Admirable or Offensive?

Giving to charity is almost universally admired. The decision to take some personal resources and hand them over to an organization that is dedicated to some attempt to make the world a better place is generally considered a good thing and has deep historical, cultural, and religious roots.When most of us give to a favourite charity it is a private matter, and one that happens with no scrutiny from others. Only rarely are average people critiqued for their giving and then, it is usually because they are supporting a cause others oppose.Things are different for the ultra-wealthy.This week a billionaire hedge fund manager in the United States donated $400 million US to Harvard University to support their engineering school, which will now bear his name. It is the largest single gift in Harvard’s history and received significant fanfare.Not everyone is impressed.The New Yorker’s famed author Malcolm Gladwell went on an unprecedented twitter binge mocking the donation and the donor for adding resources to an elite school that is already massively endowed. His humorous suggestions for next steps for the donor are clever and biting.Other writers have decried the gift as ridiculous and wasteful given the impact those same funds could have in a myriad of other charities or causes.All of this raises a few questions for me:1. When is it appropriate to question or criticize the charitable choices of others?2. What responsibility do donors have to consider the impact of their gifts to society as a whole?3. What is the impact of naming institutions/buildings after major donors? When is it appropriate?4. At what point is the endowment of a charity so large that it should not be funded further?5. Do our current tax laws for charitable donations truly serve the needs and desires of our nation?6. Should an organization that serve almost entirely the financially elite retain charitable status? What about an organization that only serves people of a single faith, gender, race, or political perspective?7. Should we assess generosity based on the size of the donation or on the impact of the gift on both the charity and the donor?8. Is $400 million from someone who made well over $2 billion last year alone really an impressive act of generosity?Your thoughts?