    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [October 22, 1999]
    [Pages 1857-1859]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the White House Conference on Philanthropy
    October 22, 1999

        Thank you, and good afternoon. I am delighted to welcome all of you
    here. I thank all those who are here from our Government and all of you
    who have come from all over our country and all walks of life to this
    very, very important meeting.
        I also want to say a special word of thanks to Hillary for yet another wonderful idea--this was a
    good idea to have this conference--and all of you who have helped on any
    of these Millennium Projects. I think it's done us a lot of good to take
    time out and think about the really big issues in our society and how we
    want them to play out in the years ahead. And particularly, I think this
    is an important issue at an important moment.
        A long time ago, Alexis de Tocqueville said that charity in America
    was something more than simple compassion; it was a sign of good
    citizenship. He wrote, ``Americans make great and real sacrifices to the
    public welfare. They hardly ever fail to lend faithful support to one
    another.''
        Today, this is a strong tradition, and the face of this tradition is
    changing. Philanthropy is, like our country, now more diverse as new
    groups seize and share opportunity in the new economy. It is more
    democratic, as Americans of all income levels, believe it or not, give
    at roughly equal levels. It is younger, as the high-tech economy creates
    a new generation of philanthropists.
        I've got to take a little time out. Last night, I had dinner with a
    lot of these high-tech gurus who made allowances for the fact that I am
    obviously technologically challenged. [Laughter] And we were talking
    about how we were all going to relate to each other and maximize the
    potential of the information age. And I started talking about this
    conference today, and I said, ``We've got to get more people to give.''
    I said, ``I would like it if Internet usage were as dense in America as
    telephone usage is, if we had 98 percent penetration, everybody had an
    E-mail address. I think we could have a dramatic impact on education and
    on poverty. I think we could skip a whole generation of development. And
    how are we going to get this done?''
        So there is this guy standing there. He's 27 years old, you know. He
    says, ``Well, you know,

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    when I got out of college, I started this company, and 3 years later, I
    sold it for $150 million, and I started three others.'' And he said,
    ``What you need is founder stock.'' [Laughter] He said, ``We need to go
    all over America and gather up founder stock and put it in a big trust
    to make universal the access to the Internet.'' He said, ``Because
    you've got all these guys like me that don't know we're rich yet. We're
    still living on $30,000, and we've got all this stock.'' [Laughter] So
    he said, ``That's what you need.''
        So I've now given you my contribution to this conference--
    [laughter]--which I learned at the foot of a 28-year-old last night.
    [Laughter] So, I mean, that's encouraging to people like me who aren't
    young, you know? [Laughter] We don't have to depend on the Rockefellers
    and the Mellons and the Carnegies or even the Paul Newmans. We can go
    get founder stock. [Laughter]
        I also think it's important to point out that not only the ways of
    giving are changing but the people. When I saw that film, I was so proud
    that there was a Federal employee that had given every single month for
    25 years, someone obviously of modest means, doubtless a lot of other
    claims on her income. So I want to thank people like Mary
    Grayson and others who are giving. And I think
    we ought to think about new opportunities, or I think the buzz word is
    ``portals,'' that are opening in the world of on-line philanthropy and
    how we can make sure that we can continue not only to increase the
    volume of money but to broaden the base of giving.
        We'll hear today about venture philanthropists and startup charities
    and other ways in which the entrepreneurial spirit is invading and
    energizing this field.
        I would like to also point out that volunteering is another
    important way of giving. This week Hillary and I celebrated the fifth
    anniversary of AmeriCorps. And we've already had 150,000 young people
    serve, and I'm very, very proud of that. I think that is an important
    thing to say. In a lot of ways, the measure of our life and our
    happiness is--to paraphrase one of the many wonderful things Martin
    Luther King said, can be answered by the question: What are you doing
    for others?
        So I'm encouraged by this conference, by the energy here. Some of my
    favorite people in all our country are out here in this audience today,
    people I have admired, some of you for 20 or 30 years, for all the
    things that I have watched you do for others. And I thank you for
    coming.
        I am glad that the sheer volume of charitable giving is going off
    the charts, but I think, as we've had this phenomenal increase in wealth
    in our country, I would feel even better if the percentage of our
    national income devoted to charitable giving had gone up just a little
    bit. You heard Hillary say what we could do if we could just increase it
    by one percent. But going from 2 to 3 percent is a huge increase. We've
    been sort of stuck at 2 percent. Now, when the stock market triples, 2
    percent is a lot more than it used to be. That's not real pocket change;
    it's real money.
        But if you think about what we could do with just a little more, I
    think it is really worth pondering. We're having the same debate in
    Congress now, and I don't want to get into any kind of a political
    dispute about that, but just let me give you an example. I very much
    want the United States to take the lead with the rest of the wealthy
    countries in alleviating the debt of the poorest countries in the world,
    and the Pope has asked us to do it for the
    millennium. Now, this is a campaign with a broad base: It's being
    spearheaded by the Pope and Bono, the lead singer for
    U2. [Laughter] And even though I am not a candidate for anything
    anymore, I can spot a big tent when I see it. [Laughter]
        So you know, we ought to do this. And this is just a little bit of
    all the money we've got. And it's just like de Tocqueville said a long
    time ago: This is not just charity; this is good citizenship. We take
    this burden off these people. If they are well governed and they are
    working hard, we give them a chance to be our partners and friends in a
    more equal and balanced way for the future.
        So there are things for all of us to do. I would like to--I would
    hope today that I will learn something and that we will learn something
    about how we can, at least incrementally, increase the percentage of our
    income we are devoting to philanthropy. I hope we will learn something,
    as I already said, about the ways we can do it. And I hope we will learn
    a little bit about whether we can all give smarter and whether we can
    make sure that the money we are giving is spent in the most effective
    possible way.

