”
Singer goes on to say:
It’s obvious, isn’t it, that saving a child’s life is better than fulfilling a child’s wish to be Batkid [referencing a child who benefitted from Make-A-Wish last year]?”
Such adolescent logic is harshly manipulative. The taking of a human life is widely considered the greatest possible sin. By accusing people of this sin, Singer is using guilt to coercively manipulate donor behavior.
Mosquito by Ibrahim Koc
Rather than offering an unbiased exploration of the roles of emotion v. intellect in the philanthropic process, Singer uses the forum to browbeat people to meet his own personal philanthropic standards.
I’m not sure why Singer thinks he is better qualified to judge which charities are worthy to exist or not. Nevertheless, it is certain that Singer feels he has a better moral compass than the rest of us. And, unless we want to be murderers, we should support his anointed causes.
What I find particularly interesting is that, while Singer appears concerned about saving lives, he seems little concerned with the quality of those lives saved.
What happens to the child who has been saved from Malaria? Would Singer oppose donations to build a school to educate those children? After all, the money otherwise could have gone to buy more mosquito nets.
Singer’s op-ed article provides an excellent example of what nonprofit organizations should not do when trying to attract people to a cause. Instead, here are some of the things that charities should do:
1. Maintain the highest possible ethical standards. All charities should adopt the Association of Fundraising Professional’s Code of Ethical Principles (or a similar code) as policy.
2. Avoid coercion and outright manipulation.
3. Provide accurate, factual information to prospective donors so they can make their own informed decisions.
4. Make a strong case for support. Even Singer acknowledges the need for a strong case for support and effective storytelling. When a charity has a strong case and relates it in the form of a story about an individual or small group, the cause will be more relatable and the charity will be more likely to generate support.
5. Resist the temptation to blame prospects for their lack of support. Instead, organizations should look inward to discover how they could have better educated and cultivated the prospect and how they could have more effectively inspired a donation. See last week’s post for a great example of the power of effective storytelling.
In addition to his ethical misstep, Singer has philosophically trapped himself by embracing three fallacies:
First, he assumes that someone who donates to Make-A-Wish does not also contribute to life-saving charities. In most cases, that is undoubtedly false.
As Singer’s own informal research shows, people want to help others and, in particular, save lives. People tend to support many charities rather than just one. Donors often support a variety of causes. It’s up to individual charities to inspire those donors.
Second, he assumes that the philanthropic pie is of a static size and that only the slices can be made smaller or larger. If one gives to Make-A-Wish, one is taking money away from a life-saving charity; it is a false determination. In actuality, the nonprofit sector has the power to grow the pie itself. Instead of berating donors for giving to the wrong organizations thereby effectively taking money away from worthy organizations, let’s increase the size of the philanthropic pie.
There’s no need to squabble over limited resources if those resources are only limited by our own imaginations. With a larger philanthropic pie, we can all be more comfortable when donors choose to support life or the quality of life. Without both, it would be a rather bleak world.
Third, Singer assumes that philanthropic decision-making is governed by either the heart or the mind. The headline of his piece sums this up clearly: “Let’s Give to Charity with Our Heads.”
The reality is that philanthropy involves both the heart and the mind. To deny one or the other is to deny human nature.
As for Peter Singer, I assume his heart was in the right place when he wrote his op-ed article. Unfortunately, his head was not. Don’t make the same mistakes.
That’s what Michael Rosen says… What do you say?
Michael Rosen Says... 