ABSTRACT
Should philanthropy have a role in responding to crises of trust in and within public institutions, and if so, what role? We address this question by examining the relationship between philanthropy and institutional trust from the perspective of public ethics, a subfield of political philosophy concerned with the moral principles and values that guide people's actions in their public institutional capacity. At issue is the nature of the relationships that should bind the members of a polity and how philanthropy may sustain or hinder such relationships.
We consider two senses of institutional trust: first, the relationships linking citizens to officeholders, where the public trusts officeholders to perform their functions in keeping with the institution's raison d’être. Second, trust relationships occur within public institutions among officeholders. When trust among officeholders falters, institutional action is at risk of failure or dysfunction.
Our question is whether and how philanthropy might play a role in addressing such failures and dysfunctions. We explore two paths: philanthropy offering services to help officeholders regain interpersonal trust, such as privately funded training programs or team-building activities, and philanthropy that helps from the outside, complementing the work of public institutions through private/public partnerships or directly providing services when public institutions fail to do so.
