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| Profile |
Half Measures
Joanna L. Krotz
03/01/2007
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Internecine War
Along the path to this point, the Ellingers have displayed
a seemingly endless interest in contemplating and deliberating the effects of
money on people and their society. In their early adulthood, they worked as
social organizers, primarily with people at the bottom of the demographic
ladder. Anne, who holds a masters degree in social work, worked for a tenants’
rights group, while Christopher also became involved in grass-roots organizing.
He had grown up in a family divided by conflict between his mother’s side and
his father’s side. As he tells it, no one talked about the awkward reason for
the tension. After his mother succumbed to cancer when he was 14, Christopher
says the unresolved gap in his family widened into a gulf.
“I loved both
sides and was confused about why they weren’t connected,” Christopher says. In
retrospect, he now recognizes the issues as class differences. “My
grandfather on my mother’s side was a doctor who grew up poor, saved every
penny and made a fortune in the stock market,” he says. But Christopher’s
paternal side struggled for money. “My mother’s father judged my father’s
family for not picking themselves up by the bootstraps. And my father’s family
judged the others as selfish.” So while Christopher was aware that his
grandparents were well off—they paid for private schools and his Princeton
education—he did not anticipate the surprise bequests that came first in the
early 1980s when his grandmother died, then a few years later from his
grandfather’s estate.
Christopher recalls that he and Anne initially refused
to spend any of the money. “I’m temperamentally cautious,” Christopher says. “My
first decision after inheriting the money was not to rush into any major
decisions for five years.” Eventually the Ellingers purchased a 10-room home
built in the 1920s, where they have lived for some two decades.
Their first
foray into philanthropy began with a project that set the stage for what they
are doing now: collecting other philanthropists’ stories. “We thought we should
hear the stories of people who gave away significant assets before we did
something rash,” Anne says. “We wanted to see if they regretted it.” Instead,
the tales they heard were so inspirational that their project turned into a
book. In 1992, the Ellingers published We Gave Away a Fortune, a handbook of
personal stories and advice from donors who gave away assets ranging from a few
thousand to millions of dollars—and none claimed to regret it.
In their
recruiting efforts for the 50% League, the Ellingers do their best to use the
lessons they gather to show others that they, too, can give away a great deal of
money without experiencing hardship. They like to tell people that they do not
have to amass the wealth of Bill Gates or George Soros before they give
substantial donations. Inevitably, though, they do encounter individuals who say
no, either to committing to giving at such levels or to becoming involved at
all. Some are sure they will end up on the street if they give away half of
their assets, while some are in an awkward position that the Ellingers would
like to help remedy, as Christopher recalls from one phone conversation. “We
went to an investment manager of high-net-worth families to get help finding
people,” he says. “That manager secretly revealed that he himself was giving at
that level. He hasn’t wanted to tell people, lest his clients think he is
somehow expecting them to match his level of generosity and be scared off from
working with him.”
Joanna L. Krotz writes on business and philanthropy. Her work has appeared in
Money, The New York Times and Eons.com
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