Americans are free to give to the charities they care about most. Perhaps they want to help repair a school, open a soup kitchen, fund medical research, rehabilitate former prisoners, protect nearby forest land, assist wounded veterans, contribute to a symphony, or support the church of their choice. However Americans want to help, they are at perfect liberty to do so.
Such philanthropic diversity reflects the extraordinary creativity of free people deciding how best to give away their money. It exists because countless individuals freely come together in pursuit of a vast variety of moral goods. Each of these associations has some charitable purpose; each has its own strategy. Each is unique, and each contributes to the rich mosaic of American philanthropy.
True diversity does not come from charitable organizations meeting some cosmetic ratio of race, ethnicity, and gender (or any other arbitrary criterion) among staff, boards, and grantees. That is a cramped, narrow, and unnatural understanding of diversity. Rather, true diversity exists when many different individuals and many different institutions freely commit themselves to a sweeping array of charitable activities.
Charitable giving in the United States is diverse because the American people are diverse—diverse in our aspirations, diverse in our beliefs, and diverse in our most deeply cherished values.
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