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        I take it we all begin by accepting that we no longer believe that
    there is a choice out there, which was never a real choice, between
    Government meeting all of our society's needs and Government walking
    away from them all and letting philanthropy do it. We have to have a
    better partnership, and it will work better if we do.
        We need to think about, in Government, whether we can do more things
    to generate more constructive philanthropy. The Treasury Department will
    meet with representatives of the nonprofit sector next month to discuss
    this. And I, in the meanwhile, am going to establish an intergency task
    force to strengthen our philanthropic partnership between Government,
    nonprofit groups, and citizens, and to ask the Council of Economic
    Advisers to do me a study on the role of philanthropy in the American
    economy and how they believe I can increase it.
        By analyzing trends in charitable giving, by assessing the impact of
    the baby boomers' retirement, which--it's going to be interesting to see
    whether it makes us more or less generous when we retire, this largest
    of all generations of Americans. It should make us more generous,
    because the kids in school are finally the first generation bigger than
    the baby boomers, and they need our help.
        But we need to think about that. What's our message going to be to
    the baby boomers as they move toward retirement? What's our message
    going to be to people thinking about the shape of our social tensions as
    we double the number of people over 65 in the next 30 years? What's our
    message going to be to ourselves, those of us in the baby boom
    generation, about how our citizenship responsibilities should grow when
    we lay down the burdens of retirement, particularly if we've been lucky
    enough to have a secure way to maintain our standard of living?
        This is deserving of an awful lot of thought because there is a
    whole bunch of us. And on the whole, those who manage to escape a career
    in politics are going to be better off than any generation in American
    history. [Laughter] So some serious thought needs to be given to this.
        Well, I've had a little fun with this today. But I am really
    grateful to you all for being here. This is a big deal. We all know--the
    truth is we're all fairly pleased with ourselves for being here because
    you feel better about your life when you've spent a portion of it doing
    something for somebody else. And you feel better about the good fortune
    you have financially if you spend at least a little of it giving
    something to someone else.
        So what we want to do is to start the new millennium poised to do
    more and to do it better and to give more chances to more people to
    participate.
        Thank you all very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:22 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to U.S. Postal Service employee Mary
    Grayson; and Pope John Paul II.