In 2004, the couple launched another nonprofit, the Zing Foundation, not a grant-making body but a 501(c)(3) charity through which they raise funds to build on some of the ideas that they think MTM overlooked, including support for arts that make a social impact and the concept of their 50% League.

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