Very Sweet Charity

New Yorkers love to give money to charity. And if it’s a question of making New York City the capital of Western civilization—the center for medical, scientific and artistic innovation around the world—New York City’s wealthiest are generally pretty happy to gratify themselves that it is they who made it so.

According to the Boston College Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, on average New Yorkers give a higher percentage of their yearly incomes to charitable causes than any other state, when adjusted for tax and cost of living. That statistic might have something to do with the fact that of the Forbes 400 Richest Americans, 73 live in New York State. And of those 73, almost every name can be found on one of New York’s prestigious philanthropic boards of directors.

>> Click here to read The Observer's Power Boards List

Meet the Power Boards: the most revered, the most powerful and the most muscle-bound groups of directors that are pulling the strings (and footing the bills) for all that stuff that capitalism doesn’t much account for.

You’ll recognize a lot of the names: Rockefeller, Soros, Tisch, Lauder. They’ve all contributed a good chunk of their own money to New York’s hospitals, parks, museums and performing-arts organizations.

And they make their boards famous by attracting other aspiring check writers: that substratum of New Yorkers who are only too willing to give gifts and buy $30,000 tables at galas if it’s a Rockefeller on the other end of the line. It only makes things better that their clout in the business and society worlds means they can call dear friends like Jay-Z or The Who to give sex appeal to a fund-raiser or two.

The idea of a Power Board is sort of perverse, no? Naomi B. Levine thinks so. Ms. Levine, now retired at age 85, is an influential name in the fund-raising world. In her 22-year tenure as New York University’s senior vice president for external affairs, she’s credited with increasing N.Y.U.’s yearly contributions from $20 million in 1978 to $350 million in 2000.

“What bothers me,” Ms. Levine told The Observer, “is that the little organizations for abused women and other social work are not able to get the same people on their boards to help them stay financially stable. We have a culture that saves the opera but not poor people who require immediate financial assistance.”

The world that Ms. Levine is referring to is one where certain institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robin Hood Foundation, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and even Ms. Levine’s own N.Y.U. have absorbed most of the city’s philanthropic impulses.

These are people that have the “capacity to make big gifts that will encourage other big gifts,” said Gail Freeman, president and CEO of Freeman Philanthropic Services, essentially creating an insular circuit of influential names across a small number of the city’s powerful boards and committees.

There is a familiar formula to this: Money begets connections, begetting more money and more connections, creating something of a community whose social caste and philanthropic power keep improving each other.

It takes all kinds of money to make a power board: “Pre-Civil War money, post-Civil War money and new money,” said Kathleen McCarthy, who specializes in philanthropy at City University of New York. “They have clout and a reputation that casts extraordinary influence locally and nationally,” Ms. McCarthy said.

All of the institutions we’ve named so far appear high up on the Philanthropy 400 list published by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, for being among the nation’s most successful institutions in terms of raising money. But here at home, their influence is considerable in Manhattan’s power elite as well.

THE CHARITABLE-SOCIETY likes of Nan Kempner, Pat Buckley and Brooke Astor that used to rule the philanthropic circuit have passed on, but the new characters that have inherited the socially indispensable traditions of galas and luncheons that these ladies made possible are working it just as hard—if a tad less glamorously.

Some names on today’s Power Boards are familiar: Marie-Josée Kravis, Bruce Kovner, Mercedes T. Bass, Sanford I. Weill and the de la Rentas, of course.

For others coming in from the corporate world—Sir Howard Stringer of the Sony Corporation; Richard D. Parsons of Time Warner—joining philanthropic boards has taken them out of the business section of the news and placed them in the firmament of New York’s Very Most Important People.

And then there are the philanthropy punks: young ones with money to burn—or money coming along soon!—who are eager to follow in their families’ philanthropic traditions (and do a tiny bit of shameless self-promotion on the side) by hitting the charity balls. One can often spot these young ladies around. Tinsley Mortimer was co-chair for the American Museum of Natural History’s Winter Dance; Arden Wohl has helped out on the Young Patrons Committee of Asia Society’s art benefit; and Zani Gugelmann was co-chair for the Met’s Young Friends Benefit Dance. And yet, another socialite, whose family has an especially prominent presence in altruistic causes both past and present, has some things on her mind about philanthropic boards with big names attached to them.

“I’m the only person that can be categorized as a socialite that doesn’t just put my name on a board and attend events,” the Hearst publishing heiress and lady-about-town Lydia Hearst told The Observer. “You would be surprised how many people have no idea what kind of charities they are working for because they are just lending their name.” Next Page >