What is Philanthropy?

First day of this class, we all were sitting at desks in a circle with a couple people chatting with the one person they kind of know. Why are any of us here in the "Honors Seminar: Experiencing Philanthropy?" We go around the circle introducing ourselves. Where are you from? What year are you? What is your major? What is one interesting thing about yourself? Our class's majors range from mechanical engineering, to nursing, to sound recording technology with many more in-between.  Notice that not one of us are here to study philanthropy. To be honest most of us are here to fulfill an Arts and Humanities elective.

But what did we get ourselves into? What exactly is Philanthropy? In the next three hours we got some answers.

We are prompted to raise our hand if we feel we are a philanthropist. Only a few hands go up as the images of Angelina Jolie building a well in a remote African village flash through our heads. We are a group of broke college students, none of us have that kind of time or money. 

Here we are, sitting in this new class, just trying to do our time to get these credits so we can graduate. We are used to getting lectured at, having an incredible amount of information shoved in our brains, just to regurgitate it on an exam. Information we may need to know for our future careers as nurses and doctors, engineers, and musicians. But what do we need to know about philanthropy? Philanthropy is just a word we use to say "the rich give their money to the poor." We are all sitting here hoping one day to not be thousands of dollars in debt, now to think of getting rid of that money?

How wrong we were. 

There is so much more to philanthropy than just giving away your money. Philanthropy is translated to "the love of mankind". Although, we defined it simply as giving. Little did we know, the next thing we learned we would hear over and over again. Time, talent, treasure. The three T's. The three ways you can give. The three ways one can be a philanthropist. You can give your time either by volunteering in any number of ways, big or small, even by mentoring. You can give your talent, like painting a mural if you're an artist or if you're a doctor, work a day in a free clinic. You can give your treasure, like your money, but also goods.

But why do people give?

People give for many reasons. You could have been influenced by an experience. You could have be invited to give by a friend. We have all been asked to donate to someone for their charity ride or run. You can have a passion. A passion for helping rescued animals, for instance. You can also give out of obligation. We have all given our spare change to that Salvation Army red bucket during the holidays when you heard that bell ringing when walking out of the store. 

We were asked a second time to raise our hand if we felt we are a philanthropist. Every student sitting in our circle looks around and then raises their enlightened hand.

We are all philanthropists.