More than eight hundred years ago, Maimonides wrote that the highest form of giving is to make charity itself unnecessary. That wisdom feels newly relevant today as questions about power and purpose continue to shape modern philanthropy. Last week, writing in The Wall Street Journal Laurene Powell Jobs revisited the idea, warning that too often wealth becomes a substitute for participation. In her words, “giving that expects control is anything but generous.” When donations become instruments of direction—when benefactors seek to decide what matters and who gets to belong—philanthropy drifts from “love of humanity” toward a contest for influence. MacKenzie Scott offered another image: a murmuration of starlings, millions of birds moving as one without a leader. Their direction, she noted, emerges from continuous response to one another’s movements. Her metaphor captures what the next evolution of philanthropy might look like—decentralized, adaptive, and animated by trust. Both women are describing, from different vantage points, a common transformation. Powell Jobs warns against power disguised as generosity; Scott imagines generosity as shared participation. Each challenges the notion that change flows downward from donor to recipient. And both point toward what many frontline and movement leaders across the Global South have long understood: real and lasting progress happens through proximity, not prescription. Image by Rhett Ayers Butler Philanthropy rarely lacks ambition or compassion, but its operating systems often remain transactional. The habits that define much of institutional giving—short cycles, risk aversion, and an insistence on measurable outcomes—shape behavior even among those trying to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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