What Makes A Philanthropist?

We talk often these days about how philanthropy should take over what government used to do. But who is really a philanthropist, as opposed to just a person with extra money.

I wrote about this once before. How Jerry Hirsch taught me what it is like to be a philanthropist. His philanthropy, through the Lodestar Foundation, is global. I am a fly on the back of philanthropists like him.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not a philanthropist myself in the broadest sense of the term. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary “the Greek root of philanthropy may be literally translated as “loving people.” The English word can refer to general goodwill to one’s fellow people, as well as to the active effort to promote the welfare of people, but in modern use it is most often used to refer specifically to the practice of giving money and time to help make life better for others.” This is what I have learned from hanging around with rich men who have tried to do good things with the money they made in business.

Most of them, however, chose to write big checks. I didn’t. Or rather, I couldn’t. Instead I got down and dirty with my philanthropy.

That’s how I found myself at a cow auction in India twenty years ago. I was in India on my second trip, in Bihar with a retired friend from Intel who had introduced me to the last surviving disciple of Gandhi on my first trip. This man, Dwarko Sundrani ran the Samanway Ashram in the wilds of Bihar, The ashram was outside Bodh Gaya, where Buddha received enlightenment.

In the “outskirts” of Bodh Gaya much of the population was too poor to feed their children. Instead, they sent their children to the ashram, where Dwarko-ji taught them to farm and to take care of cows. After they were grown, they went back to their villages to work. In other words, Dwarko-ji fed them and trained them. He ran a primitive workforce development program for villagers in Bihar. Some of the children Dwarko-ji cared for were tribal. They only came to school because he

fed them, and he taught them only farming. With oxen. Not only couldn’t people afford to educate their children; they didn’t even understand why education was necessary. Remember. This was twenty years ago.

Dwarko-ji was 85 when I met him, and had no succession plan for the Ashram. When I asked him why he taught the children to farm with oxen when we could raise money to buy machinery, he said he had to educate those kids for survival at home, where there would never be farm machinery.

I looked at this 85 year old man, so full of purpose, and I wanted to help him and the children. I asked him what I could do.

He told me he was going to a local cow auction to try to buy a cow and I could come with him to buy it for him. At 65 I was no spring chicken. But I figured if he could do it, I could do it, so I signed up to go with him.

And that’s how he and I found ourselves in a dusty open field full of skinny cows one afternoon. Dwarko-ji explained to me that he wanted a cow because the urine of Indian cows could be used to make antibiotics, and he wanted to educate the children in this skill. We walked up and down rows of cows, breathing in the dust and heat, looking for the perfect cow. Dwarko-ji questioned and haggled in Hindi. I asked what made a perfect cow. He told me the scammers at this market were trying to palm off non-Indian cows on unsuspecting buyers at the auction, but he knew how to choose.

At the end of the day, we didn’t find a cow up to Dwarko-ji’s standards, I left him $200 for the next auction. That was the going price for a cow. If you had told me this was philanthropy, I would not have recognized it.

When Dwarko-ji died at 99, the Speaker of the Tibetan government in exile wrote a letter of condolence to his family:

“Shri Dwarko ji was the last active disciple of Mahatma Gandhi. For many decades he worked closely with Acharya Vinoba Bhave, who was the spiritual successor of Gandhi. Late Shri Dwarko ji has devoted his life for the welfare of the people and has founded a network of 360 schools and engages in all kinds of social action: from eye camps to vocational services for the underprivileged. He was a staunch believer of Non-violent social change. In 1953, Shri. Vinoba and Dwarko ji joined together at Bodh Gaya and set up an ashram named Samanvaya and later in 1962 he was appointed as the chair of the Ashram.”

“Shri Dwarko ji had several audiences with our great leader His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama and shared a great bond of friendship. His Holiness has visited the Ashram in Bodh Gaya and during the visit, he stated that ‘I teach compassion but you, Dwarkoji are living compassion’. Ever since the year 1960s, the Samanvaya Ashram has always facilitated the Tibetans during the Kalachakra and teaching of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama in Bodhgaya. He had also met with many Tibetan dignitaries.”

I still live in the shadow of Dwarko-ji’s life.

As small as my philanthropic contributions have been (ask me about the woman in Uganda for whom I bought a chicken), they are the part of my life of which I am most proud.

Anyone can be a philanthropist. You just have to love people. And just say yes.