National Philanthropy Day falls on November 15 every year. It is a day set aside to recognize the people who give – money, hours, expertise, attention – and the organizations that turn that generosity into something a community can use. It is promoted by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and nothing about it is reserved for people with a foundation named after them.
That last point is the one worth holding onto. The word philanthropist has drifted toward meaning billionaire, which is a recent and fairly useless definition. It originally meant something closer to a lover of humanity, and it still describes anyone who gives deliberately toward a public good.
Where the day came from
The Association of Fundraising Professionals, the trade body for people who raise money for nonprofits, has promoted National Philanthropy Day since the 1980s. The date was recognized by presidential proclamation in 1986, and the observance spread from there through AFP’s chapters across North America. Chapters typically mark it with awards – outstanding volunteer, outstanding youth in philanthropy, outstanding corporate donor – which tells you what the day was designed to do. It is a thank-you, aimed at the people who are usually the least interested in being thanked.
What actually counts as philanthropy
Charity responds to a need now. Philanthropy tries to change the conditions that keep producing the need. Most giving contains some of both, and the full comparison is set out in the Foundation’s guide to philanthropy versus charity. For the purposes of this day, the working definition is simple: giving on purpose, toward something beyond yourself, whether the currency is dollars or time.
Generosity at every scale
The reason National Philanthropy Day exists as a day rather than an awards ceremony is that the sector runs on contributions of wildly different sizes, and the small ones are not decorative. Giving USA, the annual report on American charitable giving researched by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, has consistently found that gifts from individuals are the single largest source of charitable dollars in the United States – larger than corporations and foundations. That total is built mostly out of ordinary gifts. The shifts changing how those gifts are made are covered in the Foundation’s piece on philanthropy trends.
| Scale | What it looks like | What it makes possible |
|---|---|---|
| An hour | Driving a neighbor to an appointment; serving at a food pantry; coaching | Work that no budget covers, done by someone who shows up |
| A skill | A CPA doing a small nonprofit’s books; a contractor fixing a roof at cost | Capacity a small organization could never afford to buy |
| A small recurring gift | $20 or $25 a month, automatically | Predictable income, which is the scarcest thing in nonprofit finance |
| A named fund | A family opens a fund at a community foundation | One decision that keeps funding something after the donor stops deciding |
| A bequest | A clause in a will | A gift that arrives when the donor no longer needs the money |
The names people know, and what they were actually doing
The famous American examples are worth knowing mainly because of the argument they were making. Andrew Carnegie set out his case in an 1889 essay published as The Gospel of Wealth, arguing that a rich man who dies rich has failed, and he then spent decades paying for public libraries in towns that agreed to stock and staff them. The condition mattered as much as the money: he was buying local commitment, not buildings.
Julius Rosenwald, who built Sears, worked with Booker T. Washington on a program that helped fund thousands of schools for Black children across the rural South in the early twentieth century, again on a matching basis that required communities to raise part of the cost themselves. Both men were doing something structurally identical to what a matched community campaign does today, a century earlier and at national scale.
The modern institutional version is The Giving Pledge, launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, which invites very wealthy people to publicly commit to giving away the majority of their wealth. It is a promise rather than a transfer, and its published commitments are worth reading for what they reveal about how the very rich reason about money. It is also, deliberately, a list nobody reading this page will be joining, which is why it is the least interesting part of the story.
The famous names are easy enough to look up — what charities celebrities support runs through the best-known cases — but the giving that actually holds a place like Miami County together never appears on a list like that.
The giving nobody puts on a list
Most philanthropy is invisible on purpose. Donors ask not to be named. Funds get set up quietly after a death. Somebody pays a family’s utility bill through a church and never mentions it. Miami County Community Foundation’s own experience is a fair illustration – in the words of Executive Director Tammy Booe, “We have a number of private donors that are not listed on this page that give money to Miami County nonprofits at their discretion.”
If you want to see the organizations doing the visible work locally, the Foundation’s rundown of charitable organizations in Miami County is the place to start. This page stays with the national picture.
What the day looks like in Miami County
Miami County Community Foundation is a 501(c)(3) community foundation established in 2007 and based in Paola, Kansas. Almost everything it holds started as somebody’s decision to make one act of generosity repeatable, and many of the funds here began after someone died.
The scholarships are the clearest example. The Steve Pepoon Memorial Scholarship gives $1,000 to a Paola High School senior pursuing writing, screenwriting, film, television, media arts or theater – Pepoon was an Emmy Award-winning television writer and a Paola native. Shifting Gears, in memory of Regan Johnson, awards $500 to a Paola High School senior affected by suicide or mental illness, personally or through a family member. Stomp Out Suicide, added in 2026 in memory of Joshua McQuay, awards $500 to a graduating Osawatomie High School senior. The Miami County Youth Leadership Council awards $500 to one senior at each of Louisburg, Osawatomie and Paola. Almost every scholarship here is applied for through the student’s own high school counselor, not through the Foundation.
Not all of it is money. The Avelyn SonShine Journey fund does not award cash at all – it gives away children’s bibles to churches and youth groups. And the Foundation is careful about what it calls its own payouts: “we don’t call them grants,” Booe says. “We call them donations or contributions.” You can see what is currently held on the grants and scholarships page.
How to mark National Philanthropy Day
- Thank someone specific. Name a volunteer, a board member or a donor out loud, in front of other people. This is what the day was built for.
- Make a gift you were already going to make, and make it recurring. Predictable income is worth more to a small organization than the same amount arriving once.
- Give a skill instead of a check if the check is not there this year. Bookkeeping, legal review, a website, a trailer and a Saturday.
- Ask an organization what it actually needs, then listen to the answer instead of funding the thing you assumed it needed.
- Write the clause. A gift in a will costs you nothing now and is the single most underused form of giving. The Foundation’s ways to give page covers wills, trusts, retirement plans and life insurance.
Before marking the day with a gift, check the organization against the charity watchdogs, or choose one of the local funds the Foundation holds. Giving habits also shift by age, as how giving differs by generation shows.
The point of a day like this
National Philanthropy Day is not a fundraising deadline and nobody is going to send you an appeal because of it. It exists to make a fairly simple argument: that giving is a normal thing ordinary people do, that it works best when it is deliberate, and that the person who deserves recognition is more often the volunteer than the donor with the biggest number. Miami County Community Foundation can be reached at (913) 404-7287 or info@micocf.org if the day prompts a conversation about starting something.
